LE MILLION Movie Review

Starving artist Michel (René Lefèvre) is thrilled to discover that he's the owner of a winning lottery ticket, but his joy turns to panic when he realizes that the ticket was in the pocket of a coat he sold at a secondhand store. In a splendid touch of irony, the artist's coat is purchased by an operatic tenor, who finds it authentically tattered enough to use as part of his costume for a production of La Bohème. Director René Clair's inspired comic musical is the story of Michel's desperate pursuit of that lottery ticket—which eventually leads him to a chaotic and hilarious night at the opera—and is also the tale of the frantic parade of creditors, cops, thieves, and hangers-on who are pursuing Michel. Le Million is weird, funny, and ingenious; surrealistic comic schtick erupts unexpectedly, and much of that well-orchestrated anarchy was to be influential for years to come. The Marx Brothers had already established a beach-head on screen, but The Cocoanuts was a filmed play, and Monkey Business—released the same year as Le Million—still felt stage-bound. Clair's ideas, which rethought the concept of musical comedy in cinematically innovative and visually inventive ways, inspired much of the subsequent liberating Marx madness of Horse Feathers and Duck Soup, and, more specifically, the hilariously mangled Il Trovatore of A Night at the Opera. Still, there's nothing quite like Le Million, which looks as hip and startling today as it must have when first released. It's almost as much fun as winning the lottery.

NEXT STOP … A Nous la Liberté, Modern Times, Duck Soup

1931 89m/B FR Annabella, Rene Lefevre, Paul Olivier, Louis Allibert; D: Rene Clair. VHS VYY, NOS, DVT