Clair has somehow come to be looked on as a satirist, though he hasn't an atom of the passion and indignation that puts the force into all great satire. For the most part he has found his fellow men, particularly his countrymen, odd and amusing creatures, whose petty ways he enjoys making an amiable show of on the screen. If the people are simple and not too malicious (like many of his Parisian underworld characters and his vagabonds) he is apt to be kindly and rather gentle with them, though completely frank. With middle-class pretentiousness and arrogance his portraiture moves definitely toward caricature, with a sharp, witty edge. Hitherto he has kept his locale in France, and his plots generally farcical.

In Le Dernier Milliardaire he has gone outside of France, into a mythical kingdom called Casinario, and he has picked the butts of his fun-making from all...