Fan-Fan the Tulip

Fanfan is a handsome young peasant who goes off to join the army to avoid an unwanted marriage. Before he leaves, a fortune teller promises him glory and the hand of a royal princess, but the prediction turns out to be a trick: she is Adeline, the daughter of the recruiting sergeant, and the prophecy is bait to bring in new soldiers. Once Fanfan realizes he has been fooled, he refuses to give up the dream and sets out to make the false prediction come true anyway, an ambition that carries him into the world of King Louis XV.

Christian-Jaque directed this French-Italian production, working from a screenplay by René Fallet and René Wheeler, with Alexandre Mnouchkine producing. It came roughly midway through the director's filmography: twenty years after Adhémar Lampiot and eight years after The Bellman, and it was followed by Nathalie in 1957 and The Black Tulip in 1964. Gérard Philipe plays Fanfan, Gina Lollobrigida plays Adeline, and Marcel Herrand appears as Louis XV, with Geneviève Page as the Marquise de Pompadour among a credited cast of twenty-seven.

On IMDb the film holds a 7.1 rating from around 3,800 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 6.7 from about 128 votes. The larger and more settled IMDb sample and the smaller TMDB sample point to a similar level of approval, suggesting a durable popularity rather than a sharply divided response.