KnotMissPriceless Why so much hype?

WillSushyMedia This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

SanEat A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Dana An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

chaos-rampant The story is enjoyable fluff, zipping past in a droll flurry of conniving, gaffe, hysterical chase, mistaken identity, public dishonesty, false appearances, and social hypocrisy around money. A snotty starving artist who owes everyone wins the lottery but his fateful jacket upstairs is missing and makes its round of Paris.Now for the musical touch. The jacket ends in the hands of an opera singer who thinks it authentic ('bohemian') enough for his stage costume—it's closing night for a bohemian opera. The singer is rich but gets no satisfaction out of his art, constantly bickers with his co-star, lecherously chases skirt backstage. Our man along with the girl that is secretly in love with him follow the jacket on stage, as curtains go up and the show begins.What follows is a magical moment where the fake bohemian couple provide the song that conciliates the two lovers hiding on the same stage behind a piece of scenery, a marvelous setup. In the dreamlike reality of the musical, the jacket is miraculously retrieved, miraculously snatched away in the next beat, and—lo— miraculously presented again in the finale. All because he realized the richness of love.And how about this as framework? A vast tracking shot opens the film, over a sleeping city to a rooftop where two neighbours peer from a window to wild celebration below. The two of them wonder why the ruckus, which is promptly followed by the dancers relating the story that is our film. I am in awe of how they achieved the shot, it looks like they had to build a few acres of cityscape inside the studio.

dbborroughs Rene Clair's groundbreaking musical. If you want to see where songs first drove a story this is the place. This is the story of a starving young artist who finds he's won the lottery just as his creditors come calling. Unfortunately his ticket is in his coat, which is in his girlfriends apartment and has been given to an on the run convict who then... oh but that would be telling.This is a light and frothy story where much of the dialog is sung (most people think this didn't happen until Oklahoma or Andrew Lloyd Webber). Its the sort of movie that they don't make any more, and rarely did when they did. Its sound a film from the early days that plays like a movie from five or six years later. Clair moves his camera around in ways that not even Busby Berkeley was doing (though to be honest comparing the two film makers is unfair since Berkeley was doing essentially stage bound dance numbers and Clair was moving the camera through "the real world"). Its an amazing little movie. and its a charming movie that will just make you smile. Its just a fluffy piece of enjoyment.I'm sorry I can't say more. Its just a nice little movie and thats really all you need to know.

Ian Abrams This film was a disappointment, except for one or two moments (the singing cops/the singing crooks, Grandpa Tulip). It felt like a Marx Brothers movie starring Zeppo and Gummo. There's a great, frothy lightness to the film and the constant sense that something really, really amusing is just about to happen-- but it never actually does. I'd class this picture as "interesting," but not really good except as a curiosity.

asiahander Rene Clair has a style best characterized by Vernon Young as "champagne on cornflakes." Le Million is ostensibly a kind of Preston Sturges plot - a man wins the lottery, but can't find the ticket. Musical numbers and ebullient camerawork and cutting make this a standout for early sound films (although Clair's own A nous la liberte was better). And the wonderful fuzz that has collected on early 30's films is still eminently there. What all these restorations fail to point out to the uninformed viewer is the physical hazards that a film had to endure for fifty or sixty years before a restorer got enough financing to re-create a film like Le Million. Perfect of its kind, yet ultimately cornflakes.