René Clair’s Paris qui dort | The Crazy Ray (1924)

Paris qui dort is a fascinating silent science fiction film in which the guardian of the Tour Eiffel Albert (Henri Rollin) wakes up to find that Paris hasn't woken up, and shows no signs of doing so. Putting his clothes on he descends the tower and finds an empty city, apart from some people frozen at 03:25, in vehicles, a cop after a robber, a man on a bench, there's no way of moving them from their static positions in time. The world has stopped moving. I was very much reminded of Nicholson Baker's much later novel La Fermata (1994).

Then he discovers five more moving people, only they were on a plane from Marseille to Paris at the time, so like Albert at the top of the Tour Eiffel they somehow missed the halt of the progress in time. They are free to do as they please, they can rob people, raid tills, take jewels, become wildly rich, but then that doesn't have any meaning when a world in which money can't be used as a transaction anyway: as time has stopped, so has the possibility – and even the meaning – of a financial transaction.

A call from the niece of a (mad) scientist informs them of the address of the person responsible for the disaster, they arrive at the laboratory and force the man to put time back to normal, which he does. The plane passengers go about their normal lives, Albert goes up the Tour Eiffel with the niece, and...