Mirages de Paris Review: A chaotic, beautiful 1930s mess

If you have seventy-five minutes to spare and want to feel like you’ve been transported to a very loud, very dizzying 1930s Parisian dream, then yes, Mirages de Paris is worth your time. Anyone who loves old-school French whimsy and chaotic energy will find this charming, but if you hate screamy characters and plots that make zero logical sense, you should probably skip it. 🥂

The whole thing is about a young girl who basically says "screw this" to her boarding school and runs off to Paris to become a star. It’s got that classic, naive "I can conquer the world" vibe that you see in American silent comedies like The Boob, but with way more accordion music.

What I love about this is how cheap but creative the fantasy elements feel. At one point, she’s looking at Paris and the city lights look like they were literally drawn on black cardboard with a silver marker.

It's not trying to be high art, which is a blessing. The film gets noticeably better once you realize the plot is just a loose clothesline to hang funny scenes on.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Mirages de Paris (1933) through its definitive frames.

The main actress, Inka Krymer, spends the first twenty minutes just making wild eyes at everyone. Her face must have been so tired after filming this.

There is this one incredibly long scene in a theater dressing room where about fifteen people keep walking in and out of the same door. You can almost feel the director off-camera waving his arms to tell them when to enter because the timing is just a tiny bit off.

Also, the sound design is wonderfully messy. In some scenes, the background noise just completely vanishes when a character stops talking, leaving this weird, dead silence that makes you think your speakers broke.

But then the music kicks back in, and it's this incredibly catchy, tinny tune that will stay stuck in your head for three days. I was humming it while doing the dishes this morning, which is always a sign a movie did something right.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Mirages de Paris (1933) through its definitive frames.

It reminds me of those fast-paced, slightly incoherent Hollywood shorts like Windy Riley Goes Hollywood where the plot is just an excuse to show people running around. Except here, everyone is speaking rapid-fire French and wearing fantastic hats.

Is it a masterpiece? Absolutely not.

The third act gets incredibly messy and feels like they ran out of film, so they just decided to wrap everything up in about four minutes. But the journey there is so sweet and weirdly comforting that you don't really mind the rushed ending.

It’s just a cozy, dusty little relic from a time when movies were still figuring out how to talk and sing at the same time.

Some things I noticed:

• The boarding school uniform looks like it was designed by someone who has only ever heard a vague description of what schoolgirls wear.
• That one extra in the café scene who is clearly staring straight at the camera for a solid five seconds.
• The way everyone in Paris seems to have unlimited free time to watch street performers.
• The absolute lack of transition between being homeless and becoming the "toast of Paris."