Trois cents à l'heure: A dizzying, old-school blur

Is it worth your time?

Honestly, only if you have a very specific craving for French cinema from the early talkie era. If you’re looking for a plot that makes sense or characters that behave like real human beings, keep walking. 🏎️

This movie is for people who enjoy theater-style acting where everyone projects to the back of the room. If you get annoyed by rapid-fire dialogue that mostly serves to move furniture, you will probably hate this.

The vibe

It’s loud. Everyone is constantly moving, even when they’re just standing in a drawing room. It’s got that jittery, low-budget energy where you can tell the camera was just barely keeping up.

The pacing is… well, it’s three hundred miles an hour in name only. Most of the "speed" happens in the mouths of the actors. They talk so fast I almost needed subtitles for a language I already speak.

Small observations

• There’s a door on the left side of the screen that gets opened and closed so many times I started counting.
• The lighting makes everyone look like they’re perpetually standing in front of a very bright, very judgmental lamp.
• I’m not entirely sure why the cars are even involved, but they provide a nice excuse for someone to wear a leather cap and look concerned.

It feels a bit like watching Too Many Crooks if it had been edited with a pair of rusty kitchen scissors. Things happen, people get flustered, and then someone else walks in to make the situation worse.

The takeaway

It’s not a masterpiece. It’s a relic. There’s a strange comfort in how messy it is, though. It’s not trying to win an award or change your life. It just wants to finish the scene before the film stock runs out.

Sometimes you just need to watch a bunch of people in 1930s suits lose their minds over a race. Even if the race itself feels like it’s happening in a completely different zip code. 🏁

It’s definitely a weird companion piece to something like Mister Smith fait l'ouverture. Both share that frantic, stage-bound DNA that makes you wonder what the stagehands were thinking.

Don’t overthink it. Just watch the hats. The hats are doing a lot of the heavy lifting in this production.