In René Clair's science-fiction comedy Paris qui dort (known as Paris Asleep or The Crazy Ray, 1923), the watchman of the Eiffel Tower Albert wakes up one morning to find the entire city at a standstill. As he looks down from the top of the Tower, he is perplexed by the absolute stillness of the streets. Bewildered, but not so bothered, Albert decides to snooze. As the clock ticks forward towards noon, the city does not wake up. The wide avenues, the meandering river Seine, the bridges, parks, and squares—all appear strikingly empty. Intrigued by the oddity of the situation and knowing what “the city should look like” at this time on an ordinary day, Albert descends the Tower and sets out for a walk along the streets of Paris. He roves around the city's noted sights, such as the Pont d’Iena, the Place de la Concorde, and the Champs-Élysées, only to find all of them completely deserted. In Clair's surrealist cinematics, Paris—“the capital of the nineteenth century”—appears strangely uncanny when drained of its bustling rhythm.

A large part of the film shows Albert's flânerie across the city, while he investigates the reasons that brought the city to this unusual motionless state. The still images are linked through Albert's walk: a car frozen in the middle of its journey, a man poised to jump into the Seine with a suicide note in his hand, a caretaker taking the garbage out, and a policeman about to catch a pickpocket—all paralysed in the middle of acting.