Le silence est d'or

Rene Clair finished out the war in the United States and returned to France, but it was a France changed from the one he had become a film director in. His youthful surrealistic works, the early sound films where he reinvented Paris, all were gone. So he had no choice but to recreate the Paris he loved in this film about a love triangle, with Maurice Chevalier unwittingly planning his own cuckolding like a silent film his character is directing.

While it might seem to some that Clair should have used as its background the Paris of SOUS LES TOITS DE Paris and LE MILLION, what better way to show your love than through a realistic camera, using techniques that suggested reality through realistic detail? Besides, wasn't his audience anxious to forget the horrors of the War and see a show about a time when the only problem was losing the girl you loved?

Clair has left in some of the surrealism. When the characters are happy, there is singing all around. People whistle. Crowds gather in the street to harmonize. And the star is Maurice Chevalier in a straight role. This is not the sort of movie you'd expect to see with Clair's name attached to it, but it is as heartfelt and as loving of Paris in his youth, as he remembered and wished to tell of it.

Alas, the New Wave never forgave him, even when they grew up and started to use these techniques themselves. Like all young people, like Clair himself when young, they loved the flash for its own sake; it didn't matter what the fireworks celebrated, so long as the roman candles went off.