The Italian Straw Hat (film)
| Un chapeau de paille d'Italie The Italian Straw Hat |
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| Directed by | René Clair |
| Produced by | Alexandre Kamenka |
| Written by | René Clair |
| Based on |
the play by Eugène Labiche and Marc-Michel |
| Starring |
Albert Préjean Olga Tschechowa |
| Cinematography |
Maurice Desfassiaux Nikolas Roudakoff |
| Distributed by | Films Albatros |
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Release date
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(France) 13 January 1928 (USA) 31 August 1931 |
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Running time
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105 minutes (19f/s) |
| Country | France |
| Language | Silent |
The Italian Straw Hat (French: Un chapeau de paille d'Italie) is a 1928 French silent film comedy written and directed by René Clair, in his feature debut, based on the 1851 play Un chapeau de paille d'Italie, by Eugène Marin Labiche and Marc-Michel.
On the day of Fadinard's wedding, his horse eats a lady's hat on a bush at the roadside, while the lady is hidden behind the bush with her lover Lieutenant Tavernier. Because she is married, she cannot return home hatless without being compromised, and Tavernier orders Fadinard to replace the hat with one exactly like it - or else he will wreck his new home. In an elaborate sequence of complications, Fadinard tries to find a hat while keeping to his marriage schedule.
When René Clair was first offered the job of adapting the farce of Labiche and Michel for the cinema by Alexandre Kamenka, of the Albatros film company, he was unenthusiastic, but he nevertheless demonstrated a sure touch for a fast-moving satirical portrayal of bourgeois style and manners. He updated the original play from 1851 to the setting of the Belle Époque, and an opening title dates it specifically to 1895, the year of the birth of the cinema. In addition to the period settings designed by Lazare Meerson, the story is filmed in a style which recalls the techniques of the earliest cinema films. Most shots use a fixed camera which does not move with the action; characters walk in and out of shot from the sides. Set-ups are usually in long shot, with the characters backlit to provide contrast with the background; much of the action is built up by details within the shot. Close-ups are comparatively rare. (Only in occasional sequences do we see tracking shots, to follow a moving carriage, or rapid cutting, for instance to suggest Fadinard's growing panic in a dance scene.)
The verbal dexterity of the original text is replaced with inventive visual comedy. Each supporting role is characterised by a comic detail which becomes a running joke: the deaf uncle with a blocked-up ear-trumpet; the cousin who has lost one white glove; the bride's father whose dress shoes are a size too small; the bride who feels a pin that has dropped down the back of her dress; the cousin whose tie keeps dropping, and his wife whose pince-nez will not stay on her nose. The visual narrative is made largely self-sufficient, and there are comparatively few intertitles throughout the film.
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