As charming as it is inaccurate, Les Perles de la Couronne makes a mockery of European history in three languages. The film has a literary playfulness found in the best early cinema and the humor manages to be mean and light hearted at the same time. Though the story is funny and clever, Arletty's performance as the Abyssinian Queen alone makes Les Perles worth watching. Her vocal track is played backward to sound like gibberish; pretty fancy stuff for 1937.