SHADOWLAND
The emotional otherworlds of classic cinema. Unspooling the ribbon of dreams every Sunday afternoon.
Films in this Series
René Clair
96 minutes
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
René Clair
104 minutes
One of the all-time comedy classics, René Clair's À NOUS LA LIBERTÉ tells the story of Louis, an escaped convict who becomes a wealthy industrialist. Unfortunately, his past returns (in the form of old jail pal Emile) to upset his carefully laid plans. Featuring lighthearted wit, tremendous visual innovation, and masterful manipulation of sound, À nous la liberté is both a potent indictment of mechanized modern society and an uproarious comic delight.
“Happiness—how might one attain it? With factories? À NOUS LA LIBERTÉ is in a sense a definitively radical film. It may be tamer than Vigo’s preadolescent assault of ZERO FOR CONDUCT, but its arena is adult. It may be less libidinous than Buñuel’s wild ride of L’AGE D’OR, but its vectors are less caricatured, more directly representative of actual social forces (although, like L’AGE D’OR, LIBERTÉ is largely prefigured on the frustration of romantic desire—Marchand’s puppyish Everyman falls for a secretary after a single glimpse, but his pursuit of her has all the gravity of a Harpo Marx fixation.) Whereas both the supposedly antithetical ideologies of capitalism and socialism agree that work is indeed liberty, Clair argues that freedom is freedom, for the individual to define individually. Despite the memorable late sequence wherein a crowd of top-hatted corporate vultures scramble through a courtyard after wind-blown money, Clair’s target isn’t the nouveau riche, but the very notion of social control. Still, Á NOUS LA LIBERTÉ isn’t a critical film—it’s a celebration, a living, life-is-a-song proof of the alternatives. Better to own nothing in a field of singing flowers than to sell your life for the right to live.” - Michael Atkinson
“Happiness—how might one attain it? With factories? À NOUS LA LIBERTÉ is in a sense a definitively radical film. It may be tamer than Vigo’s preadolescent assault of ZERO FOR CONDUCT, but its arena is adult. It may be less libidinous than Buñuel’s wild ride of L’AGE D’OR, but its vectors are less caricatured, more directly representative of actual social forces (although, like L’AGE D’OR, LIBERTÉ is largely prefigured on the frustration of romantic desire—Marchand’s puppyish Everyman falls for a secretary after a single glimpse, but his pursuit of her has all the gravity of a Harpo Marx fixation.) Whereas both the supposedly antithetical ideologies of capitalism and socialism agree that work is indeed liberty, Clair argues that freedom is freedom, for the individual to define individually. Despite the memorable late sequence wherein a crowd of top-hatted corporate vultures scramble through a courtyard after wind-blown money, Clair’s target isn’t the nouveau riche, but the very notion of social control. Still, Á NOUS LA LIBERTÉ isn’t a critical film—it’s a celebration, a living, life-is-a-song proof of the alternatives. Better to own nothing in a field of singing flowers than to sell your life for the right to live.” - Michael Atkinson
René Clair
113 minutes
An impoverished artist discovers he has purchased a winning lottery ticket at the very moment his creditors come to collect. The only problem is, the ticket is in the pocket of his coat. . . which he left at his girlfriend’s apartment. . . who gave the coat to a man hiding from the police. . . who sells the coat to an opera singer who uses it during a performance. By turns charming and inventive, René Clair’s lyrical masterpiece LE MILLION had a profound impact on not only the Marx Brothers and Charlie Chaplin, but on the American musical as a whole.
“In Clair’s magical city of small cobbled courtyards, of bistros, drunkards and street-singers, and skylines dotted with chimney pots at odd angles, there are no villains. An unsentimental love of humanity permeates every frame, operating with members of all levels of society. Clair makes full use of the celebration of movement, the balletic view of activity, the brilliant sense of comic timing and avant-garde imagery that had made his earlier comedies of the 1920s so memorable. While a good deal of European cinema of the 1930s has not stood the test of time, LE MILLION hasn’t aged a bit—seeing it today, nearly 70 years after its release, one still cannot help feeling exhilarated by its sheer audacity and grace.” - Elliott Stein
LE MILLION will be preceeded by a screening of Clair's short film ENTR’ACTE!
ENTR’ACTE opens with a cannon firing into the audience and that’s pretty much a statement of purpose for the whole movie. Clair wanted to shake up the audience, throwing it into a disorienting world of visual bravado and narrative absurdity. Still one of the best-known avant-garde films of the 1920s, ENTR’ACTE stages a series of zany, disconnected scenes, including a chess match between Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray that is swept away by a jet of water, a dizzying roller coaster course, a hearse pulled by a camel, and a high-speed chase through Paris’s Luna Park. A seminal surrealist gem!
“In Clair’s magical city of small cobbled courtyards, of bistros, drunkards and street-singers, and skylines dotted with chimney pots at odd angles, there are no villains. An unsentimental love of humanity permeates every frame, operating with members of all levels of society. Clair makes full use of the celebration of movement, the balletic view of activity, the brilliant sense of comic timing and avant-garde imagery that had made his earlier comedies of the 1920s so memorable. While a good deal of European cinema of the 1930s has not stood the test of time, LE MILLION hasn’t aged a bit—seeing it today, nearly 70 years after its release, one still cannot help feeling exhilarated by its sheer audacity and grace.” - Elliott Stein
LE MILLION will be preceeded by a screening of Clair's short film ENTR’ACTE!
ENTR’ACTE opens with a cannon firing into the audience and that’s pretty much a statement of purpose for the whole movie. Clair wanted to shake up the audience, throwing it into a disorienting world of visual bravado and narrative absurdity. Still one of the best-known avant-garde films of the 1920s, ENTR’ACTE stages a series of zany, disconnected scenes, including a chess match between Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray that is swept away by a jet of water, a dizzying roller coaster course, a hearse pulled by a camel, and a high-speed chase through Paris’s Luna Park. A seminal surrealist gem!
