The Crazy Ray (1925)

Director: René Clair
Writer: René Clair
Stars: Henri Rollan, Albert Préjean, Madeleine Rodrigue, Louis Pré Fils, Antoine Stacquet, Marcel Vallée, Charles Martinelli and Myla Seller

Less than a week after Josef von Sternberg’s debut with The Salvation Hunters, another film legend of the future, René Clair, debuted with this short and unusual science fiction feature, although I believe his second picture, Entr’acte, was released first, in 1924.

It’s usually titled The Crazy Ray in English, a much edited version released as At 3:25, but its original French title translates to Paris Asleep, which carries a lot more depth. As French film tends to do, it asks many questions, but it isn’t particularly interested in answering any. It’s a happy and very cinematic curiosity.

Initially it’s a curiosity because of its dream of a location. Albert wakes up one morning to look out over Paris from a singular point: he’s at the very top of the Eiffel Tower, where he’s presumably working as a night watchman. The views of 1924 Paris from this height are magic andshots of the tower are even better still. The one of him walking down the spiral staircase at its heart while the camera slowly descends alongside him is a thing of beauty indeed.

The reason he’s walking down is because he hasn’t been relieved, which always happens at ten in the morning. And, as he emerges from a building located under one of the tower’s feet, he gradually discovers that it’s because he’s on his own. Paris, one of the busiest metropolises anywhere in the world, is entirely empty.

Tellingly, he’s bemused by the whole thing. The actor is Henri Rollan and he has a grin on his face as he wanders through the landmarks of Paris like he’s the only man left on Earth, as indeed he seems to be. Some of these shots are clearly stills but many are not and they echo a lot of later zombie and post-apocalyptic films. It’s surreal to see the Place de la Concorde and Notre-Dame Cathedral entirely free of people.

Eventually, he discovers that there are folk around, albeit very few of them, and every one of them is frozen still. There’s a man in a car, a man on a bench, a man with his hands in a bin. René Clair, who wrote this as well as directed, builds these stills into vignettes. There’s a cop frozen in the act of catching a crook, who’s as frozen as he is. There’s a man frozen in the act of leaping into the Seine to kill himself. Albert puts banknotes in his hand and walks on, that grin firmly intact. He’s enjoying himself.

If you’re wondering if there’s going to be a crazy ray and whether it will arrive with some semblance of story, then the answers are yes and kinda sorta. Before we get to the ray, we’ll discover, with Albert, a quintet of people who aren’t frozen. They arrived in Paris together, on a plane from Marseilles that landed at four in the morning. There’s the pilot, a prosperous merchant, a detective in charge of a thief and a lady who travels the world for fun. For some reason, she’s the only one with a name, Hesta. The rest have to settle for their professions.

There’s not so much a story here as a set of moods for these six characters to go through, each of which says as much about Clair as it does about his characters.

Firstly, they’re inquisitive. Why are they the only people who haven’t been frozen by some inexplicable act of god? Well, the commonality is that they were all high up in the air when it happened, so maybe whatever it is can’t affect them. Therefore, they stay in Albert’s room at the top of the Eiffel Tower at night to be safe.

Then they take care of necessities. They find food and especially wine at a restaurant, in the company of many frozen people. It seems that there are plenty of those, merely indoors, not out in the street, though that doesn’t ring too true. This is a high concept piece and it isn’t a good idea to think too deeply about the logic in play, because much of it quickly falls apart.

Then they realise that the world is theirs. If they do this or that, nobody’s will stop them. So they take pearls from around necks and as much money as they like and, hey, is that the Mona Lisa sticking out of the window of one of their new cars? I do believe it is. They stick it to the wall in Albert’s Eiffel Tower penthouse.

Then they get bored. What use are riches in a world where there are only six people? The pilot makes a paper aeroplane out of a million franc note and throws it off the Eiffel Tower. Here’s where the film could have got deep and pondered on what humanity means. It’s been a long time since I read M. P. Shiel’s The Purple Cloud, but it had much the same story with one character instead of six, who returned from a polar expedition to find the world dead from the titular cloud. If memory serves, he actually burns Paris to the ground in his madness. This film doesn’t go remotely that deep.

And finally, other urges take over. After all, there are five men walking around Paris and a single woman. Technically, there are a whole lot of women, just one that’s walking around with them, but it isn’t that sort of film either.

So she becomes incredibly popular and the men start fighting each other for her favour. Social commentary is easy to find in this film but it never bites deep except for here, with a reminder that the border between civilisation and brutality is a thin one indeed, something the French knew well from a World War that was only seven years in the past in 1925.

Eventually, of course, they discover that the situation was caused by a mad scientist who’s discovered and wielded the titular crazy ray. It doesn’t quite go where you might expect from there, not least into actual story, as Clair gets almost conventional with plots and subplots. Thus far, he’s remained high concept.

I liked this film a lot, though it drags a little at points. However, it’s so high concept that it carries few surprises and little substance. It’s as easy to talk about what we individually see in it as what’s actually there, which suggests a lot of its substance is what we bring to it. That ought to make it a perfect film club choice.

The actors are capable if unstretched, and I didn’t recognise any of them. Rollin would be back for another Clair film, Mysteries of Paris, later in 1925, and would play Athos in a four hour French take on The Three Musketeers in 1932. Charles Martinelli, the mad scientist, had played Porthos in a short version in 1921 and a sequel. Albert Préjean, the pilot here, starred in Clair’s Under the Roofs of Paris in 1930.

Mostly this is a quirky introduction to a new name who would become a legend, with some glorious cinematography as a strong bonus. A location like the top of the Eiffel Tower, sans a boatload of tourists, is a cinematic godsend!