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| Festival Year |
Festival Section |
| 2007 |
René Clair: Le silence est d’or -- Prog. 8 |
| Film Title |
LA TOUR |
| Alternative Title 1 |
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| Alternative Title 2 |
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| Alternative Title 3 |
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| Country |
France |
| Release Date |
17 May 1929 |
| Production Co. |
Films Albatros |
| Director |
René Clair |
| Format |
|
Speed (fps) |
| 35mm |
|
20 |
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| Footage |
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Time |
| 293 m. |
|
13' |
| Archive Source |
Cinémathèque Française, Paris |
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| Print Notes |
Senza didascalie / No intertitles |
| Other Credits |
| f./ph: Georges Périnal, Nicolas Roudakoff |
| |
| Program Notes |
LENNY BORGER
Clair’s silent cinema is book-ended by the Eiffel Tower, that “tall iron girl I have always been in love with”. In Paris qui dort, the tower had served a dramatic and symbolic function. Clair felt he had not exhausted all its visual possibilities, and in March 1928, during a hiatus in his contract with Films Albatros, he asked producer Alexandre Kamenka for a cameraman to shoot a one-reel documentary on his beloved Paris landmark. The film is simply structured and fluidly edited: after a brief historical presentation, the camera ascends, then descends through the tower’s intricate lacework of wrought iron, admiring its powerful lines and gracious contours. Alexandre Arnoux, an early champion of Clair’s films, called it a “poem of sober and metallic magnificence”. The production marked Clair’s first collaboration with a young cameraman who, along with set designer Lazare Meerson, would become one of the pillars of Clair’s artistic team: Georges Périnal. – LENNY BORGER
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