Un chapeau de paille d'Italie

Report from Cinesation 2006: AN Italian STRAW HAT (***) Rene Clair had a huge reputation in the early days of sound, and though it's not hard to see why, it is hard to see why the same critics who loved his films (often voting them onto the early Sight & Sound lists of the best films of all time) were dismissive of great Hollywood comedies with exactly the same virtues. (A Nous la Liberte and Le Million are delightful, for instance, but in no way that Duck Soup and Top Hat aren't equally or more delightful.)

This-- based on a perennial stage farce about the complications that follow when a horse eats a married woman's hat while she's off dallying with her lover-- is skillful enough, and it has a few very funny moments, but made mostly in medium or longshot with little subtlety in the playing, it seemed far more primitive for 1927 than, to pick one American comedy, Kiki (shown earlier the same day)-- and the audience at Cinesation didn't laugh nearly as often, either.

Silent film fans are really in for a treat with this DVD. Once again, Flicker Alley has released a terrific DVD--with a nearly pristine print (very rare for a silent), some nice special features as well as two different sound tracks for this movie! Each time I see one of their films, I marvel at the amazing care they give each release--and it's the class of the industry.

"The Italian Straw Hat" is film that was a bit short on plot but is still well worth seeing. This is because the director, René Clair, did a masterful job with this movie--with great camera-work and composition throughout. Unfortunately, despite looking great the plot keeps me from giving the movie an even higher score. The problem is that although the story is entertaining, it just had too many holes--too many situations that simply were too hard to believe and could have EASILY been resolved...but weren't.

The film begins with a bridegroom traveling by horse and buggy to his wedding. On the way, he gets out and his horse keeps walking--and finds a straw hat that it begins to eat! Naturally, the lady who owned the hat was angry and her lover was ready to fight. The bridegroom tried to pay for it but the couple insisted he find a replacement hat. And, they follow him into town and continue to insist--even moving into his apartment and threatening to destroy the place unless he get an identical hat. It turns out it's because the woman is married to a different man and doesn't want to have to explain to him what happened to the hat. But why the couple squatted for many hours in the house seemed forced--and why the bridegroom didn't just go to the police made no sense either. But, it did have lots of cute and mildly funny moments--even if the story just made no sense.

Overall, the film is expertly filmed but inconsequential because of the writing. It's worth seeing if you love silents or if you want to see a silent that manages to have very, very few intertitle cards yet tells the story very well. Otherwise, there are better silents out there--even with the great Flicker Alley package.

I enjoyed this silent movie with a very good incidental live music in the theater. A man is going on his way home to prepare himself for his wedding, and his horse eats a hat, that belonged to a married woman. Her lover demands a new hat - she can't go home without her rare and uncommon "hat made of hay from Italy" - so our hero must find a new one, but remember, today he's going to get married, and the woman's lover threatens to destroy his house if he doesn't arrive on time ... will he find the hat?

I should point out from the outset that I was probably in the wrong frame of mind for a movie like this. Today was a pretty extreme example of "one of those days" for me. I sat down to watch this, definitely wanting a laugh. But any movie was going to have to work extra hard to get a laugh out of me on this crappy day, and this one didn't really do the job. I should have probably gone with something simple and sure-fire, like a Buster Keaton movie, or a Woody Allen, or a Monty Python. Or maybe I should have just gone for a long bike ride. But I watched this instead.

This is one of those society comedies, with a large cast of characters, and various complicated goings on. Most of the humor derives from people trying to put a normal happy face on for the benefit of society, while meanwhile things are spinning out of control beneath the surface. It reminded me a little bit of Fawlty Towers, with John Cleese, for some reason. It's the same kind of humor. You've probably seen a lot of the gags in 10,000 TV sitcoms by now, but I suppose this stuff was a lot fresher in 1927. And most of it was pretty well done, I'll admit.

The story itself is simple, but you have to pay a lot of attention to keep track of all the moment-to-moment details. And I guess that's where the movie failed for me today. My mind kept wandering, and I'd have to rewind the tape to figure out what was going on, and I'd get annoyed. I was really feeling the lack of dialogue in this one. I watch a lot of silent films. They appeal to me for some reason I can't explain. But this movie felt incomplete to me. I felt it would have worked better as a talkie. But maybe it was just the mood I was in.

Anyway, there were several individual scenes that I thought were brilliant, and definitely made me sit up and take notice. One was worthy of a Seinfeld episode: it's a wedding scene; a woman notices her husband's necktie is undone, and she repeatedly nudges him and fiddles with her neck. The husband takes no notice. He sits there like a lump. But another character instinctively reaches to check his tie. This starts a chain reaction, and pretty soon everyone in the church is checking their ties, except for the husband, who's still sitting there oblivious. Another great scene is when the groom at the wedding imagines the angry military man back at his house, vandalizing everything, tossing all his possessions out the windows, tearing down walls--the film lapses into total surrealism; this is Rene Clair at his visual best. I love this scene.

For now, I'm going to rate this a 7/10. But I'll try to catch it again some day, when I'm in a better and more attentive mood, and I think I'll like it a lot better.

I recently saw "The Italian Straw Hat" for the second time; on the silver screen yet! The plot is simple.A horse chews up a lady's straw hat.Her escort demands that it be replaced. This leads to all manner of complications. Slight? Perhaps. Funny? Absolutely hilarious - with not a word spoken!! If any reader gets a chance to see this film, or Clair's 'American' films - "The Ghost Goes West", "And Then There Were None", and: "I Married A Witch" - DO!