Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) "Paris qui dort" is a French science fiction drama movie from over 90 years ago. It is a very early career effort by René Clair, who is considered among France's most influential filmmakers of all time. It is of course black-and-white and also still a silent movie. I have to say I liked it early on when it really focused on the mad scientist putting (almost) the entire city of Paris into stasis. When the police officer walks around and sees all the people who are apparently stunned. Unfortunately the film later on loses itself in pointless conversations and people randomly playing cards instead of convincingly elaborating on that interesting plot idea. Also the ending did not really do too much for me. As a whole, I would not recommend it, although this 34-minute film certainly has a couple interesting moments.

Cinema_Fan What a stunner this little movie is. With fantastic panoramic shots of early nineteen-twenties Paris. Called originally, Paris Qui Dort, plus too, At 3:25 or The Crazy Ray, this early science fiction story is set in, around and on the Eiffel Tower and the empty city Paris streets.A night watchman, waking up one morning, while sleeping on the top of the Eiffel Tower, finds the whole of Paris has fallen asleep, permanently, with only himself for company and roaming the empty streets in bewilderment. After a short while, he stumbles across a small group of other bemused survivors. They explore. They take advantage. They have fun.Parisian born René Clair's (1898 – 1981), whose other works include À nous la liberté Entr'acte (1924 short), Under the Roofs of Paris (1930) and À nous la liberté (1931), short comedy is a work of vision that today's contemporary cinema makers seem to have taken notice. With post isolationist films as 28 Days Later (2002), The Omega Man (1971) and Terry "Dalek creator" Nation's 1975 BBC television adaptation of "Survivors", this, Paris Qui Dort, is a very fascinating early contender of the sci-fi genre.Placed at the heart is a narrative of while the cats are away the mice shall play, with wonderful shots of a bygone city seen from far above and with moments of comedy, The Crazy Ray is a classic of immense importance to the genre of sci-fi magic. Seen as the very first science fiction fable Georges Méliès's 1902 Le voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon) has set the trend for visionary art, with the silent era composing of some of the greatest artists: Chaplin, Keaton, Clair, Lang and Hitchcock. At 3:25 can be seen as a new and fresh beginning for said filmmaker René Clair and a bold step into the unknown, as sound was soon to take control and all but the greatest has superseded to dominate.Paris Qui Dort is a true gem, and while the mice are at play I highly recommend that you freeze time and find a moment to explore this intriguing visual work of art.

signadserv "Paris Qui Dort" film review by kWRiceTime has stopped for all but yourself. The world is your oyster, and you've got all the time in the world. Now what do you do? How many times have you seen a memorable "Twilight Zone," "The Outer Limits," or "Doctor Who" episode with a friend that provoked worthwhile ideas to discuss? How about a 1924 Silent Film? Rene Clair's "Paris Qui Dort"(While Paris Slept) AKA "The Crazy Ray" is such a film.These are the Roaring Twenties and Paris is much more than the romantic City of Lights. One man who is above it all wakes up in the Eiffel Tower, and comes down to a city that has stopped. He smiles, enjoys his unexpected power and eventually discovers a handful of others.They are not asleep; they are all very different. Five men and one woman begin some fun hijinks, that escalate into life and death struggle. Are there any others out there? As you watch these six people you may laugh more than once as you see vignettes Steven King, "The Outer Limits", and those wonderful "B" Movies of the '50s have all borrowed. More than once you think you know what will happen next, it won't! From beginning to end there are many surprises.You'll see special effects you will not believe! You thought Jackie Chan was exciting on that tower, it was done better in 1924! You'll see mankind at its worst. You see how classy the different classes are not. There is perspective on perceptions of madness, and for those that like numerical conspiracies, what do 4 and 325 signify? Yes I am over hyping it, but this is 1924! It's a different world, or is it?

Alice Liddel The most loveable of all silent masterpieces. It took years for Surrealism to finally mature in the cinema as a powerful artistic presence, as in 'Vertigo', 'Le Samourai' or the late films of Cocteau (of whom much of the imagery of frozen citizens in this is reminiscent). The official Surrealist films of the 1920s, with the exception of Bunuel's, were usually childish trickery, rather than a valid way of looking at, or undermining the world. 'Paris Qui Dort' is different, delicate, beautiful, elegant and funny, it turns reality inside out, making reality a dream, and dream a reality (see the wonderful sequence where the bewildered hero, having roamed through an enchanted Paris, can only find the 'real' city in his head).It is such a lovely idea, the whole of Paris enchanted by sleep, except for those in the air. The hero, due to bad luck, has to live on top of the Eiffel Tower, already cut off from a social context, as with the 'Wizard of Oz'-like band of acquaintances he strikes up - an aviator, an English detective, a notorious criminal, an independent woman (it IS the 1920s!), a blustering tycoon, a mad scientist and his daughter. These are the kind of people who would see life as unreal anyway. The question is: is the city of Paris, with its social order of work, crime and play, dreaming of these outsiders, who play out its desires of independence, wealth, power, freedom; or is it the other way round?For the Surrealists, there was no need to heighten life - it was strange enough as it was. By placing the picture-postcard Paris in a fantastical context; by emphasising the hidden geometry of the city and its buildings; by showing a city, built by people for people, without people, Clair suggests a sublimely suspended dream place, like Tir na nOg, where people never grow old.Tellingly, the old human foibles - greed, lust, jealousy, ennui etc. - threaten to destroy the freedom of the new social order even as it subverts the old one based on those foibles. But Clair subverts this world anyway by revealing the power of film, as the Professor's power over life and movement is Clair's power over his cinematic apparatus, capturing a Paris that sleeps, that never has to die, or admit debilitating transience, by capturing it on his camera. It's only a dream, just as the cinema is a dream before we go back out into the rain, relationships, bills, health. Sometimes you wish time would stop, that the inevitability of progress, and its immovable corollary, decline, could be averted. Clair is the most beloved of the Surrealists, because he knows knockabouts and chases are far more eloquent than portentous, 'meaningful' images.