The Italian Straw Hat

René Clair's masterful farce — one of the funniest films of the entire silent era and the crown jewel of French comic cinema before the talkies. On his wedding day, Fadinard's horse eats a lady's straw hat from a bush — a hat she needs to conceal the fact that she's been on an assignation with a military officer. What follows is a cascading, perfectly engineered comedy of errors as Fadinard races across Paris trying to find a replacement hat while his entire wedding party — an ever-growing, increasingly bewildered procession — follows him from shop to apartment to banquet in mounting confusion. Clair orchestrates the chaos with the precision of a Swiss clock, building gag upon gag with a geometric elegance that recalls the best of Keaton. Adapted from Eugène Labiche's classic play, it's proof that farce is the hardest genre to master and the most rewarding when mastered.