Silence Is Golden

René Clair had just come back from the USA,so this movie is the follow-up to "and then there were none" ,based on Agatha Christie's play (and not novel) .Clair was in his element again , I was never convinced by his take on whodunit.

It was the time the director came to term with his past , that is to say the silent age when, like Renoir and Duvivier ,he was already working;so he knew what he was taking about and his movie is one of the best dealing with la Belle Epoque ,at the time of the Cinematographe , when the movies were made in cheapstake settings but fascinated the ladies (who liked happy endings best ) who were picked up par les messieurs .

Clair's work is full of nostalgia ,the silent age -check the title:(= silence is golden-) was the time when he was himself in his twenties .Gone is the youth; Maurice Chevalier ,10 years his senior ,plays the part of his alter ego ;many consider his part of an old beau his best role .He still thinks he's an irresistible womanizer pretending he's his best friend's daughter's guardian and protecting her from man's lust ,but ,though she may be his daughter, , she's exclusive preserve. He's a director ,par excellence ,the job that makes the girls drool .

But he also claims to give a young actor (François Périer) lessons in seduction ; hearing the old buck talk to women is just a joy; and hearing the pupil using the same sentences ,the same quotations (from poet Ronsard ) is a trick worthy of peer Sacha Guitry .

But this education might backfire on the "teacher" ;this culminate in "oriental passion " , a film the director is shooting ,in which pretending is no longer the rule .Anyway the old beau was actually cynical and hypocrit .

The ending ,with the coming of the sultan ,is hilarious and perhaps inspired by Molière 's "le bourgeois gentilhomme" : is the lady for sale? And Clair laughs at the decoration ,and perhaps at all the decorations,including la légion d'honneur , which loses its value when it's awarded to the first to come;poets, like him,don't need it.

The female lead,Marcelle Derrien ,was only a shooting star,whereas Dany Robin,who 's just got a small supporting role, would work with Decoin,Duvivier, Litvak ,Audry, ,Guitry and would end her career with Hitchcock ("topaz").