Paris qui dort

The watchman on the top level of the Eiffel Tower comes out to find the whole of Paris asleep and frozen into position, drivers in their cars, passers-by, policemen just seconds before an arrest. He joins up with a group of people who were flying over Paris when it happened, to enjoy newfound freedom without limits.

One way to view this is as conceived; a comedy by way of surrealism and the absurd so far as the premise is concerned, and mostly harmless execution. A scientist is responsible we discover, who has devised a contraption that controls the flows of reality.

Or you can read between the images. I study what it means to meditate and effective conveyance of this through cinema, so this rings loud and clear to my eyes.

So we have the narratives that make up the bulk of day-to-day life arrested, doesn't matter how, and only those who were above ground spared from the effect. They walk through a still world full of possibilities for reflection, the only ones 'awake' among sleepers dreaming their routines. Of course being ordinary human beings, what do they do? They drink and dance, they indulge themselves, and when boredom sinks in, they fight for the one woman in their company. Narratives are resumed and stopped again, as the scientific mastermind, someone who is trying to master mind, tinkers with the equations.

The quest is for a still center, discovered in the arms of the woman.

It was perhaps too early in the medium to add further layers, for instance to link control of reality with the mind desiring images or desiring escape from them. Maybe, if this was Epstein's film who had by then stumbled on a theory about the eye in motion. It is fine to have just this at any rate, concerned more with visual invention than introspection. There are guerilla shots from inside moving cars, frozen and resumed, that do Nouvelle Vague thirty years early.

If you are an imaginative viewer, you will want to see the first half with its eerily empty boulevards and plazas, and imagine a silent horror film about some unspecified apocalypse.

A watchman high on the Eiffel Tower awakens one morning to find everyone in Paris seemingly asleep, frozen in the position they were at 3:25 AM. He, and a group who had been high up in an aeroplane in the wee hours, frolic in the petrified City of Lights until the novelty wears out and they discover the cause of the mysterious phenomenon. The film is a charming silent directed by René Clair (one of his many fantasy films) and features fine old images of Paris in the 1920's (much of the story talks place on or around the Eiffel Tower) and some borderline surrealism, especially of people frozen in mid-action or having tea perched high on the iron girders of the iconic landmark. The version I recently watched on-line (about 55 min long) was a bit washed out - a high-quality copy would be worth finding. Note that there are several versions in circulation with various titles and lengths. A must see for fans of vintage fantasy films or of early French cinema.

I caught this as part of the 2021 Virgin Dublin International Film Festival and I really enjoyed it. Hard to imagine it was made almost 100 years ago and the quality of the print used was top notch. It's a simple enough story of a small group of people roaming through a silent Paris. It's set over just a few days and there was a lot packed in for the relatively short running time (by today's standards) of about an hour.

This silent film took me by complete surprise and I could hardly believe this film was so advanced for this production in 1925. Henri Rollan, plays the role as a watchman on the top level of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France and comes down into the city and finds people all sleeping and in suspended motion standing like frozen statues. It seems a certain scientist had discovered an invisible ray which could not reach people in airplanes or Henri who worked at the top of the Eiffel Tower. If you want to see how France looked in Paris in 1925, you will enjoy all the old cars and the 1925 fashions for men and women. By the way, this film is only 21 minutes long and went along as a second feature on a much longer film I purchased. Great film to view and enjoy.

It's always nice to watch various films from a relatively long time ago in order to get a grasp of what set the standards for the discourses of today. "Paris qui dort" is a science fiction short which establishes several motifs of today's science fiction fancy.

Paris sleeps. People who were high above the ground, either in the Eiffel Tower or in an airplane come down to find a city almost frozen in time. Water, machines, regular things move, it's just that all the people are asleep. The characters then get to live their wildest dreams of freedom and riches until it just starts to not work out for them.

Some images, such as the initial main character's approach to a fountain, are immediately recognized as used in 28 Days Later... The sleeping people are often set in the same sort of not-quite-frozen, not-quite animated set-up that's later used in Dark City. It's interesting to see such images become inspiration for entire other works we recognize today.

Unfortunately, the short itself hardly feels able to stand on its own anymore. The initial shot of a static Paris has cars moving at the edge of the frame. The characters' own boredom unfortunately connects well with the modern audiences own. However, it's still creative and interesting enough to be worthy of recognition and to be respected for what it's done.

--PolarisDiB