The Italian Straw Hat (1927)

Alas, sometimes extreme anticipation yields unexpected disappointment.  This French silent comedy directed by the great Rene Clair has been a staple of film societies and hailed as one of the classics, but I had never seen it before yesterday's showing at the NFT.  Perhaps I expected too much, but the most I can say is that it was patchily amusing and well-conceived; however, the basic joke was stretched far too thin and seemed to go on forever.  Set in 1895, a groom en route to his wedding halts his buggy to retrieve his whip and his horse nibbles on a lady's hat hung on a nearby branch.  The chapeau in question belongs to an adulterous hussy in the tall grass with her lieutenant lover, who insists that the young man produce an identical bonnet or the woman will be unable to return home to her husband.  In fact they follow the groom to his flat and threaten to totally destory it if a new hat is not found.  Meanwhile the lady passes out on the nuptial bed.  Our frenzied groom tries to mix the expectancies of the wedding day with the search for a hat, all the while trying to keep his bride and her extended family happy and ignorant.  And so it goes on.  Apart from some visual humour as the groom pictures his furniture marching out from his flat, most of the comedy was of a more gentle sort and loaded into bits of business for the various other characters like the man whose shoes were too tight, the one who could only find a single dress glove, the one whose collar and tie kept slipping, and the hard-of-hearing uncle whose ear-trumpet was blocked. These and similar bits of comic business produced the odd smile and a generally happy overall outlook, but were not really the stuff of great comedy.  As an ensemble piece it had its moments, but it would have been better-served with a more engaging lead actor.