LE MILLION
FILMS SONORES TOBIS (FRANCE), 1931 | BLACK AND WHITE, 82 MINUTES
DIRECTOR, PRODUCER, SCREENPLAY, EDITOR, LYRICIST: RENÉ CLAIR ORIGINAL PLAY: GEORGES BERR AND MARCEL GUILLAMAUD MUSIC: ARMAND BERNARD, PHILIPPE PARÈS, AND GEORGES VAN PARYS STARRING: ANNABELLA (BÉATRICE), RENÉ LEFÈVRE (MICHEL), LOUIS ALLIBERT (PROSPER), PAUL OLLIVIER (GRANPÈRE TULIPE), CONSTANTIN SIROESCO (AMBROSIO SOPRANELLI), RAYMOND CORDY (LE CHAUFFEUR DE TAXI), VANDA GRÉVILLE (VANDA), ODETTE TALAZAC (LA CANTATRICE)
An impoverished Parisian artist discovers he has won a lottery, and he and his girlfriend scramble to locate the ticket.
America gave birth to the movie musical. Europe was where much of its growing up commenced. Germany, France, and England were the most prominent of the countries with pioneers and artists and innovators, and none was more significant than René Clair. At a time when most American film was literal and prosaic, Clair created Le million, a joyfully surreal blend of comedy and music that has been much copied and never duplicated.
In silent films such as The Italian Straw Hat, Clair established himself as an artist of extraordinary ingenuity and wit, and he was initially skeptical about adding sound to film. After The Broadway Melody helped persuade him of the possibilities, he made Sous les toits de Paris (Under the Rooftops of Paris). A startling blend of sound and silent movie techniques, it was a bracing departure from more earthbound musicals and a major success. Clair next adapted a stage comedy that had already been filmed in the United States in 1914 as The Million, and which in other hands might have been just another backstage musical. Instead, with Clair, Le million creates a self-contained, quirky, and marvelously entertaining world in which movement, song, dialogue, and pantomime can intersect and commingle.
Everyone in Le million seems to be chasing after something or someone, which makes it fitting that, just like them, Clair pursues every opportunity for visual and musical cues and jokes. Characters pop up constantly to explain themselves musically and move around rhythmically, and one person’s conscience even manages to sing a cautionary advisory. A few song sequences appear to start off with more conventional staging—and then Clair moves them in a wildly different path, advancing or commenting on the plot without a pause in momentum. In many scenes, Clair forsakes live sound entirely and uses the music to accompany choreographed melees straight out of a slapstick silent comedy. He punctuates the action with exaggerated sound effects, then goes even further when, to hilarious effect, he overdubs the frenetic action with crowd noises out of a soccer game. Such audacity helped make Le million an instant hit in Europe and a major influence on American cinema, where rhymed dialogue, rhythmic movement, and creative sound effects all popped up in musical features and shorts over the next few years. Unfortunately, there would be only one more innovative comedy musical from Clair: the anarchic À nous la liberté, in which the frequently cited parallels between him and Chaplin are especially striking. When Liberté failed at the box office, he moved permanently to less musical areas.
“Nous sommes seules”: René Lefèvre and Annabella
Clair’s meteoric career in musical cinema parallels that of other European filmmakers who found their own ways early on. Among them was England’s Victor Saville and, in Germany, Willi Forst, Erik Charell, and Wilhelm Thiele. One of the most arresting works was G. W. Pabst’s adaptation of The Threepenny Opera. So much creativity and imagination, and then, alas, silence. By the mid-1930s, the equation was playing out in reverse: instead of providing new paths and inspiration for American musicals, those made in Europe shrank into mere imitations of U.S. models, and would remain so until the 1960s. Le million, then, is more the central work of a masterful René Clair trilogy than it is a harbinger of great things to come. But what a glorious center it is.
Annabella (center)
WHAT’S MORE
The opening shot of Le million is a spectacular pan over Paris rooftops that deliberately recalls the beginning of its predecessor, Sous les toits des Paris. This time, however, it functions as a cheeky in-joke. The men scampering across those rooftops arrive at a skylight and peer in at a group of revelers—who then, for not much reason in particular, proceed to narrate the entire movie as a flashback. Obviously, Clair was not above quoting himself, nor indulging in witty self-parody.
The lead actress in Le million, Annabella, can fairly be described as adorable. Born Suzanne Charpentier, she made her film debut in Abel Gance’s Napoléon (1927) and, in 1933, again worked productively with René Clair in Quatorze Juillet. After more European success, she was signed by Twentieth Century-Fox, who saw her as the French answer to Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. In the end, it was her tempestuous marriage to actor Tyrone Power that drew more attention than her American films, which were less interesting that what she had done in Europe for Clair and others.
MUSICALLY SPEAKING
Though much of its music is fragmented, Le million does contain what can be considered a theme song, and naturally Clair finds a clever way to stage it. As a less-than-romantic-looking tenor and soprano sing “Nous sommes seules” (“We Are Alone”) onstage, Michel and Béatrice, behind the set, realize that they’re still in love. With petals falling and two voices lifted in a lilting waltz, it’s one of the best-regarded scenes in the movie, lyrical and captivating and, bien sûr, just a little quirky.
René Lefèvre (center)