Château en Suède (1963) AKA Nutty, Naughty Chateau

Castle in Sweden is Françoise Sagan’s first play, written under the direction of director André Barsacq, published and performed in 1960. The author will reprise the characters of Sébastien and Éléonore in Des bleus à l’âme, novel-essay published in 1972. This play received the very first Brigadier Prize awarded by the Association of Theater Management.
The initial film adaptation by Vadim was immediately followed by a television adaptation by Barsacq and again adapted for television by Josée Dayan in 2008. Considered as something of a classic piece of theatre qua theatre, Vadim’s film adaptation of Castle is an international star studded affair that is a pure cinematic delight in its own right. This cross between the Addams Family and Hamlet seems as if it has leaped from the pages of the comic magazine Spirou (featured in the film), has an enchanting score, superb costumes, hilarious sight gags, and is the only film to feature both Françoise Hardy and Monica Vitti. Exceptionally noteworthy in the sublime copy of the film presented here is the outstanding and very accurate translation of some very difficult French word play into brilliant English. Amazingly, Vadim’s Castle was a favorite of Alain Robbe-Grillet!