Un cappello di paglia di Firenze

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.