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!

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.

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.

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.

When two starving artists learn their lottery ticket has won, the race is on, but — where's the ticket? Although as of today, this film is 82 years old, it is still one of the most watchable and enjoyable films I've seen. It has a bit of everything, humor, pathos, screwball comedy, drama...you name it. In this madcap race to find a winning lottery ticket, you may be reminded of some of the scavenger hunt films or other films such as Million Dollar Mystery, or It's a Mad Mad World, but this one stands by itself. Half Tom and Jerry cartoon, half musical, a little opera, starving artists, sly criminals, beautiful women and a really beleaguered taxi driver...and all funny. Not to be missed.