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Those awful hats, as Griffith would say, one of them is enough to unbalance the bourgeoisie's inane carrousel, to René Clair's utter delight. The opening with the camera on the bride's floral crown gives an anticipatory sparkle of Ophüls, the wedding is afoot and the tuxedo collar is much too starched. The groom (Albert Préjean) races through Manet landscapes and stumbles upon the married madame (Olga Tschechowa) in the bushes with the peevish lieutenant (Geymond Vital). Mauled by a hungry horse, the lady's chapeau must be replaced to keep the indiscretion from being exposed, off scrambles the groom to locate the rare Italian brand, "by fair means or foul." Shrugging servants, chases around tables, copious fainting spells ensue. The original Labiche-Michel farce has its 19th-century proscenium, Clair toys with it like a grand chest of puppets: The screen is reverently archaic one moment, on the next it bobs and weaves to the beat of an expressionistic quadrille. The scuffle while the deaf old uncle sits in the foreground is modulated into a deep-focus gag in La Règle du Jeu, the impatient soldier's demolition of the nuptial chamber is a flickering fantasy realized in L'Age d'Or. (The pillow thrown out of the window flies right back up, but the bronze cherubs holding up a clock end up as a piece of debris in the street vendor's cart.) A dash of misinterpreted pantomime rippling through a congregation, the plumed giantess at the hat boutique, the subtle flash when a frantic yarn syncs up with a cuckold's discovery—an early Clair peak with objects (loose ties, missing gloves, clogged ear trumpets) arranged like floating integers in a Kandinsky swirl, a whirlwind disguised as a genteel pirouette. With Marise Maia, Alexis Bondireff, and Alice Tissot. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |