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UNDER THE ROOFS OF PARIS
1930
Director
René Clair
Starring
Albert Préjean
Pola Illéry
Edmond T. Gréville
Runtime
96 minutes
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In René Clair's irrepressibly romantic portrait of the crowded tenements of Paris, a street singer and a gangster vie for the love of a beautiful young woman. This witty exploration of love and human foibles, told primarily through song, captures the flamboyant atmosphere of the city with sophisticated visuals and groundbreaking use of the new technology of movie sound. An international sensation upon its release, UNDER THE ROOFS OF PARIS is an exhilarating celebration of filmmaking and one of France's most beloved cinematic exports.
In 1930, at the start of the worldwide financial crash, important movies tended to be set in fantasy realms of impossible wealth. Clair’s Paris was, in a way, no less fantastic—every street and square, every tenement, garret, dancehall, and café was designed by the great Lazare Meerson and built in the studio. But its characters, who live on the border between ill-paid labor and petty crime, were both instantly recognizable the world around and imbued with romance by the magic of Paris. Even today it looks exhilaratingly fresh, a cavalcade of inventive turns, a sprightly little confection poised just to the right of THE THREEPENNY OPERA and a bit to the left of 42ND STREET.
"Like many artists, René Clair has been the victim of the canon wars. Once considered one of the greatest of French filmmakers, Clair was lambasted by the aboriginal Cahiers du cinéma crowd for all-too-quintessentially French cuteness, and his reputation plummeted into a critical darkness from which it as yet to fully re-emerge. Comparisons to Vigo and Renoir are daunting, inevitable, and unfair; Clair never possessed the former’s primal elementalism nor the latter’s complexity, but he shouldn’t have to. Clair’s films have a distinct charm to them that stands alone. Today, he comes off as a fabulously empathic, inventive, stylish, unique cinematic sensibility, as generous as Renoir and as lyrical as Vigo, but the master of all things particularly Clairian. He has rarely been mentioned as a giant figure in the last 40 years, but I wouldn’t trade his utterly entrancing masterpieces for any five Chaplins, Pagnols, or Lubitschs." - Michael Atkinson
In 1930, at the start of the worldwide financial crash, important movies tended to be set in fantasy realms of impossible wealth. Clair’s Paris was, in a way, no less fantastic—every street and square, every tenement, garret, dancehall, and café was designed by the great Lazare Meerson and built in the studio. But its characters, who live on the border between ill-paid labor and petty crime, were both instantly recognizable the world around and imbued with romance by the magic of Paris. Even today it looks exhilaratingly fresh, a cavalcade of inventive turns, a sprightly little confection poised just to the right of THE THREEPENNY OPERA and a bit to the left of 42ND STREET.
"Like many artists, René Clair has been the victim of the canon wars. Once considered one of the greatest of French filmmakers, Clair was lambasted by the aboriginal Cahiers du cinéma crowd for all-too-quintessentially French cuteness, and his reputation plummeted into a critical darkness from which it as yet to fully re-emerge. Comparisons to Vigo and Renoir are daunting, inevitable, and unfair; Clair never possessed the former’s primal elementalism nor the latter’s complexity, but he shouldn’t have to. Clair’s films have a distinct charm to them that stands alone. Today, he comes off as a fabulously empathic, inventive, stylish, unique cinematic sensibility, as generous as Renoir and as lyrical as Vigo, but the master of all things particularly Clairian. He has rarely been mentioned as a giant figure in the last 40 years, but I wouldn’t trade his utterly entrancing masterpieces for any five Chaplins, Pagnols, or Lubitschs." - Michael Atkinson