Chartres (Jean Grémillon, 1923)
Nogent, Eldorado du dimanche (Marcel Carné, 1930)
La Zone: Au pays des chiffonniers (Georges Lacombe, 1928)
Les Petits Métiers de Paris (Pierre Chenal, 1933)
Paris la belle (Pierre Prévert, 1959)
Paris jamais vu (Albert Lamorisse, 1968)

The early films of Jean Grémillon, Marcel Carné and Pierre Chenal help locate the roots of French poetic realism in the documentary. Lyrical and classic, Chartres (13 mins, Silent, B&W) shows how well Grémillon used all the resources of cinema at the age of 22. In Nogent, Eldorado du dimanche (20 mins, B&W), we find a key preoccupation of Carné-finding the stuff of art in the lives of ordinary people and a working-class environment. Georges Lacombe's La Zone (25 mins, Silent, B&W) is a portrait of the rag-sellers living in caravans in a narrow strip of land between Paris and the suburbs. Shot silent, it evokes sound and utilizes fictional sequences. “With this important film,” Georges Sadoul wrote, “the French avant-garde was moving towards documentarism and social criticism.” Chenal's Les Petits Métiers de Paris (22 mins, B&W), on the small tradesmen working the streets of Paris in a time of economic crisis, also uses fictional sequences and a novel post-shooting mix of ambient sounds and popular music. The city symphony Paris la belle (20 mins, B&W/Color) is dominated by Jacques Prévert's ideas on collage, and by his memories of Paris in the '20s. It becomes a poem on passing time and a tribute by Pierre Prévert to his brother. Paris jamais vu (20 mins, Color) is the bird's-eye view-a bird given to derring do.