Un'ora d'amore

Sometimes these old films are useful if only because they are a fossilized record of the evolution of certain film techniques.

Here it is the technique of the main character looking directly at and addressing the audience outside of the story. As this really is expertly put together, there are many discrete steps of reality woven into this. There's the standard overlay of play and song that musicals had for decades. But there's also a couple other modes: one in which the characters speak their lines in rhyme. And a more subtle level where the tone is more deliberately artificial, play-like.

Incidentally, I have mentioned elsewhere that the current reputation of Paris as a romantic place was largely manufactured by the US film industry using hidden subsidies. The idea was attract US tourist dollars as part of the Marshall plan. Before the war, it was a place of sex without romance. Romance was deliberately out of the equation. You can see that here. The one hour is all that is required for the liaison that matters.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.