The Crazy Ray [Paris qui dort] is a visual essay on [motion]. The film denies motion and obstructs it; it creates it where it didn't exist, and constantly juxtaposes the mobile to the immobile. His camera moves in and out of the tower, dances around it and glides up and down it—and in so doing endows this massively stationary object with lightness and mobility. Conversely, he takes human beings, twists them into shapes and poses, and has his camera record their immobility under the ray's force…. (p. 36)

Entr'acte is Clair's most delightfully obnoxious film, twenty minutes of cheerful audacity and high spirits. While revealing Clair's talent and virtuoso command of formal technique, it puts that technique to a nonsensical purpose. It is a plotless film, divisible into larger sections but devoid of any sort of narrative line…. In Entr'acte's free-association surreality, one looks in vain for a sane, comforting image. It might seem therefore that this work is anomalous in Clair's career, but actually the film's good humor has much in common with what is to come in his later features. There can be little doubt, however, that in Entr'acte Clair has transformed reality more completely than in any of his other films. (p. 38)

But what is most important in the prophetic sense about the film is its technical expertise. The brilliance of Clair's montage and his manipulation of the viewer are the work of a young enthusiast experimenting and discovering as much as he possibly can. While Clair's approach will mellow and touch but occasionally this almost feverish pitch in his later work, the vitality and sense of total involvement will remain with him. In terms of technique, Entr'acte is full of cinematic tricks perfectly brought off. (p. 40)

[Le voyage imaginaire] is concerned with the importance of objects. Clair uses specific objects, not with the surrealistic purity of Entr'acte's free association, however, but as a means of establishing motifs in the narrative—and especially as a basis for building extended sight gags. (p. 47)

[Fitted] into the course of Clair's career, Le voyage is an indispensable work despite its flaws. While it is still a fantasy, its fantastic elements are, in a sense, grounded in reality—as a dream is part of the real life of the dreamer. The fantasy has become subjective, psychologically motivated. What the film lacks, however, is strong linking among all its parts; the characters are too weak, the gags often gratuitous, and much of the dream just overwhelms the more simplistic sections. (p. 48)

The jump from the zealous but unpolished Le voyage imaginaire to the smoothly confident An Italian Straw Hat [Un chapeau de paille d'Italie] is a large one indeed. The [later] film doesn't suffer from the slowness of Le voyage; its structure is sound instead of shaky; its characters are full of life rather than uninspired. Yet, for all its problems, the earlier comedy possesses something one cannot find in An Italian Straw Hat: a glimmer of humanity. Brilliant in its satire as the later work is, an inventive transposition of a classic stage work to the mute screen, gay, clever, effervescent, it refers back to Entr'acte rather than forward in the promising direction pointed to by Le voyage. It is too often a cold exercise in satire, fun but curiously hollow…. (p. 59)

Les deux timides is one of the most visually ambitious—and successful—films of the silent era. It belongs to that period marked by a technical perfection which was not to be achieved again (on such a universal level) until well into the sound age. In Les deux timides Clair uses just about every unusual pictorial device extant in filmmaking: freeze frames, flashbacks, hand-held shots, reverse motion, exceptionally soft-focused photography, split-screen—even small jump cuts…. Most importantly, however, all these devices are not employed gratuitously or self-consciously for effect. On the contrary, they blend so well into the plot of the film that they serve to draw the spectator further into the story, rather than simply evoke appreciative sighs at Clair's virtuosity. (p. 61)

The silent films of René Clair reveal a clear line of development from avant-garde aesthetics to optimistic human observation. For Clair, le silence était d'or, silent films were golden—pure cinema, the cinema of images. (p. 71)

[Clair's] first sound film, Sous les toits de Paris (… Under the Roofs of Paris), continues his innovative quest, as he searches for ways of dealing artistically with sound. It is paradoxical, perhaps, but sound actually clarified Clair's filmic vision, for the themes he takes up in this film and the ones that follow are those which we have come to associate with him.

Four of the five films Clair directed between 1930 and 1934 (Under the Roofs, Le million, À nous la liberté, Quatorze juillet) deal for the most part with the working class, their loves and losses. Clair saw dialogue as an obstacle to be overcome by his performers, and for authenticity had them improvise their own words. Despite his preference for creating a little world of his own, Clair's characters in these films are realistically presented. (pp. 75-6)

Clair's best trick with sound is a simple gag he will repeat in Le million and À nous la liberté. We see an object, but the wrong sound appears to be issuing from it. In Under the Roofs, the morning after Albert and Pola have shared his apartment, his alarm goes off. As he reaches out sleepily to stop the bell, Clair inserts a close-up of Pola's shoe. Albert touches the shoe, thinking it is the clock, and the ringing suddenly stops. After the joke has been made, Clair cuts to Pola, who has really turned off the alarm clock. Albert never realizes the truth. In Le million Clair develops this device even further and in fact much of that film's humor is based on such asynchronous use of sound. (p. 82)

[There] are many forlorn moments in [Under the Roofs], the first of Clair's to suggest a topical relevance to his era. From Les deux timides, Clair always treats his characters with tenderness, but here that tenderness if often bittersweet, even pathetic. These are Depression characters in a depressed Paris. And it must be noted that Clair comes closer to Chaplinesque pathos in this movie (and in À nous la liberté) than he ever did before or ever will again. But the visual economy with which he presents the less gay events taking place under the Parisian rooftops only heightens their emotional appeal. Again, it is in use of objects that he achieves his most powerfully expressive moments. (p. 84)

At first glance, Le million seems to start up where Under the Roofs of Paris left off. But—a church bell playing a popular song? Men crawling over the tops of apartment houses in the middle of the night? A crowd of people singing and dancing for no apparent reason? This is not the world depicted in Under the Roofs, where behavior is essentially realistic. The delight of Le million is its melding of the real and the fantastic. Like much of Le voyage imaginaire and Le fantôme du Moulin Rouge, Le million is an excursion into surreality. Yet this time the bizarre activity cannot be "logically" accounted for, since it is justified neither by dream nor by science fiction; its surreality arises from the familiar behaving in a most unfamiliar way. It is the fullest example we have of the uniquely Clairian universe, and, ironically, it is sound which allows him to create its surrealism. (p. 89)

Seeing Le million today, fifty years after its release, one cannot help feeling exhilarated by the sheer audacity of it all. Like Les deux timides, the film glows with the excitement of technical experimentation: Clair and his band of technicians were dreaming up new filmmaking processes, trying to invent a new visual/sonic language to replace the old. Their achievement has a surprising confidence and impertinence that dare us to put aside expectation and immerse ourselves in magic created by striking juxtapositions of sound and image. (p. 91)

Part of the triumph of Le million is its making the audience stop questioning the reality of what it sees. We know something isn't quite right, but it's difficult to say just what is wrong. The gauze which drapes the settings doesn't alter the furnishings or distort them,…; rather it enshrouds them with a kind of tangible haze that makes us squint a bit to distinguish them fully. Eventually the visual aspect of Le million becomes completely logical. (p. 98)

À nous la liberté was never intended as a social manifesto, and it is a mistake to ransack the film for a serious, cohesive political doctrine. There is none to be found…. What the film does concern itself with, as is obvious from its title, is personal freedom. Clair outlines a mythical society, closely resembling our own, in which freedom is a meaningless word; because of the stylization of decor and the generally nonrealistic approach, the issue is drained of any immediate topical relevance and becomes instead a kind of fable of modern times. (pp. 101-02)

The visual key to the film is the abundance of repeated patterns: prison bars; ceiling beams; staircases; chairs pushed against long tables; the constant flow of objects on conveyor belts and ever-changing digits on an office wall; row after row of personnel files; Louis's ubiquitous insignia. The decor epitomizes the rigor and lack of individuality of this society. (p. 108)

In Quatorze juillet the focus is on love, rather than the friendship glorified in À nous la liberté. The sequence of Jean's and Anna's discovery of their mutual love is the highlight of the film, a little masterpiece of mood, atmosphere, and emotional expression…. This sequence is a perfect example of Clair's uncanny ability to transform everyday reality into images so romantic they approach fantasy. (p. 113)

There is very little satire in [Quatorze juillet], but the small, mild amount of it is nicely handled…. But Clair does not dwell on satirical aspects. He prefers to concentrate on his characters.

And concentrate he does. No other film of his contains so many close shots…. Twenty-two years later in Les grandes manoeuvres, a similarly erotic film, the close-up is a rarity, and the long shot is used almost exclusively in order to cut off the audience from the characters' emotions. In Quatorze juillet, on the other hand, he is always trying to draw us further in. (p. 115)

The mood of absurdity of Le dernier milliardaire is about as different as can be imagined from the gentle calm of Quatorze juillet. The characters are all more or less lunatic, the prevailing spirit completely anarchic. As with Duck Soup, there is never a serious moment, but unfortunately Clair can't pull off the satire and slapstick with the unflagging lightness of Leo McCarey's film. His main problem, as he realized much later, lies in the casting…. [Humor] rarely arises from the individual personae of the [supporting] actors, but rather from an occasional funny line or situation. The wit isn't fresh or appealing, but exasperating in a silly sort of way.

The satire lacks the delicacy of that in An Italian Straw Hat, and the political barbs are even less coherent and pointed than those in À nous la liberté…. It's as if Clair just didn't feel like thinking through his ideas, and all he gives us are surface gags strung together with determination but little wit or purpose. Its lack of sophistication is especially disheartening after the perspicacity of Le million, À nous la liberté, and Quatorze juillet. (pp. 118-20)

Break the News is without question Clair's weakest film. Every foot of it reflects his lack of interest in the project, and the film is so visually nondescript it looks as if it had been shot either in great haste or with stultifying lethargy. (p. 132)

This is Clair's most overplotted film, full of improbabilities…. The absurdities are not compensated for by intriguing direction. The camera set-ups are uninspired, the editing perfunctory for the most part. (p. 133)

[The Flame of New Orleans has a] light quality that marks a modest but welcome return to form after the plodding, mirthless Break the News. Like its predecessor, Flame is essentially a star vehicle, but one so finely worked, fitted so carefully to that star's persona, that one can hardly believe the two films were fashioned by the same hand. André Bazin finds Monsieur Verdoux to be about the myth of Chaplin: knowledge of that myth is almost a sine qua non for understanding and hence full enjoyment of that film. So it is with Flame, though to a lesser degree. Not really a parody of [Marlene] Dietrich, it does what Ninotchka did with [Greta] Garbo; it plays a little game of sorts with her image. (p. 139)

[Stylistic broadness] is typical of I Married a Witch, a film greatly dependent on smart dialogue and screwball-type comedy. Despite the many special effects and sight gags, the film generally lacks the poetic visual style and flair of the Parisian films or even The Flame of New Orleans. But there is a moment of Clair's unique poetry that comes as a graceful pause in the general mayhem. Word, movement, camera work, editing, and even the speed of the film itself are memorably combined at the film's seemingly tragic climax, the second death of Jennifer. (p. 145)

[And Then There Were None] is very much René Clair, despite his allegations to the contrary, for in the film's comic base we can closely link it to the rest of Clair's work. It is the Clairian version of Film Noir—a black comedy, not so very far removed from the macabre qualities of his very first films made some twenty years earlier. He replaced [Agatha] Christie's "little bluffs" with tricks and deceits of his own, creating another of those environments in which things are often not what they may seem to be. (p. 151)

And Then There Were None takes a prominent Clairian ideal—brotherhood—negates it at first, and then affirms it. Clair and [Dudley] Nichols created a screenplay in which the comforting sense of community found in Under the Roofs of Paris and Quatorze juillet becomes a nightmare of isolation. (p. 152)

As usual, Clair concentrates in a variety of ways on objects. But in the seriocomic context of his thriller, innocent objects take on a sinister significance, becoming potential murder weapons and instruments of terror. Huge close-ups and careful placement in the deep-focus mise-en-scène also endow traditional signifiers of murder—a poisoned glass, a carving knife, a noose—with Hitchcockian menace. (p. 156)

Le silence est d'or is brimful of tributes: to the Paris of Clair's youth (it takes place circa 1906); to the first filmmakers (it is the story of a director and his company); and to film itself, referred to as "the invention of the century: an hour of crazy laughter, an hour of oblivion." After Clair's five years out of France, Le silence est d'or seems like a little sigh of relief. (pp. 161-62)

Le silence d'or is not a film about how films are made, but an essay on art and love. Art never imitates life for René Clair: it transcends life and exalts living. It transforms the commonplace into the extraordinary, reality into surreality—but a magic, romantic surreality that is Clair's own. For the first time since Michel and Béatrice sat under a cardboard moon in Le million, sharing a bench and a love song, Clair has placed two very ordinary people in a hybrid world of the actual and the artificial. It is not the out-and-out fantasy of I Married a Witch or The Ghost Goes West, but a kind of living dream world, where the daily routine is infused with the poetry of the dream. Jacques is still Jacques, Madeleine is still Madeleine; they still live in Paris on a meager salary; but by offsetting their lives with their art they become sublime creatures who evoke romance and wonderment in others. (p. 164)

And Then There Were None showed a René Clair who gave great attention to choreographed movement and camera work. Le silence est d'or is marked by similar care given to narrative structure. All of Clair's postwar films become increasingly self-conscious, occasionally at the expense of spontaneity. They are also more and more melancholy; both their construction and their new quality of sadness, Clair finds, are the result of his age. (p. 169)

La beauté du diable (1950) is his version of Faust; though still a comedy … it is the first, and perhaps only, Clair film made as if he were saying, "Now I am being serious." Another one of his movies unable to be screened for legal reasons (as of this writing), La beauté du diable appears to be even more carefully worked out than Le silence est d'or. Clair's initial idea for it involved a series of variations on the Faustian theme. After teaming on this ambitious project with writer Armand Salacrou he decided on a traditional narrative line, but the version they ultimately produced, after over a year's work, was a complete reworking of the legend. (p. 170)

It is disappointing that Clair appears to have overstepped himself with [La beauté du diable], yet as with all his carefully made movies, there is still a wealth of ideas. Much of the dialogue is bright and witty; the film itself is extremely well constructed, barring the precipitous finish. Clair's use of mirrors throughout La beauté du diable suggests the presence of one of his most inspired objects. Not only is Mephisto the image of Faust as an old man, and as such constantly reminds Faust of both his past and his future, but mirrors themselves are the vehicle which connects the present to the knowledge of the future. The scene of Faust's discovery of his fate is apparently the visual high point of the film. Sources indicate that Clair's technical invention in La beauté is varied and often dazzling…. (pp. 173-74)

Les belles-de-nuit is, in my opinion, Clair's late masterpiece, a film which completely reaffirms his love for and understanding of humanity, and his faith in the form of comedy. It is not a consistently joyous movie, for in it we find some of the lowest psychological lows in any of his films. Conversely, however, we are also shown the highest high. The film is thematically complex, yet its simple, farcical structure gives it a straightforward, unpretentious air. Clair has laid aside the aspirations of La beauté du diable, yet has fulfilled them in this work, perhaps without having really tried. (p. 177)

Celia McGerr, in her René Clair (copyright © 1980 by Twayne Publishers, Inc.; reprinted with the permission of Twayne Publishers, a Division of G. K. Hall & Co., Boston), Twayne, 1980, 239 p.