The Italian Straw Hat

On the morning Fadinard is due to marry, a neighborhood mishap turns his day into a frantic scramble. His horse snatches an elegant straw hat from a roadside bush, unaware the hat belongs to a married woman hiding there with her lover, Lieutenant Tavernier. The couple can't risk a scandal, so Tavernier insists Fadinard procure an identical hat at once, threatening to wreck the wedding if he fails. What follows is a fast-moving chain of misadventures as Fadinard races across town, encountering eccentric characters, aborted purchases, and escalating misunderstandings while trying to keep his ceremony on schedule without revealing the cause of the chaos. The humor relies on slapstick timing and escalating misunderstandings among polite society, with frantic improvisation throughout.

René Clair directed this 1928 French silent comedy adapted from Eugène Labiche's stage farce, Un chapeau de paille d'Italie. The film stars Albert Préjean, Geymond Vital, Olga Tschechowa and Marise Maia, and notably showcases Clair's early cinematic playfulness and inventiveness.

Contemporary box office records are incomplete, and no reliable worldwide gross is documented. The film didn't generate widely cited commercial figures on release, at first, though it reached audiences through later revivals and restorations rather than notable headline theatrical earnings.

Over the decades the picture has been praised for its intricate staging and precision of timing, and it's often referenced in studies of silent-era comedy. Several filmmakers and scholars point to its inventive visual solutions and choreography of chaos as an influential model for cinematic farce in film history classrooms.

Modern viewers rate it around 5.9/10 based on 20 votes, a sign that tastes have shifted. Critics appreciate the film's comic energy, choreographed confusion, and satire of bourgeois reputation, while some find its pacing and silent-era conventions harder to enjoy today, and scholars still praise its technical ingenuity and staging.