La Tour

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Technology Documentary with no narration published by René Clair in 1928 - English language

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"The great French filmmaker René Clair crafted this elegant sepia-toned profile of Paris's iconic landmark almost forty years after the Eiffel Tower took its first bow (at the 1889 Exposition Universelle). It clearly still fascinates and awes in this loving and playful tribute. LA TOUR takes the viewer first up and then down the mighty structure while also acting as a tribute to its eponymous designer, Gustave Eiffel. The film initially burrows into blueprints and photographs of the earliest stages of its construction ahead of the opening of the World's Fair but Clair's film revels in the completed structure itself, reverently scaling its heights and accompanying tourists on up through the various levels toward the topmost landing. Clair also makes strategic use of double exposures and dissolves in capturing the mechanical exuberance of the tower lifts (which help make the great swooping steel latticework edifice a bounding symbol of the modern age)." (Robert Avila) "A poem in images, that's what I tried to make. In "Paris qui dort" (Paris Asleep), I was not free of exploring all the aspects of the Eiffel Tower due to the script I had to follow. Every time I was passing close by, I was tempted to get back up there with a camera. Albatros (studio company) allowed me to fullfill this desire and I shot "La Tour" for my own pleasure, as an homage to the glory of this tall iron girl that I'd always been in love with. The Tower remains an incomparable model of modern architecture today as it was yesterday. There is no skyscraper of a bolder and more elegant shape." (René Clair) La Cinémathèque française restored the film in 1995 and temporarily released it for free on their online streaming platform 'Henri' (named after French film archivist and cinephile Henri Langlois) as part of an initiative to support culture and entertain people during the Covid-19 2020 lockdown.