The Golden Coach

(Le carrosse d’or)

The noblest and most refined film ever made.

François Truffaut
featuring

Anna Magnani, Duncan Lamont, Paul Campbell, Riccardo Rioli,

Like the gilded conveyance of its title, The Golden Coach is a magnificent vehicle for Anna Magnani. Shot in jewel-toned color and paced to the graceful rhythms of Vivaldi, the film revolves around Magnani’s Camilla, the star of a commedia dell’arte troupe playing colonial Peru in the eighteenth century. The vivacious Camilla is courted by three suitors: an actor, a bullfighter, and a viceroy. But her passion lives on the stage, where “you become another person, your true self.” In Renoir’s dazzling construction, the screen becomes a proscenium, a frame for the splendid artifice of the theater and for Magnani herself.

Juliet Clark
FILM DETAILS 
Screenwriter
  • Jean Renoir
  • Jack Kirkland
  • Renzo Avanzo
  • Giulio Macchi
Based On
  • the play Le carrosse du Saint-Sacrement by Prosper Mérimée

Cinematographer
  • Claude Renoir
Print Info
  • Color
  • 35mm
  • 103 mins
Source
  • Janus Films/Criterion Collection