Word: clair
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...certainly a finished piece of work, and it contains the bright promise that René Clair, one of the few outstanding talents in the film business, may not have finished his real work in the movies. Yet after completing Man About Town, Director Clair returned to Hollywood, an environment that has somewhat cramped his style for years. The sense of something finished hangs over the very conception of the film: it is, primarily and masterfully, an essay on moviemaking...
...Clair has phrased his essay as a gentle caricature of a motion picture-more particularly, of the French motion picture as it was bequeathed to him by the pre-'20s pioneers. Man About Town's story line is one that the movies have worn to a smudge: Maurice Chevalier instructs a youngster (François Perier) in the Art of Love. Thereupon the youngster steals the oldster's girl (Marcelle Derrien). The parody is heightened by direction that reduces action almost to a puppet-like simplicity, and by a harsh lighting that gives actors and sets...
...soundtrack, without background music, is parodic, too. But as in the great silents, the story has more than enough rhythm to move the picture. And Clair has deftly underscored the rhythm with severe, clear cutting...
...this might remain just an intricate, private, directorial joke, except that Clair gives the show away with a colossal wink: the principals are engaged in making 1906 movies, and Clair's camera inspects some prime ribs of primitive cinemacting with all the grave astonishment of a visitor from another planet...
...About Town is more than a complex piece of Clair irony. It is also a simple hymn to Paris. In the opening shot of the film, the camera kisses the cool, wet cobblestones of an alley. The screen is full of tender glances at rust-crusted sinks, at the lovelight in the eyes of streetlamps, at tired mustaches, at a street fiddler's tobacco-stained teeth, and at lovely women who (in a travesty of nostalgia) all look alike...