Le Million

Michel, a painter in debt, wins a large lottery prize. The ticket is in an old jacket his landlady has sold. The jacket passes from hand to hand, chased by the painter, his girlfriend, his creditors and a gang of thieves. The pursuit ends on the stage of an opera house. Rene Clair wrote and directed. The film was made in the first years of sound and counts among the most influential technical experiments of the period. Clair refused to use sound naturalistically: speech keeps turning into song, the chorus works like a narrator, and the sounds of a rugby match are used over the chase. That approach influenced American musicals directly; the practice of thinking about editing and music together spread from here. The set design also departs from theatrical convention, with the Paris apartment deliberately built like a stage. It runs under eighty minutes and never loses pace. Who it is for: viewers curious about early sound cinema and the origins of musical comedy. Who it is not for: anyone wanting realism; the film is play from beginning to end.