Start the Revolution Without Me

Start the Revolution Without Me is a 1970 British-French-American period comedy film directed by Bud Yorkin and starring Gene Wilder, Donald Sutherland, Hugh Griffith, Jack MacGowran, Billie Whitelaw, Orson Welles (playing himself as narrator) and Victor Spinetti. The comedy is set in revolutionary France where two peasants are mistaken for the famous Corsican Brothers. The film is considered a parody of a number of works of historical fiction about the French Revolution and French history in general, including A Tale of Two Cities (1859) by Charles Dickens and two works by Alexandre Dumas, The Corsican Brothers (1844) and The Man in the Iron Mask (1847). Plot Two sets of identical twins are accidentally switched at birth. One pair, Phillipe and Pierre DeSisi, are aristocratic and haughty, while the other, Charles and Claude Coupé, are poor and dim-witted. On the eve of the French Revolution, both sets find themselves entangled in palace intrigue. Cast Gene Wilder as Phillipe/Claude Donald Sutherland as Pierre/Charles Hugh Griffith as Louis XVI Jack MacGowran as Jacques Billie Whitelaw as Marie Antoinette Victor Spinetti as Duke d'Escargot Ewa Aulin as Princess Christina Helen Fraser as Mimi Montage Rosalind Knight as Helene de Sisi Harry Fowler as Marcel Murray Melvin as Blind Man Graham Stark as Andre Coupe Orson Welles as The Narrator Reception Vincent Canby of The New York Times panned the film, writing: "The performances are desperate, without being in any way memorable, thus matching the wit of the screenplay."