How do you have "there-ness" in a movie? Where do you get a "sense of place" and why is it valuable in a film?
Watch the superb "The Man on the Eiffel Tower" (1949; but which appears to have been first released in France in 1948 as "L'homme de la tour Eiffel") and you will learn.
In his Westerns John Ford acquired a powerful cinematic sense of place by his use of Monument Valley. In the 1948 "Naked City" they grasped a rooty feel for city, urbanism, metropolis by filming the gritty, gripping tale of crime and punishment in & around Manhattan of that era.
Here " The Man on the Eiffel Tower" accomplishes cinematic magic with Paris at a fragile yet thoroughly potent moment of its existence -- the horrifically cleared aftermath of World War Two. The city is oddly empty compared to how packed it is today by people, cars, buses, bicycles, noise, ploys and titillated tourists.
But in " The Man on the Eiffel Tower" Paris as a design, as a web of shimmering streets, as a bundle of houses wrapped around a timeless, roiling river, a city of monumental yet fragile and humanized milepost buildings -- has rarely been as powerfully and insightfully shown as in "The Man on the Eiffel Tower".
But I do the actors an injustice. See them. They are equally vital and articulate as the character of Paris.
I have personally never seen that usually very-irritating and raspy, cynical figure of Simenon's Inspector Maigret played as well and as charming as he is done here by Charles Laughton at the height of his wise powers.
Franchot Tone as the you-love-to-hate-him villain is as spooky and brilliant as he was years earlier in his less nuanced roles in "Mutiny on the Bounty" or in "Lives of a Bengal Lancer". He strikes just the right tone. Has a delicious, lean, intelligent self-destructive meanness about him; his character almost godlike in his strength. Something divined from E. A. Poe.
While Burgess Meredith is as charismatic, delicate and strong, attractive and irritating as a human cockroach; you can't take your eyes off the innocent and guilty thing he is -- as, likewise, with Laughton and Tone and many of the other quality portrayals in this film.
Do yourself a favor. You like classic movies? Check out "The Man on the Eiffel Tower". And you'll see why -- as the character Muley says in John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" -- "Place where folks live is them folks." Paris.
Thank you.
Watch the superb "The Man on the Eiffel Tower" (1949; but which appears to have been first released in France in 1948 as "L'homme de la tour Eiffel") and you will learn.
In his Westerns John Ford acquired a powerful cinematic sense of place by his use of Monument Valley. In the 1948 "Naked City" they grasped a rooty feel for city, urbanism, metropolis by filming the gritty, gripping tale of crime and punishment in & around Manhattan of that era.
Here " The Man on the Eiffel Tower" accomplishes cinematic magic with Paris at a fragile yet thoroughly potent moment of its existence -- the horrifically cleared aftermath of World War Two. The city is oddly empty compared to how packed it is today by people, cars, buses, bicycles, noise, ploys and titillated tourists.
But in " The Man on the Eiffel Tower" Paris as a design, as a web of shimmering streets, as a bundle of houses wrapped around a timeless, roiling river, a city of monumental yet fragile and humanized milepost buildings -- has rarely been as powerfully and insightfully shown as in "The Man on the Eiffel Tower".
But I do the actors an injustice. See them. They are equally vital and articulate as the character of Paris.
I have personally never seen that usually very-irritating and raspy, cynical figure of Simenon's Inspector Maigret played as well and as charming as he is done here by Charles Laughton at the height of his wise powers.
Franchot Tone as the you-love-to-hate-him villain is as spooky and brilliant as he was years earlier in his less nuanced roles in "Mutiny on the Bounty" or in "Lives of a Bengal Lancer". He strikes just the right tone. Has a delicious, lean, intelligent self-destructive meanness about him; his character almost godlike in his strength. Something divined from E. A. Poe.
While Burgess Meredith is as charismatic, delicate and strong, attractive and irritating as a human cockroach; you can't take your eyes off the innocent and guilty thing he is -- as, likewise, with Laughton and Tone and many of the other quality portrayals in this film.
Do yourself a favor. You like classic movies? Check out "The Man on the Eiffel Tower". And you'll see why -- as the character Muley says in John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" -- "Place where folks live is them folks." Paris.
Thank you.