User Reviews

"Paris Qui Dort" film review by kWRice

Time has stopped for all but yourself. The world is your oyster, and you've got all the time in the world. Now what do you do? How many times have you seen a memorable "Twilight Zone," "The Outer Limits," or "Doctor Who" episode with a friend that provoked worthwhile ideas to discuss? How about a 1924 Silent Film? Rene Clair's "Paris Qui Dort"(While Paris Slept) AKA "The Crazy Ray" is such a film.

These are the Roaring Twenties and Paris is much more than the romantic City of Lights. One man who is above it all wakes up in the Eiffel Tower, and comes down to a city that has stopped. He smiles, enjoys his unexpected power and eventually discovers a handful of others.They are not asleep; they are all very different. Five men and one woman begin some fun hijinks, that escalate into life and death struggle. Are there any others out there? As you watch these six people you may laugh more than once as you see vignettes Steven King, "The Outer Limits", and those wonderful "B" Movies of the '50s have all borrowed. More than once you think you know what will happen next, it won't! From beginning to end there are many surprises.

You'll see special effects you will not believe! You thought Jackie Chan was exciting on that tower, it was done better in 1924! You'll see mankind at its worst. You see how classy the different classes are not. There is perspective on perceptions of madness, and for those that like numerical conspiracies, what do 4 and 325 signify? Yes I am over hyping it, but this is 1924! It's a different world, or is it?

During the '30s, René Clair was considered one of the cinema's most stylish innovators and satirists… Now, however, both the 'poetic realism' and the exuberant humor on which his reputation once rested seem shallow and dated…

A critic, and a poet and actor in the serials of Louis Feuillade, the young Clair aligned himself with the French avant-garde of the '20s… Indeed, his silent work may be seen as offshoots of the Dada movement: his debut, "Paris Qui Dort" ("The Crazy Ray"), was a bizarre comic fantasy in which a mad scientist uses a magic ray to render the city immobile; only a group of strangers, safe atop the Eiffel Tower or in a plane, remain conscious to search for the culprit and bring Paris back to life…

This is a super-inventive silent film from the same director (René Clair) who later made the highly original "À nous la liberté!". Oddly, despite being a terrific film and me being a huge fan of silents, I have never heard about it. It certainly deserves to be better remembered.

The film begins with a man coming home from his job at the top of the Eiffel Tower. He is amazed to see that everyone has stopped dead in their tracks and are immobile. For a while he thinks he's the only living and moving person, but soon an airplane lands with some others just like himself--mobile and alert. For days the small group cavorts, though after a while tempers flair--after all, they are hour guys and only one woman! Just before they can kill each other, they receive a wireless communication from another woman in Paris, so they run to her address. According to the new lady, her crazy father is an inventor and made a "crase ray" that has literally stopped everyone in their tracks. The guy in the tower and people in the airplane were not effected because the ray had a limited height. The new girl was unaffected because the scientist made the house crase ray-proof! While there is more to this story, I need to point out for a silent it was well written, acted and directed and has aged very well as a result. This fantasy/sci-fi film is so unique and charming, I encourage all lovers of the silents to look for it--you won't be sorry.

Sadly, I found that this film seriously outstayed its interest; it starts off well with an intriguing concept, that of the lone survivor in a mysteriously abandoned city, and develops this into a socio-comic commentary on the worthlessness of money and valuables in unlimited supply, compared to the real necessities of life. The handful of survivors who find each other become bored of their effortless scroungers' existence and start quarrelling among themselves -- saved only by the arrival of the long-awaited signal from the outside world.

Thus far, thus John Wyndham (there are strong parallels here with the novel "The Day of the Triffids"). This silent film is somewhat heavy on its use of intertitles (which do inevitably suffer in translation), is not especially distinguished in its acting and as a comedy not particularly funny. But, having explained away preceding events by invoking a mad professor and then wound up his story by an 'and then they all went back to their previous lives' scene, the film-maker then commits the cardinal error of pressing the reset button -- or in this case, throwing the freeze-ray switch yet again. And again.

We get a whole new segment of story driven by the financial travails of only two of the previous five characters, who can't face being poor after having had the whole city to glean from and decide to freeze everybody again so that they can rob them. Only the professor notices, so he reverses the switch yet again... demonstrates to his disbelieving colleague, jerking everybody on and off... the world 'compensates' by being cranked extra fast, Keystone-fashion... and the whole thing descends into slapdash tedium of a fairly primitive kind, which has ceased some time earlier to be entertaining. More or less the entirety of the second half of the film could have been cut (from the young couple parting outside the Eiffel Tower straight to the finding of the ring), and only to its improvement.

This film was shown in a double-bill with Buster Keaton's "Three Ages", a film shot in the same year and similarly using camera trickery (what must be one of the earliest animated cartoon sequences featuring a live actor). The comparison was not at all to the favour of "Paris qui dort", alas, which dragged terribly and came across as much more wordy and primitive; it's not entirely fair to judge it against an action comedy, but it is in the frenetic action sequences that this film is the weakest. One gets the impression that the director had just run out of ideas. By the ending of the film I was seriously bored; the Keaton, despite a poor print, woke up the audience (in at least one case, literally) like a shot.

"Paris qui dort" is a French science fiction drama movie from over 90 years ago. It is a very early career effort by René Clair, who is considered among France's most influential filmmakers of all time. It is of course black-and-white and also still a silent movie. I have to say I liked it early on when it really focused on the mad scientist putting (almost) the entire city of Paris into stasis. When the police officer walks around and sees all the people who are apparently stunned. Unfortunately the film later on loses itself in pointless conversations and people randomly playing cards instead of convincingly elaborating on that interesting plot idea. Also the ending did not really do too much for me. As a whole, I would not recommend it, although this 34-minute film certainly has a couple interesting moments.