Je l'ai été 3 fois!

Jeweler Bernard Blier was cuckolded by his first two wives through no fault of their own as he tells the story. Now he is about to leave Monaco, supposedly to close a major sale in Paris, but actually to visit his little friend. Sacha Guitry, a stage actor scheduled to leave on tour the next day, spots Blier and his wife, Lana Marconi watching his performance from their box. He arranges to meet Mlle Marconi during the first interval of his play. Fortunately, the theater is right across the street from Blier's villa.

Guitry begins the movie's credits in a typically idiosyncratic manner, showing members of the cast and crew and their arrival at the movie studio -- except for editor Raymond Lamy, who is always hard at work with reels of film. Several people get off a tram; composer Louiguy marches in with a brass band playing "La Vie En Rose". And so the show begins, with Guitry talking a mile a minute, and Blier, when we see him, soberly and sadly recounting his cuckoldings. Of course, circumstances will work out so Blier will walk in on Guitry and Mlle Marconi. How will he talk his way out of this fix?

Guitry hadn't had much luck with his five marriages. His first ended when his wife informed him she had been at mass at a church which he knew had been destroyed two hours earlier in a bombardment. At least his final marriage, with Mlle Marconi, would last from 1949 until his death in 1957 at the age of 72.

... in the same movie, but we see them together only in the last funny confrontation. Why? Blier is great as usual, he even plays two characters, his 1950's career is really to discover. This amoral story about cuckoldry is rich in dialogues, editing (it sometimes makes me think of Méliès), flashbacks, and a delightful use of music. Well, always fascinating invention in a Guitry movie. Some sexy dialogues and situations could have been shocking in 1952. And as always in a Guitry movie, the introduction presenting the crew is a must, we see the entrance of the studios in Neuilly. Louis de Funès appears in the place de Vendôme scene (ah, if Guitry had lived ten more years, he would certainly have directed de Funès in a main character). Some other scenes in Monaco.

This Guitry movie is not to be neglected, it was shot between two masterpieces, "la Poison" and " la Vie d'un honnête homme".

This is the first time I've had to write the solitary first review of a film here, and I want you to know the responsibility weighs heavy on my shoulders. I will try not to let you down.

This is the third or fourth Sacha Guitry film I've seen, since falling under the spell of 'La Poison' only a week ago.

"I've Already Been Three Times" (the title refers to the number of times a character recounts he has been both unfaithful and cuckolded) is clearly one of his lesser efforts, not much more than a bedroom farce, and at moments not too far off an early 'Carry On' film, but one with all the repression and shame removed, and replaced instead with a love of the mysteries of life and the hungers of the flesh. Not a lot really happens, and most of that in flashback, but the dialogue sparkles with brazen frankness and there are lovely magical leaps of imagination and creativity in moments you would not expect to find them in many other films (the empty nightclub scene, for example). Like 'Lovers And Thieves' it sags a good deal in the middle but the 'Cardinal' conversation at the end is fantastic and very funny.

Some people find Guitry's habit of beginning his films with a voiceover introducing each of the cast and crew in imaginative ways tiresome, but I find it rather charming. All true artists must leave fingerprints that are their own.

I want so much to live in the eternal summer of Guitry's Paris, sadly now a thing of the past, if it ever existed at all. But at least we'll always have it here.