Le million

I have lately got into the habit of purchasing any interesting DVD that the Criterion company releases. I figure that even if I dislike the movie, Criterion usually supplies enough extra material to compensate for any shortcomings in the actual film. I read up on them, and I buy the ones which are the most interesting to me.

Le Million is my latest purchase, and I must say that I was not disappointed in the film. It is cheery, funny, and romantic. Everything about it is quite excellent. The songs are wonderful. If I understood French, I would probably hum them and sing them all day long. The acting is very good for this kind of movie. American musicals of the classic Hollywood era relied more on song and dance than the actual characters and story, but in Le Million, the characters are rather well developed and the story, while not being anything extremely impressive, is not at all lacking. I loved the developments of the relationships, especially the relationship between the once best friends Michel and Prosper. The romantic moments are also very well developed. The direction is nearly perfect, with several very memorable moments. Probably the single most perfect scene of the film occurs right after the lead couple has an argument. They hide on the stage of an opera performance, and the opera singers sing lines which the couple, Michel and Beatrice, interpret to their own situation. This is definitely one of the high points in cinema history. The scene managed to make me laugh, to win me over with a very sweet romance, and make me smirk at just how clever the director was. I give this film a 9/10.

P.S. - Some information for anyone who has the same faith in Criterion that I do and is planning to buy it. Amongst the Criterion discs I now own, Le Million contains the fewest features. All it has is a photo gallery (not all that useful; one might flip through it once) and a rare television interview with Rene Clair, the director. This piece is of some interest. He was one of the many directors who had started out in silent film, and when talkies were first appearing, he said that they represented the death of film. I think most film-savvy people understand what these directors meant when they said that, but it is interesting to hear him explain it. Also, if you have read the description of this movie on Amazon.com, please note that they were wrong in one important respect: not every line in the film is sung. In fact, it contains no more songs than a regular musical. It is actually a lot more like a Chaplin or Buster Keaton or Marx Brothers film. My criticisms of the disc are not that important. Heck, Criterion has the right to smack me around for making those complaints. The fact is, their people probably spent hundreds of hours fixing up a film which only 20 (now 21!) people have voted for on imdb, and only about a hundred people, if that, will ever see the film. Heck, if you look at the Criterion web site, Le Million is nowhere to be found. I have no clue why not. It's something they should really be proud of (of course, their web site is surprisingly horrible). They did a fine job on this film. Bravo! They deserve all the money I can stand to give them!

Rene Clair's groundbreaking musical. If you want to see where songs first drove a story this is the place. This is the story of a starving young artist who finds he's won the lottery just as his creditors come calling. Unfortunately his ticket is in his coat, which is in his girlfriends apartment and has been given to an on the run convict who then... oh but that would be telling.

This is a light and frothy story where much of the dialog is sung (most people think this didn't happen until Oklahoma or Andrew Lloyd Webber). Its the sort of movie that they don't make any more, and rarely did when they did. Its sound a film from the early days that plays like a movie from five or six years later. Clair moves his camera around in ways that not even Busby Berkeley was doing (though to be honest comparing the two film makers is unfair since Berkeley was doing essentially stage bound dance numbers and Clair was moving the camera through "the real world"). Its an amazing little movie. and its a charming movie that will just make you smile. Its just a fluffy piece of enjoyment.

I'm sorry I can't say more. Its just a nice little movie and thats really all you need to know.

Le million (1931)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Extremely charming and inventive French comedy takes a simple idea and really expands it to something special. A starving artist name Michel (Rene Lefevre) is being hounded by collectors when he realizes that he's won the lottery. He rushes to get his coat where the ticket is but learns his girlfriend (Annabella) has given it away, which leads to a wild chase in hopes of getting it back. I wasn't sure what to expect when entering this film because I had heard that it contained some pretty strange things but within minutes I was caught up in the story and the way it was being played out. I don't think the movie is laugh out loud funny but it doesn't really need to be. In fact, I think the story could have gone for more slapstick and gotten bigger laughs but, in a strange way, it's smarter than that and goes for something completely different. Having the actors sing their dialogue makes this film come off very fresh today and I can't imagine and fresh and unique it must have been in 1931 when many sound films didn't sound all that great. The delivery of the music is top-notch and many of the "songs" are better than what Americans were hearing in their musicals then. Another major plus are the performances, which are all very charming but Lefevre really carries the thing as he floats around like a feather and really hits all the right moves. The one thing that didn't work too well for me was the rather long sequence at the opera. I thought some of it went on a tad bit too long, although the football scene here was greatly directed.

The French director Rene Clair, who is often forgotten when the great pioneers of film technique are mentioned, made this innovative film in 1931 in the very early days of sound films. The delightful mix of silent-movie style slapstick, spoken and sung dialogue, opera parody and song, moving camera and inter-cutting obviously influenced Rodgers and Hart and Rouben Mamoulian who a year later attempted the same sort of musical, "Love Me Tonight," with Chevalier at the Paramount Studios in Hollywood. Clair's unique genius is in his ability to twist reality and create a fairy-tale world. In this film he sustains his particular brand of magic from the first model shots of the roofs of Paris to last scenes backstage at the opera. Yes, the story is very silly and highly improbable, but the charm of it, the Parisian charm, is undeniable. Much credit must be given to the cinematographer, the great Georges Périnal who later worked in England and photographed many of the great Alexander Korda films.

This is one irresistible great cheerful- and technically greatly made movie!

The movie features some of the greatest looking sets you'll ever see in a '30's movie, even though it's all too obvious that they are sets, rather than real place locations. Often if a character would fall or shake a doorpost too aggressive, the entire set would obviously move.

The best moments of the movie were the silent, more old fashioned, slapstick kind of moments. It shows that René Clair's true heart was at silent movie-making. The overall humor is really great in this movie. Also of course the musical moments were more than great. This is a really enjoyable light and simple pleasant early French musical. Though the best moments are the silent moments, that does not mean that the movie is not filled with some great humorous dialog, that gets very well delivered by the main actors, who all seemed like stage actors to me, which in this case worked extremely well for the movie its overall style and pleasant no-worries atmosphere. No wonder this worked out so well, since this movie is actually based on stage play by Georges Berr.

It's a technical really great movie, with also some great innovation camera-work in it and some really great editing, that create some fast going and pleasant to watch enjoyable sequences. There is never a dull moment in this movie!

René Clair was such a clever director, who knew how to build up and plan comical moments within in movies. It's a very creative made movie, that despite its simplicity still at all times feel as a totally original and cleverly constructed movie, that never seizes to entertain.

The last half hour is especially unforgettably fun, without spoiling too much, and is really among the greatest, as well as most creative moments in early comedy film-making.

The movie is filled with some really enjoyable characters, who are of course all very stereotypical and silly and were obviously cast because of their looks. It all adds to the pleasant light comical atmosphere and cuteness of the movie.

One of the most pleasant movies you'll ever see!

8/10

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