Paris qui dort

When a man awakens from his nightly sleep and leaves his quarters atop the Eiffel Tower, he discovers all of Paris is empty. After wandering for a bit, he finds that the people haven't vanished, they are all frozen in place like statues. He joins up with a merry band of people that land in an airplane, and they have fun in the empty city. Eventually, though, things start to turn ugly, and they need to get to the bottom of what happened to the city.

This is an early version of films like I Am Legend, in the sense that one of the chief joys is seeing a normally bustling city like Paris devoid of movement. Clair managed several impressive shots of empty streets and parks, although the effect is broken occasionally by a moving boat or train in the distance. At only 35 minutes, there isn't a lot of time for things like plot development or deep characterization. The main point here is silly fun. The version I watched had the title cards in French only, but the story is clear enough from the on screen action that this doesn't prove much of a problem. This was listed in 101 Best Sci-Fi Films book.

One has to love these early shorts -- look at the freedom that existed to film more or less whatever subject crossed the artist's mind. And at the self-reference: in the narrative, the characters have the freedom to do more or less whatever crosses their minds. The film itself is the work of a 'mad scientist' about the experiment of the mad scientist within.

The construction is both simple and deeply abstract: we begin with a lone figure against the backdrop of Paris architecture, which grows increasingly populated by statuesque mimes, who are manipulated by animated mimes. The movie ends when the level of abstraction is removed.

Clearly what have here is a work that is conceived from start to finish as a visual story...something so influential that has survived the test of time, in ways that so many other 'experiments' did not. Modern borrowings from this are found in 'Devil's Advocate', 'Dark City', 'Abre Los Ojos/Vanilla Sky'...

This short feature had so much potential early on in the movie: just imagine - you wake up and the whole city is frozen, asleep in an ever-lasting dream and you're the only one who is not. You can do whatever you want, use all the riches in the world but how long will it last until you realize that living in the world and existing in it are two completely different things? Some people get tired of living very soon and the others are fine with existing their whole lives - it's what you can do with the time that you've got on this Earth that counts.

Sadly the movie doesn't explore the human nature in this movie much, instead shifting the focus toward sci-fi explanation of the phenomenon by the end of it and loses its grip where it could've been a good drama.

Fantastic camera work, some impressive shots of empty Paris and decent performances don't allow you to fall asleep along with the other Parisians in the movie but other than that it's an average body of work with just another promising premise wasted.

The most loveable of all silent masterpieces. It took years for Surrealism to finally mature in the cinema as a powerful artistic presence, as in 'Vertigo', 'Le Samourai' or the late films of Cocteau (of whom much of the imagery of frozen citizens in this is reminiscent). The official Surrealist films of the 1920s, with the exception of Bunuel's, were usually childish trickery, rather than a valid way of looking at, or undermining the world. 'Paris Qui Dort' is different, delicate, beautiful, elegant and funny, it turns reality inside out, making reality a dream, and dream a reality (see the wonderful sequence where the bewildered hero, having roamed through an enchanted Paris, can only find the 'real' city in his head).

It is such a lovely idea, the whole of Paris enchanted by sleep, except for those in the air. The hero, due to bad luck, has to live on top of the Eiffel Tower, already cut off from a social context, as with the 'Wizard of Oz'-like band of acquaintances he strikes up - an aviator, an English detective, a notorious criminal, an independent woman (it IS the 1920s!), a blustering tycoon, a mad scientist and his daughter. These are the kind of people who would see life as unreal anyway. The question is: is the city of Paris, with its social order of work, crime and play, dreaming of these outsiders, who play out its desires of independence, wealth, power, freedom; or is it the other way round?

For the Surrealists, there was no need to heighten life - it was strange enough as it was. By placing the picture-postcard Paris in a fantastical context; by emphasising the hidden geometry of the city and its buildings; by showing a city, built by people for people, without people, Clair suggests a sublimely suspended dream place, like Tir na nOg, where people never grow old.

Tellingly, the old human foibles - greed, lust, jealousy, ennui etc. - threaten to destroy the freedom of the new social order even as it subverts the old one based on those foibles. But Clair subverts this world anyway by revealing the power of film, as the Professor's power over life and movement is Clair's power over his cinematic apparatus, capturing a Paris that sleeps, that never has to die, or admit debilitating transience, by capturing it on his camera. It's only a dream, just as the cinema is a dream before we go back out into the rain, relationships, bills, health. Sometimes you wish time would stop, that the inevitability of progress, and its immovable corollary, decline, could be averted. Clair is the most beloved of the Surrealists, because he knows knockabouts and chases are far more eloquent than portentous, 'meaningful' images.

What a stunner this little movie is. With fantastic panoramic shots of early nineteen-twenties Paris. Called originally, Paris Qui Dort, plus too, At 3:25 or The Crazy Ray, this early science fiction story is set in, around and on the Eiffel Tower and the empty city Paris streets.

A night watchman, waking up one morning, while sleeping on the top of the Eiffel Tower, finds the whole of Paris has fallen asleep, permanently, with only himself for company and roaming the empty streets in bewilderment. After a short while, he stumbles across a small group of other bemused survivors. They explore. They take advantage. They have fun.

Parisian born René Clair's (1898 – 1981), whose other works include À nous la liberté Entr'acte (1924 short), Under the Roofs of Paris (1930) and À nous la liberté (1931), short comedy is a work of vision that today's contemporary cinema makers seem to have taken notice. With post isolationist films as 28 Days Later (2002), The Omega Man (1971) and Terry "Dalek creator" Nation's 1975 BBC television adaptation of "Survivors", this, Paris Qui Dort, is a very fascinating early contender of the sci-fi genre.

Placed at the heart is a narrative of while the cats are away the mice shall play, with wonderful shots of a bygone city seen from far above and with moments of comedy, The Crazy Ray is a classic of immense importance to the genre of sci-fi magic. Seen as the very first science fiction fable Georges Méliès's 1902 Le voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon) has set the trend for visionary art, with the silent era composing of some of the greatest artists: Chaplin, Keaton, Clair, Lang and Hitchcock. At 3:25 can be seen as a new and fresh beginning for said filmmaker René Clair and a bold step into the unknown, as sound was soon to take control and all but the greatest has superseded to dominate.

Paris Qui Dort is a true gem, and while the mice are at play I highly recommend that you freeze time and find a moment to explore this intriguing visual work of art.