Programmed June 2025

René Clair’s Inventive Enchantments

Farce and fantasy, satire and surrealism mingle in the exuberantly imaginative, elegantly witty films of pioneering French director René Clair, one of the most brilliant innovators of cinema’s foundational decades. Clair’s early silent films, like the Dadaist short Entr’acte and the inventive science-fiction comedy Paris qui dort , were rooted in the spirit of the Parisian avant-garde, bursting with a formal playfulness that he would carry into the early sound era in international triumphs like the enchanting musical romance Under the Roofs of Paris and the irresistible comic delight À nous la liberté , which made brilliantly innovative use of the new sound technology. Outside of France, Clair brought his Gallic sophistication to both England and Hollywood, where he produced charming comic fantasias like The Ghost Goes West , I Married a Witch , and It Happened Tomorrow that sparkle with the whimsy and irrepressible creativity that defined his work.