{"id":9904,"date":"2015-06-11T20:00:50","date_gmt":"2015-06-12T01:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=9904"},"modified":"2015-06-02T19:20:19","modified_gmt":"2015-06-03T00:20:19","slug":"under-the-roofs-of-paris-1930-rene-clair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/9904","title":{"rendered":"Under the Roofs of Paris (1930, Rene Clair)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fred (of early Bunuels – also good roles in major Renoir movies, but I suppose I’ll always think of him as the enraged looney from L’Age d’Or<\/a><\/em>) is would-be rapist who steals pretty Pola’s key to surprise her at home – a foolish plan, since without the key she spends the night with Al instead. He’s Albert Prejean of The Crazy Ray<\/em>, the French version of Threepenny Opera<\/em>, S.S. Tenacity<\/em> and something called The Buttock<\/em>. Also in the mix: pickpocket Emile and criminal Louis (Edmond Greville, who’d later helm a Hands of Orlac<\/em> remake).<\/p>\n

Will the pretty girl with the cheek curls choose the thief, the lout, the rapist or the cheater? She is Pola Illery, who’d appear in an unknown 1930’s version of The Indian Tomb \/ The Tiger of Eschnapur<\/em> as well as a poetic realist Pierre Chenal film from the same year as L’Atalante<\/a><\/em>. Anyway, she ends up with Louis but only because Albert is arrested for a crime Emile committed. We would’ve preferred she end up with nobody, or at least leave town and find some better guys. Anyway it’s quite a pretty movie and more importantly for 1930, uses the title song expressively.<\/p>\n

Luc Sante for Criterion:<\/p>\n

In that era, 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\u2014every street and square, every tenement, garret, dancehall, and caf\u00e9 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. In the decade that followed, that setting and those kinds of characters were to constitute the fundament of the French cinematic style called \u201cpoetic realism,\u201d a principal architect of which was Marcel Carn\u00e9, an assistant director on Under the Roofs of Paris<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

–
\nHis Royal Slyness<\/em> (1920, Hal Roach)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Katy went flipping through the endless scroll of Criterion movies on Hulu, settling on this. Of course we didn’t know it was a short, so 20 minutes later we started Under the Roofs of Paris<\/em>. This one’s a Harold Lloyd short, where Lloyd and the King of Whatever trade places then he ends up joining the revolution against the monarchy. There’s a princess, and I dunno it was lightly amusing and now I don’t remember it all that well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fred (of early Bunuels – also good roles in major Renoir movies, but I suppose I’ll always think of him as the enraged looney from L’Age d’Or) is would-be rapist who steals pretty Pola’s key to surprise her at home – a foolish plan, since without the key she spends the night with Al instead. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[343,13,528,30,1429,534,1374],"class_list":["post-9904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-1930s","tag-criterion","tag-harold-lloyd","tag-identity","tag-marcel-carne","tag-pop-music","tag-rene-clair"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9904"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9961,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9904\/revisions\/9961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}