Cinema
The Crazy Ray
Paris qui dort
René Clair · 1924
Synopsis
Albert, a night watchman at the top of the Eiffel Tower, wakes one morning to find Paris frozen: passers-by, cars and police officers have stopped dead, caught in poses that are sometimes comical. He goes down into the city and there meets the passengers of a plane that has just landed, spared like him, among them a pilot, a rich man, a young woman and a thief. The only masters of a motionless city, they begin by freely helping themselves to everything it contains.
Context
This is René Clair's first feature film, in which he gives the role of the pilot to Albert Préjean. Shot in 1923, it was first shown in December 1924. The original version, of about an hour, was long supplanted by a short version of about thirty minutes that the filmmaker himself re-edited in the fifties; a longer reconstruction has since been restored.
Who it is for
A silent film of an hour in its reconstructed version, half an hour in the one its author re-edited.
Prizes and reception
Distributed in English under the titles The Crazy Ray, Paris Asleep or At 3:25, it is available in its short version from Criterion.
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