LE MILLION

---

France, 1931

Director: René Clair

Production: Films Sonores Tobis (France); black and white, 35mm; running time: 89 minutes. Released 1931.

Producer: Frank Clifford; screenplay: René Clair, from the musical comedy by Georges Berr and M. Guillemaud; photography: Georges Périnal and Georges Raulet; production designer: Lazare Meerson; music: Georges Van Parys, Armand Bernard and Philippe Parès.

Cast: René Lefèvre (Michel); Annabella (Beatrice); Louis Allibert (Prosper); Vanda Gréville (Vanda); Paul Olivier (Father Tulipe, a gangster); Odette Talazac (Prima donna); Constantin Stroësco (Sopranelli, the tenor); Raymond Cordy (Taxi driver).

Publications

Script:

Clair, René, Le Million, in Avant-Scène Cinéma (Paris), March 1988.

Books:

Rotha, Paul, Celluloid; The Film Today, London, 1931.

Viazzi, G., René Clair, Milan, 1946.

Bourgeois, J., René Clair, Geneva, 1949.

Charensol, Georges, and Roger Regent, Un Maître du cinéma: RenéClair, Paris, 1952.

Manvell, Roger, The Film and the Public, London, 1955.

Solmi, A., Tre maestri del cinema, Milan, 1956.

De La Roche, Catherine, René Clair: An Index, London, 1958.

Amengual, Barthélemy, René Clair, Paris, 1963; revised edition, 1969.

Mitry, Jean, René Clair, Paris, 1969.

Samuels, Charles Thomas, Encountering Directors, New York, 1972.

McGerr, Celia, René Clair, Boston, 1980.

Warfield, Nancy, René Clair's Grand Maneuver, New York, 1982.

Barrot, Oliver, René Clair; ou, Le Temps mesuré, Renens, Switzerland, 1985.

Greene, Naomi, René Clair: A Guide to References and Resources, Boston, 1985.

Dale, R. C., The Films of René Clair, Metuchen, New Jersey, 2 vols., 1986.

Billard, Pierre, Le mystére René Clair, Paris, 1998.

Articles:

New York Times, 21 May 1931.

Variety (New York), 27 May 1931.

Potamkin, Harry, "René Clair and Film Humor," in Hound and Horn (New York), October-December 1932.

Causton, Bernard, "A Conversation with René Clair," in Sight andSound (London), Winter 1933.

Jacobs, Lewis, "The Films of René Clair," in New Theatre (New York), February 1936.

Lambert, Gavin, "The Films of René Clair," in Sequence (London), no. 6, 1949.

"Clair Issue" of Bianco e Nero (Rome), August-September 1951.

Berti, V., "L'arte del comico in René Clair," in Bianco e Nero (Rome), March-April 1968.

Helman, A., in Kino (Warsaw), June 1974.

Fischer, L., "René Clair, Le Million, and the Coming of Sound," in Cinema Journal (Iowa City), Spring 1977.

Milne, Tom, in Monthly Film Bulletin (London), November 1977.

Adair, Gilbert, "Utopia Ltd.: The Cinema of René Clair," in Sightand Sound (London), Summer 1981.

Avant-Scène du Cinéma (Paris), no. 369, March 1988.

Faulkner, C., "René Clair, Marcel Pagnol and the Social Dimensions of Speech," in Screen (Oxford), vol. 35, no. 2, 1994.

Pappas, Ben, "Le Million," in Forbes, vol. 161, no. 6, 23 March 1998.

Trumpener, Katie, "The René Clair Moment and the Overlap Films of the Early 1930s: Detlef Sierck's April, April!," in Film Criticism (Meadville), Winter-Spring 1999.

* * *

Of the series of comedies that René Clair made for Tobis Films at the beginning of the sound era, Le million remains the most satisfying. It was preceded by the half-silent/half-musical Under the Roofs of Paris and followed by A nous la liberté, making Clair the first internationally acclaimed sound film director.

Clair had become one of the most vociferous opponents of the sound film, claiming that it could only mire down the silent film's flights of images. He had begun his career with the anarchic Paris qui dort (1923) and Entr'acte (1924), and he feared the added equipment and personnel, the excessively wordy scripts, and the close-ups of the actors speaking those scripts. It took someone as skeptical as Clair to overcome these problems in the early sound film. In Under the Roofs of Paris he freed the camera from street singers and let it scale an apartment house, peering in at every floor to watch the effects of their song. He joked with the medium by cutting the sound when a door was closed. In this way he made the first international talkie a success by keeping talk to a minimum.

With Le million his ambitions grew. Every element (sets, lighting, acting, noise, speech, and camerawork) was broken into parts capable of fitting an overriding rhythm that didn't properly belong to any of them. Characters don't walk or gesture so much as half-dance their way from scene to scene. Double chases, near misses, and parallel plots give Clair the chance to syncopate the action with his razor-edge cutting. Scenes are stopped just as one character leaves the frame, and another enters the next. Every shot offers a single dramatic or rhythmic jolt. Ultimately these tidy bits collect on stage for the delightful denouement.

The plot is as symmetrical as the decor. The lyric opera is set off against the bohemian life of two poor artists both in love with a ballerina. Their happiness depends on finding a lottery ticket which through a clever series of reversals finds its way into the jacket of the lead singer in "The Bohemians." The struggle to grab the ticket involves the police and a Robin Hood band led by the master of the underworld, the master of Paris, the master of ceremonies, Père Tulipe. At its height Clair abandons even the abstract tone of natural sound and lays the noise of a rugby crowd over the madcap actions as the jacket is passed from person to person until it appears in the hands of Père Tulipe who produces the winning ticket for our hero.

Afraid of the talkie, Clair gave cinema its purest example of what a lyrical film might be.

—Dudley Andrew