A delightful French farce with musical numbers, this has a comic brio to it that belies its creation in the early sound era (when the limitations of camera technology meant these were largely immobile). The plot itself is almost paper thin (thin as a lottery ticket, that is) as our hero Michel (René Lefèvre) realises he’s won the lottery but — for elaborate reasons — the jacket with the ticket has been taken by the shady Grandpa Tulip (Paul Ollivier). Cue a film-length long series of comic setpieces wherein our hero and his friend/rival for the money, Prosper (Jean-Louis Allibert), must track down the jacket and then the ticket, with the help of Michel’s ballerina sweetheart Beatrice (Annabella). It’s the kind of plot that successive decades of rehashing would wear down, but this early form is still light-hearted and nimble, and doesn’t outstay its welcome with an almost-too-sudden resolution to the quest, which the framing story essentially spoilers as otherwise the series of comic mishaps would probably be just too frustrating to bear.
FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director/Writer René Clair (based on a play by Georges Berr and Marcel Guillemand); Cinematographers Georges Périnal and Georges Raulet; Starring René Lefèvre, Annabella, Paul Ollivier, Jean-Louis Allibert; Length 81 minutes.
Seen at a friend’s home (DVD), London, Sunday 3 January 2016.
filmcentric 