René Clair’s first film, Paris qui dort (1924), is a delightful silent science-fiction romp invoving the Eiffel Tower, a conniving and schlubby Professor X, and scenes of Paris so deserted they recall the earliest, emptiest photographs of the city. You can watch the whole thing online here, or you could seek out the Criterion release of Clair’s Under the Roofs of Paris (Sous les Toits de Paris), which contains Paris qui dort as an extra. At about 30 minutes, this version–retooled by Clair in 1950–is half as long as the original 1924 film.
Annette Michelson wrote about the film:
“Clair proposes, with a cascade of subtlegags, the topography of a great city; he explores its scale and pace, that which sustains its life. Temporality, apprehended as movement in space, is the vital current of metropolis, the medium of “the course of affairs,” of “the business of life.” Their powerful and intricate implication is the film’s generative core. Adopting the genre of science fiction–which is, as we know, one of cinema’s oldest forms–Clair offers a fresh series of critical variations upon the thematic cluster–the city, the crowd, capital–which the art and the cinema of his day had begun to explore. There is in fact no single theme of Paris qui dort which expressionism, in an antithetical register, did not also explore. The accuracy and lucidity of Clair’s enterprise were, however, products of a privileged position, a special preparation.”
It’s a great, important film. And it should be your weekend watch.
