Le million

One of a rare breed of films which crosses elements of the silent and sound period. Le Million(1931) is excellent in its comic routes and brilliant in its storytelling abilitites. Rene Clair does wonders with the material which is top notch. Le Million(1931) is an inspiration to any comedy done within the seven decades.

French director Rene Clair was sad to see the silent era pass by. The veteran filmmaker "quiet" movies were admired during the 1920s, highlighted by his 1928 "The Italian Straw Hat." Clair viewed the early all-talking pictures, based mostly on staged plays, as relying on heavy dialogue. In his mind, the talk, talk, talk of these early audible films dragged down the visuals of what he felt movies were all about.

Clair's first part-talkie, 1930 'Under the Roofs of Paris,' still contained long silent segments to carry the plot forward. For his next movie, an adaptation of a Georges Berr and Marcel Guillemand play, Clair, in his innovative creative mind, not only accepted the new audible technology, his April 1931's "Le Million" turned out to be an inventive French musical comedy that showed the cinematic world how sound could be shaped in a new entertaining way. The tale has a poverty-stricken painter, Michel (Rene Lefevre), discovering his lottery ticket is a winner for one million Dutch florins (that's real cash). But the ticket sits inside his jacket, which he gave to his girlfriend, Beatrice (Annabella), to sew. Sympathetic to a criminal who was running from police, she gave it to him to elude the law.

Clair was one of the few auteurs at the time who wrote their own scripts, directed and edited the final version. Since part of the story deals with a ballerina (Beatrice) and is centered around a stage performance, "Le Million" contains a mix of song-and-dance numbers as well as witty dialogue. Clair was one of the first to have his songs advance the narrative of the plot instead of just stand alone set pieces solely designed to entertain. As film critic Dudley Andrew wrote, "Characters don't walk or gesture so much as half-dance their way from scene to scene."

Another cleaver use of sound occurs during the tussle for the jacket with the ticket still inside. Clair inserts a recording of a rugby crowd's cheers and applause to add an extra layer of comedy to this frenetic film. There are large segments where the visuals are shown with no dialogue, just a background soundtrack, reflecting Clair's love affair with his departed silent movie habits. As movie critic Pauline Kael noted, "no one else has ever been able to make a comedy move with such delicate, dreamlike inevitability. This movie is lyrical, choreographic, giddy--it's the best French musical of its period."

For those skeptics at the time who scoffed at talkies, and nostalgically clung to the hope audio dialogue would go by the way of the dinosaur, "Le Million" was Clair's retort to such thinking. He showed that with imagination and inventive images, including his famous opening shot of the cityscape of Paris, the visual medium could be enhanced by the imaginative use of sound to sustain a highly entertaining, uproariously humorous movie. The editors of "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die" felt Clair was so successful in the new medium they included "Le Million" in their reference book.

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.

Besides being very amusing, this French musical feature is quite creative as well. René Clair's light touch is perfect for the material, and it gives the movie a style all its own. In particular, it stands out as one of the best of the earlier sound movies that adopted a musical format.

The story is the kind of simple but amusing premise that, in the right hands, can be built up into a hilarious situation. And that is what Clair does here - beginning with some entertaining misadventures that introduce the characters, he then sets up the main story about the lottery ticket, and from there on it builds up nicely both in humor and in complexity. The climactic sequence in the opera house is a well-crafted, extended slapstick sequence that also includes some interesting parallels.

The cast works well, with Annabella particularly standing out with her engaging performance as Béatrice.

The style is an interesting contrast from what eventually became the norm in movie musicals. The musical sequences, which vary considerably in length, are for the most part worked naturally into the flow of events, rather than being set off as separate numbers. Clair and the cast make this format work well. The overall result is a very enjoyable movie that you will also remember for its imaginative approach.

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!