And dialogue need not always be among them. Clair invented his own approach to dialogue, music, and effects-a kind of select-o-sound in which only those elements that contribute to story, character, or atmosphere are heard. When sound came to French film in 1930, the young genius leapt at the talkies, determined to soar above the horde of earthbound filmmakers who would likely use audio to redundant effect: see a door slam, hear a door slam. In 1928, for instance, with silent film just reaching its acme of expression, Clair pulled a bravura aerobatic stall turn by repurposing to stylistically triumphant effect the antiquated editing rhythms and wide, stationary frames of prewar cinema in his The Italian Straw Hat. The astonishing accomplishments of this debutant year established Clair as a leading member of the Parisian avant-garde and a director of limitless promise, known for staying one step ahead of expectations. The movie’s shots run in reverse, in double exposure, and with joyous non sequiturs abounding-all this and cameos by Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp! That same year, Clair was invited by painter and poet Francis Picabia and composer Erik Satie to supply projections for the overture and intermission of their Dadaist ballet Relâche, a mischievous title that roughly translates as “Performance Canceled.” The resultant commission, Entr’acte, is an orgy of trick photography and playful camera positions that makes the viewer experience the world in new ways-an up-tutu shot of a dancer in slow motion resembles the blooming and closing of a flower, over and over a cannon fired directly at the audience by Picabia and Satie fills the frame with an image of a glans-like projectile slowly sliding out from the wide-caliber foreskin of a long, dark barrel bore. All of Clair is already in this first picture-the fantastic premise, the leftist lampooning of the classes, the light romantic bounce in his touch, the love of simple photographic tricks used in smart and startling ways.
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He became a filmmaking force in 1924, when, at the age of twenty-six, he finished his first picture, Paris qui dort, a special-effects fantasy about a mad scientist who invents a device that freezes Paris in time, leaving the city’s populace locked in odd and humiliating positions while those not affected by his “crazy ray” are free to loot. When director René Clair started to make movies, it didn’t take him any time at all to get airborne. And streaking in with a curlicue contrail of signature flourishes behind him, an ultramodern esprit de l’humeur from France. Highest above flies the most refulgent aerial enchantress who ever took to the empyrean, and pilot of an uncanny career crash that haunts me frightfully every time I watch her perform. I behold sturdy domestic immortals in their unshakable orbits, some fascinating-but-rickety life forces flapping about without much altitude, a squadron of sad souls utterly lost in the fog.
Sorting through the career trajectories of those who worked on I Married a Witch (1942) makes me feel like an air traffic controller amid a strange confusion of spirits-phantoms arriving from far-flung corners of time’s oblivion to work together on one bedazzling movie.