"Whatever the exact combination of reasons, the feature-length film comedy developed fitfully (in the early twenties).... The most important effort of all, as it turned out, had little to do with either the boulevard comedy, the vaudeville, or the circus. Instead, it represented an original synthesis of American film comedy and earlier French fantasy films, interpolated with parodic elements from other film genres. Two writer-directors were principally involved in this strategy: Ivan Mosjoukine and René Clair. Ironically, it was the young Albatros company formed of Russian emigrés that initiated this renewal of French film comedy. Apparently, their model of comedy construction was the story of a naive provincial fellow come to the sophisticated city, which suggests a parallel to the company members' own transposition from Russia to France and Paris. This juxtaposition was the basis for linking together all sorts of mocking episodes in different milieux. For instance, in Tourjansky's Ce Cochon de Morin (1924), adapted from a Maupassant story, Morin (Nicolas Rimsky), a lawyer from La Rochelle, has a series of drunken adventures in Paris that carry him from a jazzband dance hall to court. Perhaps overstating the case, Jean Pascal saw the film as 'high comedy' in contrast to 'the heavy-handed burlesque too often employed in American comedies.'" Richard Abel, French Cinema: The First Wave