Clair has a happy time with [the delightful situation in The Italian Straw Hat], which provides the motivation for his incredible collection of 1895 bourgeois characters. The realism of the film lies in the settings and in the formalities of the wedding, in all those things people do to make them seem important and dignified in their own eyes….

As a piece of story telling the film moves slowly enough, but it contains so much carefully contrived humour and is so well acted … that it survives repeated viewings. (p. 220)

[All through the film episodes] are worked out with little need for captions or dialogue. That the film is both too slow and too long for popular entertainment I have no doubt, and the characters of the officer, the fainting wife and the bridegroom's sorrowful valet become repetitive and tedious. For it is the elderly folk who distinguish this film...