Summary
René Clair's 1928 silent documentary, 'La tour,' is a loving, sepia-toned tribute to Paris's iconic Eiffel Tower. The film takes viewers on a visual journey, starting with historical blueprints and construction photos, then gracefully ascending the completed structure. Clair uses clever camera work and early cinematic techniques to capture the tower's grandeur and the bustling life around it, culminating in a reverent tour to its very top.
Synopsis
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
