Start the Revolution Without Me is a 1970

1970 in film

The year 1970 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* January 9 - Larry Fine, the second member of The Three Stooges, suffers a massive stroke, therefore ending his career....

 film

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

 directed by Bud Yorkin

Bud Yorkin

Bud Yorkin is an American film and television producer, director, writer and actor.Yorkin was born Alan David Yorkin in Washington, Pennsylvania. He earned a degree in engineering from Carnegie Tech, now Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsbugh, Pennsylvania...

, starring Gene Wilder

Gene Wilder

Gene Wilder is an American stage and screen actor, director, screenwriter, and author.Wilder began his career on stage, making his screen debut in the film Bonnie and Clyde in 1967. His first major role was as Leopold Bloom in the 1968 film The Producers...

, Donald Sutherland

Donald Sutherland

Donald McNichol Sutherland, OC is a Canadian actor with a film career spanning nearly 50 years. Some of Sutherland's more notable movie roles included offbeat warriors in such war movies as The Dirty Dozen, , MASH , and Kelly's Heroes , as well as in such popular films as Klute, Invasion of the...

, Hugh Griffith

Hugh Griffith

Hugh Emrys Griffith was a Welsh film, stage and television actor.-Early life:Griffith was born in Marianglas, Anglesey, Wales, the son of Mary and William Griffith. He was educated at Llangefni County School and attempted to gain entrance to university, but failed the English examination...

, Jack MacGowran

Jack MacGowran

John Joseph "Jack" MacGowran was an Irish character actor, whose last film role was as the alcoholic director Burke Dennings in The Exorcist. He was probably best known for his work with Samuel Beckett.-Stage career:...

, Billie Whitelaw

Billie Whitelaw

Billie Honor Whitelaw, CBE is an English actress. She worked in close collaboration with Irish playwright Samuel Beckett for 25 years and is regarded as one of the foremost interpreters of his works...

, Orson Welles

Orson Welles

George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...

 (playing himself as narrator) and Victor Spinetti

Victor Spinetti

Victor Spinetti is a Welsh comic actor.-Early life:Spinetti was born in Cwm, Ebbw Vale, Wales of Welsh and Italian heritage from a grandfather who was said to have walked from Italy to Wales to work as a coal miner...

. The comedy is set in revolutionary France where two peasants are mistaken for the famous swordsmen, the Corsican Brothers. It can be considered a parody

Parody

A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...

 of a number of works of historical fiction about the French Revolution

French Revolution

The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

, including Dickens'

Charles Dickens

Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...

 A Tale of Two Cities

A Tale of Two Cities

A Tale of Two Cities is a novel by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. With well over 200 million copies sold, it ranks among the most famous works in the history of fictional literature....

and Dumas'

Alexandre Dumas, père

Alexandre Dumas, , born Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie was a French writer, best known for his historical novels of high adventure which have made him one of the most widely read French authors in the world...

 The Corsican Brothers

The Corsican Brothers

The Corsican Brothers is a novella by Alexandre Dumas, père first published in 1844. It has been adapted many times on the stage and in film.-Adaptations:*The Corsican Brothers , directed by film pioneer and inventor George Albert Smith...

and The Man in the Iron Mask.

Plot

Two sets of identical twins, played by Wilder and Sutherland, are accidentally switched at birth

Babies switched at birth

Babies switched at birth are babies who, because of either error or malfeasance, are interchanged with each other at birth or very soon thereafter, leading to them being unknowingly raised by parents who are not their biological parents...

. One set, Phillipe and Pierre DeSisi, is aristocratic and haughty, while the other set, Charles and Claude Coupé, poor and dim-witted. On the eve of the French Revolution, both sets find themselves entangled in palace intrigues.

Awards

Start the Revolution Without Me authors Fred Freeman and Lawrence J. Cohen were nominated for a WGA

Writers Guild of America

The Writers Guild of America is a generic term referring to the joint efforts of two different US labor unions:* The Writers Guild of America, East , representing TV and film writers East of the Mississippi....

 award for "Best Comedy Written Directly for the Screen" in 1971.

Treatment of History

As a spoof, the film has no pretense of historical accuracy. Louis XVI, who was 38 years old at the time of his death, is played by Hugh Griffith, who was in his late fifties when the film was shot. He is portrayed as a bumbling cuckold

Cuckold

Cuckold is a historically derogatory term for a man who has an unfaithful wife. The word, which has been in recorded use since the 13th century, derives from the cuckoo bird, some varieties of which lay their eggs in other birds' nests...

. Marie Antoinette

Marie Antoinette

Marie Antoinette ; 2 November 1755 – 16 October 1793) was an Archduchess of Austria and the Queen of France and of Navarre. She was the fifteenth and penultimate child of Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa and Holy Roman Emperor Francis I....

, here called simply Marie, is portrayed as a nymphomaniac. The French Revolution is depicted as being led exclusively by the impoverished masses, while most revolutionary leaders were actually middle or upper-class citizens. The film also portrays the man in the iron mask

Man in the Iron Mask

The Man in the Iron Mask is a name given to a prisoner arrested as Eustache Dauger in 1669 or 1670, and held in a number of jails, including the Bastille and the Fortress of Pignerol . He was held in the custody of the same jailer, Bénigne Dauvergne de Saint-Mars, for a period of 34 years...

, who actually lived during the reign of Louis XIV. The princess Christina from Belgium is also a person in the movie, but in reality she does not exist and Belgium was only founded in 1830.