"An Italian Straw Hat." At the Academy THE copyright of
An Italian Straw Hat will shortly expire, and this revival of Rene Clair's silent comedy may be the last. When Clair made it in 1928 he was recognized by the critics as a brilliant follower of the Chaplin tradition, but to the general public in this country he remained unknown. Rather oddly, his reputation here dates from Sous lea Toils de Paris, in which his use for the first time of French dialogue might have been expected to limit his popularity.
It must be admitted, I think, that An Italian Straw hat is now something of a museum piece. Its story—about a bridegroom who becomes involved with a fiery cavalry officer and his mistress as the result of an accident to the lady's straw hat—is too slight for such extended treatment ; and in the style of its photography it reveals its age clearly enough: But in its best moments—and they are often delightful—it reveals also how far Clair had gone already in refining and subtilizing the " slapstick " methods learnt from Chaplin and Mack Sennett. There are several touches very characteristic of his later work—the deaf man, for instance, who wanders vaguely through the plot, and the fiasco of the Mayor's speech at the wedding ceremony. The essence of the comedy is the effect of trivial misadventures on the fine adjustment of French social conventions, and as a gallery of more or less caricatured French types the film is richly successful. Compared with a good modern talkie, it is bound to seem rather slow and tame ; but anyone interested in cinema history will find it both instructive and entertaining.
CHARLES DAVY.
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