Fanfan la tulipe

Legendary French star Gérard Philipe – who would have turned 100 on 4 December – swashbuckled his way into film history as the peasant soldier Fanfan in Christian-Jaque’s devil-may-care romantic action-comedy. In 18th-century France, Fanfan joins King Louis XV’s army to avoid a forced marriage to a local lass, and gets himself into close scrapes and tight squeezes with Adeline (Gina Lollobrigida’s impostor fortune-teller) on his way to fighting in the Seven Years’ War. Filled to the brim with dazzling stunts and sexual innuendo, Fanfan la tulipe, which won the best director prize at Cannes in 1952 and was a smash hit upon its initial release, remains one of France’s all-time best loved films.