MOVIE · 1970

Start the Revolution Without Me

Comedy90 min

On the eve of the French Revolution, two sets of identical twins — switched at birth and raised in opposite classes — collide in a tangle of palace schemes and mistaken identity. Gene Wilder and Donald Sutherland each take on two roles: one half of an arrogant aristocratic pair, one half of a dim-witted peasant pair. As Phillipe, Pierre, Charles, and Claude crisscross through revolutionary France, the film folds royal courts, family mix-ups, and Corsican Brothers-style confusion into a period farce. Hugh Griffith, Jack MacGowran, and Billie Whitelaw turn up around the edges as the mix-up grows wider.