The Italian Straw Hat

Based on Eugène Labiche’s masterpiece of 19th-century vaudeville, René Clair’s breakthrough film remains one of the wittiest and most elegant screen comedies ever made. Written, directed and premiered in a mere five months (the script was completed in eight days!), it is a delightful feast of movement, rhythm, and purely visual gags—there are barely two dozen intertitles in all. Film critic Pierre Billard credits Clair’s “coherent vision of the film from the very start, an impetus so powerful and so accurate that the directing of the film came in one steady flow and the editing was done in the course of shooting.” Maud Nelissen, one of Pordenone’s youngest star musicians, enhances Clair’s gentle balance between dramatic construction and narrative pacing with her newly composed score. —PCU