Sous les toits de Paris [Under the Roofs of Paris] (Original double weight photograph from the 1930 film)

N.p.: N.p., 1929. Vintage double weight photograph from the French release 1930 film. With the logo of the French production company Films Sonores Tobis at the bottom left corner of the image. Shot by the film's cinematographer Georges Perinal.

Shown are Pola Illery and Gaston Modot in an intimate moment, shot at night from outside a horizontal folding window. A stunning image, capturing the essence of the film's story, and literally that of Clair's entire aesthetic in the 1920s and 1930s: small, intimate stories of France's lower and middle class in a struggle to love and simply survive-often shot through windows and doors, as seen here.

Georges Perinal was one of the great cinematographers in early French and European cinema, working with every major director of that time, and in particular with Clair. In addition to shooting all of Clair's major films in the 1930s, he also photographed Cocteau's "Blood of a Poet" (1932), William Cameron Menzies' "Things to Come" (1936), Michael Powell's "The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp" (1943), and Carol Reed's "The Fallen Idol" (1948).

9 x 6.5 inches. In an archival mat. Four tiny pinholes at the corners, press annotations in pencil and a shallow horizontal bruise from an old non-archival mounting on the verso, else quite bright. Very Good Near Fine.

Criterion Collection 161.