Fantasy, yes, but hardly escapist in the astonishing pertinence with which it reduces the hawkish military and political ambitions of the day to derisory farce while demonstrating the infallibility with which love goes on making the world go round.

The fact that Jean Renoir was its director is the ultimate oddity. How this fiasco could have happened is difficult to explain.

Bergman's signature elegance remains the only enduring element of Renoir's light-hearted confection.

I have no objection to frivolity, but there is something slightly annoying about this kind of film.