On the verge of revolution, the bankrupt kingdom of Casinaria begs the richest man in the world to pay a visit and offer financial advice. Upon his arrival our hero is accidentally hit on the head and he later awakens as a babbling imbecile.

Le dernier milliardaire.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 28 min
Size: 	1.48 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	556x576 ~> 790x576
Aspect ratio:  	1.372
Frame rate: 	25.000 fps
Bit rate: 	2 200 kb/s
BPP: 	0.275
Audio
#1:  	French 2.0ch AC-3 @ 192 kb/s (Stereo)

https://nitro.download/view/8825F29CD11B797/Le_dernier_milliardaire.mkv

Language(s):French
Subtitles:English French

The post René Clair – Le dernier milliardaire AKA The Last Millionaire (1934) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

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, translated from French)

Originally released in 1928, this is a documentary about the famous tower which was built for the 1889 World Fair and should have been destroyed afterward but the people in Paris were wise enough to change their minds. It was made between two movies and the music was composed and added in 2003 by Arnaud Gauthier for the DVD release.

La Cinémathèque française restored the film in 1995 and temporarily released it for free on their online streaming platform Henri as part of an initiative to support culture and entertain people during the Covid-19 2020 lockdown.

La Tour AKA The Tower - René Clair (1928 - Restauration Cinémathèque francaise 1995) 1080p WEB-DL.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	14mn 20s
Size: 	453 MiB
Video
Codec: 	h264
Resolution: 	1920x1080 
Aspect ratio:  	16:9
Frame rate: 	24.000 fps
Bit rate: 	4 322 Kbps
BPP: 	0.087
Audio

https://nitro.download/view/EFFB4E37844E965/La_Tour_AKA_The_Tower_(1928_-_Restauration_Cinematheque_francaise_1995)_1080p_WEB-DL.mkv

Language(s):French
Subtitles:None

The post René Clair – La tour (1928) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Le Voyage Imaginaire” is full of suggestions in which different genres are mixed (avant-garde, comedy, surrealism) without any real connection. It’s a really bizarre film that relates the complicated relationship between three bank clerks (and their boss) for the typist girl that works in the same office. Clair creates a dream world which plunges the audience into a universe full of fantasy. There are lady fortunetellers, fairies, classic story characters and even modern heroes such as “Charlot”, not to mention the “Notre Dame” roofs and the museum “Grévin”. It seems to be a kind of deluded fairy tale, extravagant, anxiously exaggerated and very rich in film ideas.

That mixed dream world benefits from using all the special effects known at that time (slow motion, double exposure, optical effects) combined with simple backgrounds that are perfect for the formal aspect of the story. It all creates an unreal atmosphere, incredible and dumbfounding at times. Clair directed a very special film that is thought-provoking and fascinating.
Ferdinand Von Galitzien

Le.voyage.imaginaire.1926.Henri.WEB-DL.1080p-MH.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 17 min
Size: 	2.83 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1920x1080 
Aspect ratio:  	16:9
Frame rate: 	24.000 fps
Bit rate: 	5 069 kb/s
BPP: 	0.102
Audio
#1:  	French 2.0ch AAC LC @ 192 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/CC610FB3ED7A301/Le.voyage.imaginaire.1926.Henri.WEB-DL.1080p-MH.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/E49AE7C522632D5/Le.voyage.imaginaire.1926.Henri.WEB-DL.1080p-MH.en.srt

Language(s):Silent
Subtitles:French intertitles, English

The post René Clair – Le voyage imaginaire (1926) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
In René Clair’s irrepressibly romantic portrait of the crowded tenements of Paris, a street singer and a gangster vie for the love of a beautiful young woman. An international sensation upon its release, Under the Roofs of Paris is an exhilarating celebration of filmmaking.

Sous.les.toits.de.Paris.AKA.Under.the.Roofs.of.Paris.1930.576p.BDRip.x264.AAC.2.0-OLDFLiX.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 32 min
Size: 	2.66 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	694x576 
Aspect ratio:  	1.205
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	3 955 kb/s
BPP: 	0.413
Audio
#1:  	French 2.0ch AAC LC @ 130 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/8B19416D482B75F/Sous.les.toits.de.Paris.AKA.Under.the.Roofs.of.Paris.1930.576p.BDRip.x264.AAC.2.0-OLDFLiX.mkv

Language(s):French, Romanian, English
Subtitles:English, Japanese

The post René Clair – Sous les toits de Paris AKA Under the Roofs of Paris (1930) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
René Clair’s ghost comedy begins melodramatically, with the story of a young man who seeks the hand of a politician’s daughter in vain. But when a mysterious doctor frees the spirit of the despairing young man from his body, the film takes a fantastic turn. From then on, the lover wreaks havoc on Paris in the form of an invisible phantom. With double exposures and imaginative tricks, Clair successfully capitalizes on the surreal, Dadaistic undertones of the story. Everything culminates in a breakneck chase through the streets of Paris.

Made under better technical conditions than either of the preceding pictures, LE FANTÔME DU MOULIN-ROUGE was notable for the various uses Clair made of the camera’s resources, sometimes “giving objects a three-dimensional effect by moving round them” (J. Bourgeois). The story shows how the disembodied spirit of a man disappointed in love consoles himself by playing pranks on his acquaintances at favourite old haunts, like the Moulin Rouge, and has a fine time until he discovers that his love is after all reciprocated – when his one wish is to become reincarnated. So a twist, typical of Clair’s fantasies, turns an extraordinary advantage – the invisible hero’s ubiquity – into a handicap and, before the story ends, reconciles him to his ordinary state.

Catherine de la Roche: René Clair. London 1958

I think that the subject of a film should be above all visual … LE FANTÔME DU MOULIN-ROUGE is a fantastic story based on superimposition, a wonderful means of expression thanks to which reality and dreams can be merged.

René Clair: Manifesto, 1924

Like PARIS QUI DORT (Bonner Sommerkino 2016), LE FANTÔME DU MOULIN-ROUGE was a modern Paris-set fantasy, but its tone was more dour, its gags less spontaneous, and its plotting more mechanically melodramatic. In its time, the film impressed critics with its many trick shots and double exposures, used to visualize the hero’s ethereal state as he hovers over traffic on the Grands Boulevards or slips into interiors, private and public. The plot itself seemed a new twist on Stevenson’s “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” and Wells’ “The Invisible Man”. One of the film’s highlights remains the sequence at the Moulin Rouge (recreated in the studio by Robert Gys), when the film suddenly comes to life after some particularly laborious exposition. The virtuosity of the rhythmic montage of chorines and the crescendo of intercutting reflect the influence of the tavern dance in the recently released Alexandre Volkoff film KEAN (itself influenced, of course, by Gance’s LA ROUE). “LE FANTÔME DU MOULIN-ROUGE,” wrote American Clair biographer Celia McGerr, “contains some of the best and the worst of Clair during this period. But … when he breaks from the narrative and concentrates on the image, the film awakens and ‘pure cinema’ appears.”

Lenny Borger, Le Giornate del Cinema muto, Pordenone 2004

	
Le.fantome.du.Moulin-Rouge.1925.1080p.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.x264-KG.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 44 min
Size: 	3.25 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1920x1080 
Aspect ratio:  	16:9
Frame rate: 	24.000 fps
Bit rate: 	4 191 kb/s
BPP: 	0.084
Audio
#1:  	zxx 2.0ch AAC @ 253 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/E582D967A1C6AD4/Le.fantome.du.Moulin-Rouge.1925.1080p.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.x264-KG.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/087147F5D9ED8CA/Le.fantome.du.Moulin-Rouge.1925.1080p.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.x264-KG.srt

Language(s):French intertitles with music
Subtitles:German – hc, English

The post René Clair – Le fantôme du Moulin-Rouge AKA The Phantom of the Moulin-Rouge (1925) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
René Clair, the most distinguished of the French motion-picture directors, is one of the great men of the cinema. His triumphant photoplays, Sous les toits de Paris, Le Million and, the finest of them all, A nous la liberté, stand among the genuine classics of the films. Now M. Clair, who has tried cheerful sentiment in Sous les toits, farce in Le Million, and brilliant social satire in A nous la liberté, gives up some of his adventurousness and returns to the quiet romantic mood of his earliest success in the new work called Quatorze juillet (“Fourteenth of July”). It is true that the latest of the Clair offerings is not being particularly courageous in its efforts. Instead of going in for the new and exciting field of scornful social criticism, it plays reasonably safe and once more tries out the mood of amiable sentimentality. Its story of the romance between a flower girl and a handsome taxi-driver is managed directly and sincerely, without any sophisticated pretense at mockery. In addition, there is a certain formlessness about the film, wherein it darts back and forth between comedy and drama.

Noticing these two widely separated moods and the apparently careless way in which the film wanders about between them, skeptics have suggested that M. Clair has lost all sense of form. Realizing that the story involved is a slight one, and that it possesses nothing of the significant import of A nous la liberté, critics have declared that the eminent Frenchman was falling back on mere simplicity, where he should have been going ahead with witty profundity.

In answer to the first charge it should be said that the director has not lost his sense of unity. The only thing is that Paris, rather than a dramatic mood, supplies the central unity of the work. In reply to the latter attack, it should be said that the work, even if it is not as ambitious as it should be, is one of the loveliest, most enchanting motion-pictures of its time.

That, in addition to the delightful playing of the heroine, Annabella, and the beautiful villainess, Pola Illery, is enough to make a screen play which will bring joy even to those who are not so sure that they are French enthusiasts.

Rating: AAAA (outstanding)

Quatorze.Juillet.AKA.July.14.1933.576p.BluRay.AAC.x264-HANDJOB.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 32 min
Size: 	2.82 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	690x576 
Aspect ratio:  	1.198
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	4 214 kb/s
BPP: 	0.442
Audio
#1:  	French 2.0ch AAC LC @ 137 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/44A3BEBB4CB63AA/Quatorze.Juillet.AKA.July.14.1933.576p.BluRay.AAC.x264-HANDJOB.mkv

Language(s):French
Subtitles:English, Japanese

The post René Clair – Quatorze juillet AKA Bastille Day (1933) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

A young man, the night watchman on the iconic Eiffel Tower, wakes to find he is alone in the world. Descending from his iron eyrie, all is eerily frozen, apart from a few souls who have escaped a mad scientist’s immobilising ray. The streets of Paris briefly become a Garden of Eden to play in, as the friends indulge in their new-found liberty. Like Powell and Pressburger’s A Canterbury Tale, this is a film to be carried in the heart.

Paris.qui.dort.English.intertitles.1924.BDRip.x264.720p.AC3.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	59mn 39s
Size: 	2.81 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	960x720 
Aspect ratio:  	4:3
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	6 500 Kbps
BPP: 	0.392
Audio
#1:  	French 2.0ch AC-3 @ 224 Kbps (Stereo)

https://nitro.download/view/55B41EDD9889894/Paris.qui.dort.English.intertitles.1924.BDRip.x264.720p.AC3.mkv

Language(s):English intertitles
Subtitles:French

The post René Clair – Paris qui dort AKA The Crazy Ray (1924) first appeared on Cinema of the World.