The Crazy Ray (Paris Asleep) (Paris qui dort) (1925)

Slant's 100 Best Sci-Fi Movies of All Time (100 movies items)

"In René Clair’s The Crazy Ray, a man (Albert Préjean) and a group of friends are in an airplane on their way to Paris when a scientist’s experimental device freezes every Parisian in place. Unaffected, the friends deplane to find that up close the bustling French capital looks exactly as it does from above: immobile, timeless, asleep. The film’s English title refers to the beam emitted by the scientist’s device, but the French title (Paris Qui Dort, or “Paris Sleeping”) refers to t"