The Crazy Ray (1924)

100 Best Science Fiction Movies from Slant Magazine

 

#82. The Crazy Ray (1924)

 

Most important things in the earliest days of cinema happened in France. Oldest surviving film, “Roundhay Garden Scene” by Louis Le Prince (1888 and less than three seconds long). Oldest films commercially exhibited, a group of shorts including “Train Arriving at the Station” by the Lumière brothers (1895, all the disparate scenes strung together were about seven minutes). The first Horror film, “The Haunted Castle,” by Georges Méliès (1896, about three minutes). The first SF film, “Trip to the Moon,” also Méliès (1902, about fifteen minutes). And this one, the first feature-length SF film, by René Clair (1924, and you’ll be surprised that what’s officially a “feature” can be as short as 40 minutes, this one clocks in at about 50, and apparently somewhere out there there’s an hour-length version). This is also the first ever post-Apocalyptic film, though it featured a reversable Apocalypse, and watching it one sees how it was echoed in much later, better-known films like “The World, the Flesh, and the Devil” (1959), “Vanilla Sky” (2001) and “28 Days Later” (2002).

 

Despite its earliness in the Art Form, cinema was already International, and one can see the influence of other Nations even here, notably the Comedies by Canadian Director Max Sennett. The New York Times was able to review it (they liked it) because the Cameo Theatre hosted the International Film Arts Guild Festival in 1926. In fact, by the time of the film’s release, Creators already suffered under the threat of International Film Piracy for more-than a decade.

 

This film is more about the possibilities of cinema than its own story. It’s in love with Modernity and full of the on-going explosion of Real-World technological marvels like wireless broadcasts, elevators, automobiles, passenger air planes, and the Eiffel Tower, then not even fifty-years-old. The plot hinged on a fantasy technology and is soundly light hearted, but is born of a scary place, released in the midst of a short-lived “Death Ray” paranoia that anticipated the Nuclear fears of the Cold War, still thirty-years in the future.

 

Death Ray paranoia was driven by Conmen. In 1914, Giulio Ulivi, a Paris-based Italian Inventor, demonstrated his supposed Death Ray to the French Army. Ulivi claimed that he could detonate explosives from a distance and even demonstrated this, blowing up Underwater Mines and Ammunition Stores by pointing his machine at them. Unfortunately for Ulivi, the demonstration proved unrepeatable when the target ordinance was set-up by someone else, so no army would pay for his secert. Ulivi was never definitively exposed as a fraud, but he clearly was.

 

And just as this film was being made, another apparent fraud, British Harry Grindell Matthews, was making International News with a similar, though nastier, version of the Invention. Unlike Ulivi, Grindell Matthews didn’t even try to make a demonstration, he wanted his device purchased by the Brits sight-unseen. The Military refused to buy, but also forbade him from selling it to anyone else. Matthews defied that order, went to France, but still refused to provide a demonstration so the French also refused to pay him for it.

 

The British and the French were Allies in WWII, but Enemies for centuries before that, so Ulivi and especially Matthews set off a Death-Ray craze in both Countries and throughout the World. It was reflected in early SF shorts like the French “The City Struck by Lightning” (1924), the Soviet “The Death Ray”, and the American film-serials “The Power God” and “The Scarlet Streak (the last three titles all 1925). “The Crazy Ray” was part of this trend, even though the Ray of the title did not deal death and the Mad Scientist had no malicious intent.

 

For the record, I hate this title, which is not the original, it’s from the English-language release, and gives away too much of the plot. The original title, directly translated, as "Paris Which Sleeps," is a lot better.

 

Our Hero is a charming ner-do-well, Albert (Henri Rollan) with a great job for someone who can’t get a good one. He’s the Nightwatchman of the Eiffel Tower, has an apartment near the top, and when he wakes every morning and steps outside, he gets a view of the city that no Millionaire could afford.

 

He's also a bit irresponsible, he slept through part of his shift, then overslept as the sun rose. Oddly, given this is one of the world’s most bustling tourist sites, no one noticed. This concerns and confuses him because it’s 10am and he can’t see a soul.

 

Albert descends the tower and discovers the city abandoned, much like in “The World the …, “Vanilla Sky,” and “28 Days Later.” There is an undeniable power in images of a lone man wandering in an empty Metropolis, this was the first film ever to do it, and it did it very well.

 

Eventually, he encounters a few people, standing like statues, seemingly asleep. These include a Homeless man slumped on a park bench who can’t be roused, a Cop and Pickpocket frozen in the last spit-second of a foot chase, an apparent Suicide one-step before his final plunge, and finally a few behind the wheels of motor cars, but the vehicles didn’t crash. (There’re a few plot problems in the film, the Writer/Director/Editor René Clair never clearly decided if they were asleep, as stated early in the film, or Frozen-in-Time, which makes more sense given the film’s resolution. I like the movie, so I’m forgiving.)

 

He does eventually find a few unfrozen people: a Pilot (Albert Préjean), a Tycoon (Antoine Stacquet), his mistress Hesta (Madeleine Rodrigue), a Scotland Yard Detective (Louis Pre Fils), and the Thief he just captured (Marcel Vallée). They had been on a passenger airplane, and landed into the middle of this crisis, so the group surmises that all escaped the disaster because they were at too high an altitude when it struck. They also are able to figure out when, but not why, it happened.

 

It is also the first Cozy Catastrophe, a term coined by Brian W. Aldiss to describe Apocalypse that is actually kinda nice. It was originally coined to criticize the works of novelist John Wyndham, which seemed a bit unfair regarding him, but totally applies here. As our Protagonists explore Paris, they indulge its luxuries, get stuff from expensive stores and eat at the fanciest restaurants without paying, and all class divisions dissolve. The Detective starts being friendly to the Thief, but the Thief’s own friendliness proves deceitful. Though everyone helps themselves to stuff that’s now unguarded, the Thief just becomes more-so, stealing even more and cheating at cards even though paper money no longer has value -- but he still proves useful to the group because he can pick locks. Albert also indulges, he’s never a Hero, but he does take a Leadership role and proves the one with greatest Social Consciousness, something unthinkable only a day before (he’s also better dressed as the film progresses).

 

The film’s only political themes, not strongly stated, is that the Class Structures are outdated and our Society is nothing but a thin veneer. These were very popular Themes in prose, theatre, and cinema during the Interwar years.

 

After a drunken party, the obvious dawns on them. Since they don’t know what happened, they don’t know if it will happen again. Oddly, they don’t get back into the plane to figure out how far the disaster extends, but as no Army or Authorities roll into Paris to see what’s up, it might be World-wide.

 

The safest place locally is Albert’s apartment on the Tower. Over the next-three-days, boredom and jealousy sets in, they behave increasingly crabbily and irresponsibly considering how easy it would be to fall to their deaths. One Inter-card reads "What good are riches when you're bored," and finally the paper money is folded into paper air planes.

 

They, and the World, are saved by a radio broadcast from a woman asking for help (Myla Seller), who turns out to be the Mad Scientist’s Beautiful Daughter (or niece, there’s different versions of the film) and that is probably the first-time for that trope too. They then meet the Mad Scientist responsible (Charles Martinelli), who has no idea how much trouble he caused because he doesn’t get out much. They convince him to set it right, and after a few more complications, the proper order of things is restored.

 

There’s an extended epilogue which details, among other things, that Albert returned to his lowly place in the social pecking order and none-too-happy about it.

 

The extend epilogue is a bit slow, but the rest of the film demonstrates a sure-hand for a first-time Writer/Director/Editor making such a shockingly early feature. The print I saw was poorly preserved, apparently the shorter cut (about a half-hour) was better maintained. Still, here it is, a century later, and it still retaining its wit and charm.

 

Though cinema itself was barely more than thirty-years old at the time, it had already built-up traditions that Director Clair was both celebrating and subverting. His career would ultimately last four decades and he’d become World-Renown, offering us such classics as “Under the Roofs of Paris” (1930), the very first French movie musical, and the best version of “And Then There Were None” (1945, made in Hollywood after he fled the Horrors of the encroaching Nazi invasion). This film displays things he’d proved to love for the rest of his career, like over head shots (Paris from the Tower) and vertical tracking (people running up and down the stairs or climbing the Super-Structure of the same Tower)

 

His reputation would go up and down, much like France’s influence in World cinema. In the 1960’s the Radicals of the French New Wave derided him, saying he was “making films for old ladies who go to the cinema twice a year.” But he enjoyed a later critical revival, being compared to Master Francois Truffaut, who just happened to be the guy who uttered that last nasty statement.

 

The story he wrote is more complex than one would expect given he was more interested in exploring what he could do with the camera than anything else, and full of sight-gags tied to filmic movement-vs-stasis. Though one wishes he hammered out the plot-points better, his love of what he could invent is exuberant.

 

He especially has fun turning the idea of a tableaux vivant upside down, as the characters frolic is the frozen world, like bathing in the fountains of the Place de Concorde or dining among humans made into statues. Clair’s love of the Paris skyline is repeatedly on display, as is he fascination with the details of the engineering of the Eiffel Tower.

 

His Cinematographers were Muarice Desfassiaux and Paul Guichard.

 

Opening scenes:

Paris qui dort [Paris Asleep] (René Clair, 1925): Opening scene - YouTube