A portrait of 1920’s Paris, accomplished so majestically and crisply. From the dandies at the Opéra who ask a traffic policeman for directions […] to the kids hanging out at the bastions with tattered shirts and battered faces, an entire extinct world passes by us. And looming over these street kids the giant baby Cadum smiles from a distance, a giant billboard advertising the smooth skin of a newborn baby. There’s the Seine and its island, Saint-Louis; the Cité; the quays bobbing at the edge of the river; views from the riverboats, where the director installed his cameras to get a better angle; a cart driver washes his exhausted horse […] And again, along the Seine: a boy skips down the steps to the river, a girl at the same time on the opposite stairs. The camera finds them once again at the bottom, along the edge of the water, but the level has risen and the stairs no longer meet: each is rising on its own side, the two figures back to back suggesting a surrender. In three shots and twentyve seconds the story of a romance and its unraveling is told. André Sauvage is not content with mere observation, in fact. He imagines and prolongs and experiences his Paris. This silent film is full of old tales, songs of the streets and courtyards, and heartbreaking arias sung by lemonade vendors. It might have only been a picturesque old album to leaf through, but it’s more than that. It’s the beauty of the places and those who inhabit them that are the true subjects of this film: the beauty of a construction site, of a river barge and its cargo, of the bustling market, or the flickering reflections of the water; but also the gloomy shape of a cathedral churned up in the water, that emerges as a barge crosses through the night below the Bastille, coming out from the Saint-Martin canal into the Seine, and the brilliance of an immense sun – to say nothing of the impeccable attention to the composition of all of the images […].

With the thoughtful pace of a Parisian pedestrian, wandering from one neighborhood to another, it is born of the love of conveying all the right qualities. Painter and poet, Sauvage knew that every form of expression calls for its own language and he had already reflected, in his earlier films – now sadly lost – to what he owed this language. This is where his strength lies, and it still remains the case today.

Emile Breton, Découvrir le Paris des années 1920, “l’Humanité”, October 17, 2012