Celluloid : the film to-day (1931)

LE MILLION 187 when Clair arouses our greatest admiration — is the chase in the theatre. Michel and Prosper have at last succeeded in stealing the coat, now almost in rags, from the bewildered tenor, and are making a dash for it through the labyrinths at the back of the stage pursued by the crooks and stage-hands, when suddenly a whistle blows and the chase swiftly turns into an American rugby game. Hurtling up the field in a burst of speed, accompanied by a rising tide of cheering, Michel becomes Harold Lloyd or Richard Dix of an American college movie, while the crooks form a scrum in the approved style. This rapid transition from straight humour to brilliant burlesque is so good as to defeat criticism. Alone it stands as Clair's tour de force — as the most masterly instance of his/ ingenuity. /The presence of music, both in the form of songs and as an accompaniment to the action, is of the greatest importance in he Million because Clair is one of the first directors of sound films to appreciate the value of music for emphasis of the visual image. In Sous les toils de Paris, he exploited with some success the idea of making music the binding continuity of his visual action, much in the same way as the orchestral score used to be arranged to fit a silent picture. At times, he took this simple method further and made music the binding factor of the screen. Thus, in the famous travelling shot which descended from Pola's attic down the face of the house so that we saw the inmates of each floor in turn as they picked up the theme song, he established a perfect relationship between the camera and the