Slideshow
RENÉ CLAIR
Friday, March 21 – Thursday, April 3, 2025
“A REAL MASTER… He invented his own Paris, which is better than recording it.”
– Orson Welles
After short stints as a journalist, actor and assistant director, René Clair (1898-1981) made his filmmaking debut with the Dadaist short ENTR'ACTE (1924), with music by Erik Satie and a cast including Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray. He made his feature debut in 1924 with the surrealist science fiction PARIS QUI DORT (aka THE CRAZY RAY), in which a mad scientist paralyzes the French capital with a ray gun. It would be the first of many fantasy films the director would create over five decades.
He next made a series of fantasies including VOYAGE IMAGINAIRE (1925), LE FANTÔME DU MOULIN ROUGE (1926), and TWO TIMID SOULS (1928), then established his international reputation with the more conventional THE ITALIAN STRAW HAT (1928), an updating of a 19th century Boulevard comedy.
Clair was recognized for his innovative use of sound in the early 1930's with his two enchanting comedies UNDER THE ROOFS OF PARIS (1930) and LE MILLION (1931). He followed these with the film considered his masterpiece, À NOUS LA LIBERTÉ (1932), a musical (music by Georges Auric) about a tramp who becomes a captain of industry. Its factory scenes were said to inspire Chaplin’s MODERN TIMES.
Though often called “the most French of all directors,” Clair would go to Britain to make both THE GHOST GOES WEST (1936), starring Robert Donat, and BREAK THE NEWS (1938), starring Jack Buchanan and Maurice Chevalier. During the war, he went to Hollywood to make I MARRIED A WITCH (1942), a screwball fantasy starring Veronica Lake and Fredric March (inspiration for the TV series Bewitched), IT HAPPENED TOMORROW (1944), with Dick Powell, and AND THEN THERE WERE NONE (1945), with Walter Huston, Barry Fitzgerald, and Judith Anderson, one of the best Agatha Christie adaptations ever made.
Following the war, he returned to France to make LE SILENCE EST D’OR (1947), with Maurice Chevalier, followed by LA BEAUTÉ DU DIABLE (1950), with Gérard Philipe and Michel Simon, LES BELLES DE NUIT (1952), with Philipe, Martine Carole, and Gina Lollobrigida, LES GRANDES MANOEUVRES (1955), with Philippe and Brigitte Bardot, and PORTE DES LILAS (1957), with Pierre Brasseur.
Says Bruce Goldstein, Film Forum’s Repertory Artistic Director, “I first wanted to do a Clair series in the early 90s, but it was impossible to do then, because of a lack of prints and rights issues. After 35 years, we’re finally able to do a comprehensive festival thanks to the new restorations now available.”
SILENT FILMS IN SERIES FEATURE LIVE PIANO ACCOMPANIMENT BY STEVE STERNER.
Special thanks to Janus Films, La Cinémathèque Française, Institut Français, Library of Congress, UCLA Film and Television Archive, TFI, Gaumont, and Pathé.
Presented with support from The George Fasel Memorial Fund for Classic French Cinema
