The Married Couple of the Year Two (French: Les Mariés de l'an Deux) is a 1971 French comedy film directed by Jean-Paul Rappeneau. It was entered into the 1971 Cannes Film Festival.
The title is a reference to “The Soldiers of Year II”, the conscripts raised by the Levée en masse in 1793 to defend the French First Republic against foreign invaders. Released before mutual consent divorce was authorized in France, the film also pays homage to Hollywood comedies of remarriage.
Contents
Plot
Having killed a noble too friendly with his wife Charlotte, Nicolas Phillibert flees from pre-revolutionary France to South Carolina, where he does well and wants to marry a rich plantation owner's daughter. To do so, he will first have to return to France and get a divorce, since the very first law passed by the new French Republic legalized it. On landing at Nantes in 1793, the Reign of Terror is raging and he is arrested by the authorities. Taken to a republican ceremony in the cathedral, he saves the life of a royalist girl, Pauline, and escapes with her to an isolated castle. There he finds Charlotte, claiming to be a widow, with Pauline's brother Henri. A prince arrives from London to organise resistance in the Vendée and is struck by Charlotte, who was told by a gypsy that she would become a princess. She admits that she is married to Nicolas, so the prince has him drugged and carried into the Hôtel de Ville in Nantes to get a divorce. Put back on his ship for America, Nicolas’ divorce certificate blows overboard. Diving into the Loire, he swims ashore to find Charlotte again, but she has left with the prince for neutral Germany. Pursuing her across France in the throes of the Austrian invasion, he catches her at the frontier. At the end of the chase, the prince's carriage crosses the enemy lines, but Charlotte immediately runs back to France, where Nicolas is leading the attack with the French troops. An epilogue subsequently reveals that Nicolas had a brilliant military career, eventually became Marshal of France, and was elevated to Prince of the Empire in 1809. Charlotte indeed thus became a princess, and Nicolas found fortune and fame in a new world, thus fulfilling the Gypsy woman's prophecy...
Cast
Jean-Paul Belmondo as Nicolas Philibert
Marlène Jobert as Charlotte
Laura Antonelli as Pauline
Michel Auclair as Prince
Julien Guiomar as Representative
Mario David as Requiem
Charles Denner as Traveller
Georges Beller as Simon
Paul Crauchet as Public Prosecutor
Marc Dudicourt as Le chauve
Patrick Préjean as Saint-Aubin
Sim as Lucas
Pierre Brasseur as Gosselin
Sami Frey as Marquis de Guérandes (as Sami Frei)