Movies: René Clair

A daydreaming French composer sees himself as a fine figure dashing through history....

A light, comedy romance about a cab driver named Jean and a flower girl named Anna that takes place in Paris during the Bastille day celebration of July 14th....

In a strange bank, a young clerk, in love with a typist, gets asleep after a minor incident. His dream sarries him into the retirement house of old fairies, that he will manage to help to grow younger. He then lands on the towers of Notre-Dame, and i...

Two small-time song-and-dance men come up with what they believe is a surefire publicity stunt, guaranteed to keep their names in the public eye--one of them will "disappear" in what looks like a murder, and the other will be convicted of the crime. ...

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On the day of Fadinard's wedding, his horse eats a lady's hat on a bush at the roadside, while the lady is hidden behind the bush with her lover Lieutenant Tavernier. Because she is married, she cannot return home hatless without being compromised, a...

A poetic documentary tribute to the famous Eiffel tower, built for the 1889 World Fair and intended to have been destroyed 20 years later. A vocal subset of Parisians (among which, one may surmise, Clair would've been counted) insisted the Tower rema...

Collective contribution to a history of cinema, this issue of the “Civilisations” collection also takes part in the genesis of Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle and La Chinoise...

Documentary about filmmaker Jean Grémillon....

"Les quatre vérités" aka "The Four Truths" is a movie anthology that consists of four segments, all loosely parodying fables from the 17th-century French poet Jean de la Fontaine. The US cut usually features only 3 segments....

Lucienne, typist and gorgeous bathing beauty, decides to enter the 'Miss Europe' pageant sponsored by the French newspaper she works for. She finds her jealous lover Andre violently disapproves of such events and tries to withdraw, but it's too late;...

A young man, unsuccessful in love, manages to leave his body and tours Paris, disembodied and invisible, playing practical jokes: a row of coats walks off from a hotel cloakroom; an unattended taxi drives itself away; a row of top hats appears on the...

In the 18th century, as the army of Prince De Beaulieu lays siege on the fortress of Marechal D'Allenberg, a young princess sends a soldier out of the fortress to go find her lover....

Garadoux has beaten his wife. His lawyer Fremissin is young and very shy, and therefore, not very efficient... Two years after, Garadoux is trying to seduce Cecile, but she prefers Fremissin......

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Loie Fuller, in her 1920 feature-length film Le Lys de la vie, […] explored the new technique for poetic ends, creating fleeting, dreamlike images that "freed" the medium from "illusionism" and imbued it with fantasy. A 17 minutes fragment is held a...

Pioneering comedy legend Max Linder wrote, produced, directed and starred in Seven Years Bad Luck. Hilarious misadventures begin when Max' butler, chasing a maid, breaks an expensive full-length mirror. The butler persuades the cook, who somewhat res...

This twelve-part melodrama details the intertwined fates of a Portuguese nobleman, a Carmelite nun, and a mysterious look-alike....

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A pilot crashes and a beautiful countess of a castle nearby nurses him to health....