[Le Million] is indescribably gay and amusing, done in a style that is partly French, but chiefly René Clair's own…. In Le Million he has gone in for fewer subtleties—just swift straight comedy that flirts with what is sometimes rather contemptuously called slap-stick. Through it all he has scattered some lively tunes that quicken the pace rather than halt it, and in his rapid stride he manages, lightly but pointedly, to have some fun with various things: with greed and infidelity, to name the more serious ones, with gangsters and gangster films, with football and collegiate films, and most gleefully of all with that solem-old institution, grand opera….

If a funnier, more original and individual screen comedy is to be looked for to follow Le Million, there is no one in sight to expect it from but René Clair himself. (p. 14)

James Shelley Hamilton, "'Le Million'," in...