The Italian Straw Hat

René Clair achieved an international reputation in the mid-1920s with some of the most vibrant comedies of the early sound era, but his mastery reached mature form in this 1927 silent masterpiece. Based on an 1851 stage farce but transplanted to 1895 Paris, The Italian Straw Hat combines the befuddled energy of a Harold Lloyd movie, the criss-crossing characters of a screwball comedy, and the Continental attitude and wit of an Ernst Lubitsch film. At the center is Ferdinand (Albert Préjean), a groom whose confident charm turns to flustered panic as his wedding day is upended after he crosses paths with a philandering military officer enjoying a tryst with a married woman (who faints at any hint of her infidelities becoming public). Clair uses simple plot mechanisms to build a lively, comic character study, using less than 40 intertitles while conveying the bulk of the narrative in purely visual terms. A marvelous work with limited general appeal but essential for any collection of international and silent classics, this beautifully restored DVD marks the first time the complete version has been available in the U.S. Presented with the option of choosing between two separate scores (one by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, the other a solo piano accompaniment by Philip Carli), DVD extras include two silent shorts—Clair's 1928 “La Tour” and Ferdinand Zecca's 1907 “Noce en Goguette”—along with a booklet featuring essays on the film and the music. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)