There's only one other comment on this film and it was posted by a friend of mine who also happens to be French. Though we tend to agree in general about French cinema we have also been known to have divergent opinions which is, of course, as it should be. I'm sure he thought we would disagree in this case but not so. I have never really understood the fuss made about Rene Clair, especially the early stuff of which this is an example. True, I have yet to see An Italian Straw Hat but if it's anything like this I'm not holding my breath. We're in that mythical land that exists only in Operetta, say, Merry Widow country; around this time - early-mid thirties - there was a lot of it about, the aforesaid Merry Widow, Duck Soup, Prisoner of Zenda etc and it even got a late workout in Call Me Madam in 1950. Most of them, it has to be said, did it better than Clair. Apart from the odd sight gag - punters in a casino play with goods instead of money, one man, having just lost everything, pulls out a gun to end it all; someone knocks it out of his hand, it lands on a number, the wheels spins, his number comes up and the croupier 'pays' him with several more guns - the film is verbose to a fare-thee-well. You know those Westerns where the town sends for a gunfighter to take care of the bad guys and having done so the gunfighter turns out to be the baddest guy of all. Clair may well have started the trend; here, the entire country hasn't got change of a match so they 'sell' their young princess to a rich but OLD financier who - they hope - will, in return, make them solvent again. Bad move. Seems he's a paper-hanger in his spare time and in no time at all he's interchangeable with Herr Shickelgruber. That's about it. Au clair de la loon.
Review of Le dernier milliardaire
