Preceded by: Les Primitifs (Méliès et al) and Pathé journal (newsreels, 1947). ------------------ (Silence Is Golden/U.S. release title: Man About Town). René Clair often acknowledged his debt to the "primitives"-Georges Méliès and others-and this period piece is a tender and clever evocation of the early years of cinema. Maurice Chevalier apparently won back some of the hearts he lost during the war years with this portrayal of M. Emile, a middle-aged film producer who gives lessons in savoir faire to his timid assistant, only to have the assistant savoir a little too well. Soon he is courting the producer's own true love. The period background is superbly recreated, with the inclusion of a number of tiny film dramas of the kind made in Paris in 1906. Clair's characteristic set pieces and comic routines here revolve around the mysteries of theatricality vs. real life.