What is missing in Paris Je T’Aime, a film that was released
last year and is made up of 20 short films by established directors
from around the world, can be found in Paris Vu Par, a film that
was released in 1965 and contains six short films by French directors
of the New Wave moment. The missing element is a sense of balance
between the city’s chaos and its stability. In Paris Je T’Aime,
all we saw and felt was the city’s chaos, and so no real connection was
established between the viewer and the particulars of Paris. In
Paris Vu Par, a perfect balance is struck between the big city
and individuals, the cityscape and interior spaces, the public and
private.
In one apartment, a bourgeois family is slowly but surely falling
apart (at the dinner table, the wife and husband debate with no real
emotion or concern about important matters like the death penalty). In
another apartment, a young dishwasher prepares pasta for a proud but
aging prostitute. In a loud and cluttered workshop, a middle-aged metal
worker learns that his young American girlfriend has been unfaithful to
him. In a men’s clothing store, a clerk fears that he has accidentally
killed a homeless man near the Arc de Triomphe.
The greatness of this film experiment is primarily located in the
ease with which the directors move from the endless rooftops and busy
streets of Paris to these intimate moments. Indeed, without this
movement (from the total to the single) great thought and art would not
be possible. 
