Celluloid : the film to-day (1931)

LE MILLION 193 have a surfeit of them — in the block of studios and at the back of the stage in the Opera, passages which cross and bisect each other like the railway lines at Clapham Junction. It is remarkable what humour Clair can extract from his passages. Instances of his mordant wit are too numerous to set down in full, but mention should be made of the two ladies employed by Signor Sopranelli to be present at the Opera every night so as to be able to throw the same bouquet on to the stage. This small incident is as memorable as the muddle of the clocks in The Italian Straw Hat and the frightening of the American tourists in Sous les toits de Paris. Although Clair is a director who works entirely through his camera, as we may remember from the photographic trickery of the court scene in Les Deux Timides and the moving camerawork in Sous les toits de Paris, it is obvious that he does not give overmuch thought to his actual camera set-ups. He certainly does not employ the angle of camera vision to express particular moods, as does Pabst in Die Dreigroschenoper. With the exception of the travelling camerawork, it seems as if the set-ups in Le Million are the result of careless abandon. I cannot recall one shot of the film which in itself was beautifully composed, a fact that adds weight to Clair's cinematic instinct. Yet he makes a point of employing every camera device peculiar to the cinema in order to express his humour. Taken as a whole, Clair's direction is essentially personal, utterly the work of a single mind, combining satire and slapstick with occasional flashes of sentiment. He is more interested in classes of people N