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Le Million [Import]

Annabella , René Lefèvre , René Clair    Unrated   DVD
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
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Product Description

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Welcome back one of the treasures of international cinema. In 1929-30, when Hollywood was stymied by the arrival of talkies, a Frenchman named René Clair set about reinventing the movies for the world of sound. Rather than enslave his camera--and imagination--to a microphone in a potted palm, Clair embraced sound as a liberating new dimension of the motion picture. His effervescent comedy-musical-romance Le Million doesn't just feature a witty commingling of dialogue and song--it's a jeu d'esprit in which every movement, every cut, every sound effect (or absence thereof) contributes to a lilting rhythm.

The plot is precisely as airy and as farcically complicated as it needs to be. Suffice it to say that there's this threadbare jacket with a winning lottery ticket in the pocket. It becomes separated from its starving-artist owner and leads him and numerous others a merry chase over the roofs of Paris, through the urban underworld, and onto the very stage of the Opera. You'll wonder more than once whether the Marx Brothers were taking notes.

For no good reason whatsoever, Le Million remained out of circulation for decades, except for a few bleary dupe videos. Now we have a crystal-clear DVD that does full justice to Lazare Meerson's ethereal settings, Georges Périnal's luminous camerawork, the enchanting beauty of leading lady Annabella, and René Clair's world-class comedy masterpiece. There shall be dancing in the streets. --Richard T. Jameson

Product Description

An impoverished artist discovers he has purchased a winning lottery ticket at the very moment his creditors come to collect. The only problem is, the ticket is in the pocket of his coat. . . which he left at his girlfriend's apartment. . . who gave the coat to a man hiding from the police. . . who sells the coat to an opera singer who uses it during a performance. By turns charming and inventive, René Clair's lyrical masterpiece had a profound impact on not only the Marx Brothers and Charlie Chaplin, but on the American Musical as a whole.

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5.0 out of 5 stars The love of money is the root of all evil May 23 2004
By Ted
Format:DVD
This review is for the Criterion Collection DVD edition of the film.

This movie, one of the very first sound films made in France remains a comic classic today and the Biblical message of the film is often overlooked. In the film, a man who is in debt has the winning lottery ticket for 1,000,000 francs. Unfortunately the jacket he left the ticket in goes missing and he goes to great lengths to reacquire the jacket. Later word gets out about it and others are trying to take the jacket also. There is a man brandishing a gun who takes the jacket by force also. This film shows that money has the power to corrupt people greatly.

"For the love of money is the root of all evil" 1 Timothy 6:10

The DVD has improved subtitles and also has a production photo gallery and an interview with director René Clair.

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Format:DVD
Years ago as a graduate student, I was ecstatic to see a faded, fuzzy, and torn copy of LE MILLION at one of the campus film societies. Nevertheless, I was immediately enchanted. Luckily, those who today want to see this masterpiece have this magnificently restored version by Criterion. No one who loves classic cinema will fail to be enchanted by this magical story about the hunt for a lost, winning lottery ticket.

In 1931, the year this film was made, European cinema was just beginning to catch up with the technical achievements made in the United States in the late 1920s. The period from 1929 to the early 1930s was an extraordinary time, as the art struggled with perfecting the new ability to record soundtracks. For a brief period of time, the world of cinema was awash with a world of possibilities, and in Hollywood Ernst Lubitsch made perhaps the first lasting musical films in a string of productions (THE LOVE PARADE, MONTE CARLO, and THE SMILING LIEUTENANT by 1931, and later ONE HOUR WITH YOU and THE MERRY WIDOW) that borrowed heavily from the operetta, a form that tragically-based on the extraordinary success achieved by Lubitsch and later Clair and Mamoulian-failed to survive for long.

LE MILLION was essentially an attempt to do in France what Ernst Lubitsch was doing so successfully in Hollywood. The transition was an easy one, especially given that Lubitsch, the European expatriate, was setting all of his films in Europe. Rene Clair, however, added many touches of his own. The humor he employs in the film is laced with a degree of slapstick that simply wasn't Lubitsch's style. This film is a romp through Paris, and romping wasn't Lubitsch's mode of travel. LE MILLION is working class, while Lubitsch focused primarily on the antics of the aristocracy, or with workers having to deal with the aristocracy. Also, while Clair of necessity worked primarily in the studio (the limitations of sound technology required it), he employs some exterior shots that were very unusual for the time.

There is a magic and a delight in LE MILLION that simply cannot be captured in words. There is something sui generis about a truly great film, especially one that is great in only the way that a film can be great, in the use of camera to tell a story, to tell a joke, to invoke a sense of delight. Except for those unfortunate film viewers for whom no good film was ever made in black and white, for whom no good film can be subtitled, and for whom an "old" film means made before 1970, this is one of those filmed that will be loved and cherished by anyone who loves movies.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Nice lighthearted musical comedy Mar 15 2001
Format:DVD
Criterion did a nice job with this 1931 musical comedy. The quality is very good considering its age. It is an important film historically, but also it's just good, clean, amusing fun. And we know it has a happy ending because everyone is celebrating in the beginning. :o)
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