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 remain above the River Seine, a continued display of French engineering excellence. Clair makes strategic use of double exposures and dissolves, capturing the mechanical exuberance of the Tower; The great swooping steel latticework edifice a bounding symbol of the modern age.
Direction
Clair's dissolves turn iron into liquid light.
Cinematography
Double exposures that predate music video tricks by decades.
Editing
Rhythmic cuts match the Tower's own industrial heartbeat.
Director
René Clair
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Clair was part of the 'Parisian vanguard' who literally saved the Tower from destruction—this film is his love letter to that victory.
Those fluid dissolves? Clair borrowed from Impressionist painting techniques, proving cinema could be gallery art.
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