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Sacha Guitry was born in Russia, the son of renowned stage star Lucien Guitry, who virtually abducted the boy following the break-up of his marriage and introduced him to the theatres and circuses of St Petersburg. Indeed, the five year-old Sacha made his acting debut in a pantomime created for his godfather, Tsar Alexander II, and he later mounted his debut production, The Page (1902), at the tender age of 16. Despite a disrupted education, Guitry proved a precocious and erudite talent and dabbled in silent cinema after making his name as a writer and performer of boulevard comedies.

However, his love of dialogue meant that Guitry devoted his energies to the stage during the 1920s, often collaborating with his father and his second wife, Yvonne Printemps. In 1925, on inheriting Lucien's mansion near the Eiffel Tower, Guitry became Paris's leading wit, raconteur and collector, in addition to being its most prolific playwright, essayist and caricaturist. But, when Printemps left him for actor Pierre Fresnay, Guitry decided to venture back into film on marrying Jacqueline Delubac, who would feature in 10 pictures, including the now-lost Bonne Chance (1935), which finally convinced Guitry of cinema's artistic potential after years of denouncing it as `theatre in a metallic box'. But it was his adaptation of his own picaresque novel, The Story of a Cheat (1936), that established Guitry as a film-maker of rare audacity and vision.

This is an endlessly innovative and mischievous film, from the moment Guitry reads the opening credits and presents the members of the crew on the studio floor in a self-reflexive gambit that comfortably anticipates the nouvelle vague. He then proceeds to narrate the remainder of the action in the guise of an unnamed tricheur penning his memoirs at a pavement café. Moreover, he also delivers the dialogue for all of the others characters in a sort of animated radio variation on the stream of consciousness technique. It's a brilliant conceit and in lesser hands it could easily have become laboured. But Guitry continuously interrupts his recollections with encounters at his table that not only comment on the flashbacks, but also introduce an element of Brechtian distanciation that was almost unique in a 1930s feature.

The story opens in the provincial town of Pangolas, with a small boy (Serge Grave) being banished from supper for stealing eight sous from the family store. However, the meal of freshly picked mushrooms poisons all 11 members of the household and the boy is forced to conclude that crime pays, even though he is swindled out of his inheritance by some grasping relatives. Having worked as a bellboy and served as a soldier, the wiser, if poorer young man (Pierre Assy) climbs the ladder from doorman to lift operator and croupier in luxury hotels across the country before finally settling in Monte Carlo. At each stage, he has garnered further proof that dishonesty is the best policy, even when dealing with an amorous countess (Elmire Vautier) and a beautiful jewel thief (Rosine Deréan).

But it's a sad-eyed and enigmatic gambler (Jacqueline Delubac) who steals his heart and they forge a deliciously crooked alliance, as the cheat develops his skills as a card sharp. However, there is a twist in the tale, as the roué reveals his new identity when the now aged countess (Marguerite Moreno) asks if he would be prepared to join her in a final act of cracksmanship.

Contemporary critics enjoyed the wit and polish of the piece, but decried Guitry's resort to dumb show and voice-over. But, by the 1960s, when jump cuts, reverse motion, stop-motion and trick wipes had become part of the nouvelle vague armoury, The Story of a Cheat's dazzling ingenuity became more readily apparent. François Truffaut suggested it had influenced Orson Welles's use of the playback technique in Citizen Kane (1941) and the spoken credits in The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), and there is no question that its playfulness found echo in Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player (1960). Some have even claimed that Guitry's loquacious style was an inspiration for Eric Rohmer and there's a hint of its Coward-like refinement in the mature works of Alain Resnais.

A handful of less audacious, but still accomplished pictures followed before Guitry marked the 1937 coronation of King George VI with The Pearls of the Crown, the first of his handsome, if not always enthusiastically received costume dramas. Containing dozens of speaking parts and effortlessly transposing the action between some 80 locations, this has been compared to an historical flip-book that flashes a transient pageant upon the screen. But the script fashioned by Guitry and technical director Christian-Jaque is too adroitly structured and verbally dexterous for this simply to be a shiny cinematic bauble.

The action turns around Guitry's French writer, royal equerry Lynn Harding and Vatican chamberlain Enrico Glori, as they relate the history of the pearls in the newly created Imperial State Crown. According to legend, they were four of seven given to the young Catherine de Medici (Paulette Élambert) by Pope Clement VII (Ermete Zacconi). However, their origins date back to the rivalry between Henry VIII (Harding) and Francis I (Guitry) and the scene shifts across the centuries to show how the pearls came into the possession of such figures as Anne Boleyn (Barbara Shaw), Mary Tudor, Elizabeth I (both Yvette Pienne), Mary, Queen of Scots (Jacqueline Delubac), Madame Du Barry (Simone Renant), Napoleon and Josephine (Émile Drain and Delubac), Queen Victoria (Pienne), and Napoleon III and the Empress Eugenie (Guitry and Marguerite Moreno).

It says much for Guitry and Christian-Jacque's authorial control that this delicate conceit doesn't collapse like a pack of court cards. Yet not only do they avoid entangling the various timelines, but they also allow themselves the luxury of the odd digression, including a rather racially dubious Abyssinian odyssey involving Arletty's blackfaced, snake-charming queen and a sublime exchange aboard the SS Normandie between Raimu's nouveau riche industrialist and writer Guitry's wife, Jacqueline Delubac, in which she speaks solely in adverbs.

Impeccably designed by Jean Perrier, costumed by Georges K. Benda, photographed by Jules Kruger and edited by Myriam and William Barache, this has all the style of a prestige epic, the verve of a screwball comedy and the complexity of a 1960s caper movie. It has since been dismissed as talkative and contrived. But its use of three languages - French, English and Italian - presaged Jean-Luc Godard's ploy in Le Mépris (1963) and, even though he was by no means a fan of Guitry, Graham Greene had it right, when he wrote in The Spectator: `Late in life he has taken lightheartedly to the cinema, breaking every rule...Everything seems to have come to him so easily...The rules remain rules for all of us but M. Guitry. The impertinence of it.'

Released later the same year, Désiré is comedy of class manners that both recalls Gregory La Cava's My Man Godrey (1937) and prefigures Jean Renoir's La Règle du Jeu (1939). However, it's the bold discussion of eroticism that sets this apart, as both a former actress and her philandering butler find themselves sharing the same highly charged dream.

Despite her success and status, Jacqueline Delubac has always managed with a small staff, comprising cook Pauline Carton and maid Arletty. However, as the mistress of government minister Jacques Baumer, she decides that she needs a valet to keep up appearances on a trip to Deauville. She wants to hire the garrulous Guitry, but his previous employer, countess Geneviève Vix, warns her that he's something of a rogue.

Having made Guitry promise that he is not attracted to her, Delubac heads for the coast. But, no sooner have they settled in, than she begins having racy dreams about Guitry that infuriate Baumer, while Guitry keeps Arletty awake all night in an adjoining room by talking in his sleep about his feelings for Delubac. Strewn with innuendo and meaningful glances, this is a witty, stylish and risqué farce that's played with relish by a splendidly spirited cast. Guitry and Delubac are particularly impressive. But Baumer exudes egotistical pomposity as the politician who refuses to compromise his position by openly consorting with an actress, while Arletty is so convincing as the domestic underwhelmed by deference that Guitry's own chambermaid accused him of eavesdropping at her door.

But, once again, it's Guitry's direction that's most worthy of note, as he moves Jean Bachelet's camera around the set with an ease that recalls the mise-en-scène elegance of a Renoir or Max Ophüls. He even borrows Busby Berkeley's trademark top shot to follow the valet's poised movements during dinner, as he tolerates the prattled prejudices of Delubac's insufferable guests.

Concluding the quartet is Quadrille (1938), another adaptation of a Guitry stage hit that frequently feels like a Gallicised Noël Coward's take on The Front Page. The direction is again assured. But, this time, it's Guitry's skill as a comic actor that is most to the fore.

He plays the editor of Paris-Soir, who is devoted to actress Gaby Morlay, but just hasn't got round to proposing marriage during their six years together. Indeed, he spends as much time in the company of ace reporter Jacqueline Delubac and they are again in cahoots as the plan the paper's coverage of the visit of Hollywood idol, Georges Grey. But before they can line him up for a scoop, he has made Morlay's acquaintance and been puzzled by the fact that she has appeared on stage under her own name and signed her autograph as Delubac.

In order to atone for his deception, Morlay agrees to meet Grey at his suite at the Ritz Hotel. What she doesn't know is that Guitry and Delubac are waiting in the room next door to interview a celebrity who is much more interested in seduction than promoting his latest picture. Come the morning after, however, Morlay feels so guilty at straying that she confesses all to Guitry. But he has already confessed his feelings for Delubac, even though she really only has eyes for Grey.

Boudoir farce is invariably more effective on the stage, as the timing of entrances and exits is always more thrilling when seen live. But Guitry and his co-stars maintain the pace and precision throughout this slick mix of screwball and satire, which is given additional tension and momentum by Myriam's superb cutting. Yet Guitry also keeps Robert Lefebvre's camera on the move, most notably during Grey's gleeful striptease, which culminates in him giving a naked shock to prim chambermaid Pauline Carton.

Despite coming to terms with the demands of cinema much better than contemporaries like Marcel Pagnol, Guitry remained a man of the theatre. But, while his films always crackled with literate dialogue that was closer in spirit to Feydeau or Coward than Sturges or Wilder, he did come to master screen technique and François Truffaut was quite right to opine: `In any history of cinema worthy of that name, Sacha Guitry would, with no reservations, find a place in the chapter "Auteurs of Films", his name alongside that of Cocteau and Malraux and then of Bresson, Astruc, Gance, Ophuls, and Renoir.'

There are numerous other Guitry titles worthy of a DVD release, including Faisons un rêve, Mon père avait raison (both 1936), Remontons les Champs-Élysées (1938), the much-maligned costume saga, Si Versailles m'était conté (1954), and La Poison (1951), La vie d'un honnête homme (1953) and Les 3 font la paire (1957), the trio of darker crime films he made towards the end of his life with the inimitable Michel Simon. Let's hope Criterion lives up to its reputation for unearthing forgotten gems.