Original title: Le million
AKA: The Million
Year: 1931
Runtime: 1 hour, 21 minutes
Country: France
Language: French
Subtitles: English (.srt)
Genre: Musical | Comedy
Director: René Clair
Cast:
Annabella … Béatrice
René Lefèvre … Michel Bouflette
Jean-Louis Allibert … Prosper
Paul Ollivier … Granpère Tulipe
Constantin Siroesco … Ambrosio Sopranelli
Raymond Cordy … Le chauffeur de taxi
Vanda Gréville … Vanda
Odette Talazac … La cantatrice
Pedro Elviro … Le régisseur
Jane Pierson … L’épicière
André Michaud … Le boucher
Eugène Stuber … Le policier
Pierre Alcover … Le policier
Armand Bernard … Le chef d’orchestre
Plot/Synopsis:
Michel, a Parisian artist, is being hounded by numerous impatient creditors. To make things worse, when he is embracing the woman whose portrait he is painting, he is surprised by his indignant fiancée Béatrice. Suddenly, Michel learns that he holds the winning ticket in the Dutch Lottery. But when he goes to retrieve the ticket from the pocket of his jacket, he finds that Béatrice has given the jacket to a stranger who was in need. Now everyone has a keen interest in finding that jacket.
… It is cheery, funny, and romantic. Everything about it is quite excellent. The songs are wonderful. If I understood French, I would probably hum them and sing them all day long. The acting is very good for this kind of movie. American musicals of the classic Hollywood era relied more on song and dance than the actual characters and story, but in Le Million, the characters are rather well developed and the story, while not being anything extremely impressive, is not at all lacking. I loved the developments of the relationships, especially the relationship between the once best friends Michel and Prosper. The romantic moments are also very well developed. The direction is nearly perfect, with several very memorable moments. Probably the single most perfect scene of the film occurs right after the lead couple has an argument. They hide on the stage of an opera performance, and the opera singers sing lines which the couple, Michel and Beatrice, interpret to their own situation. This is definitely one of the high points in cinema history. The scene managed to make me laugh, to win me over with a very sweet romance, and make me smirk at just how clever the director was. I give this film a 9/10.
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Le Million (1931)
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