27 December 2023 marks the centenary of the death of the French civil engineer, Gustave Eiffel. Many studies have looked at the way in which the tower that bears his name has inspired painters (Bonnard, Chagall, Delaunay, De Staël, etc.) and poets (Apollinaire, Cendrars, Cocteau, Queneau, etc.) since it was built in 1889 for the Universal Exhibition commemorating the centenary of the French Revolution. But its presence in silent cinema, which coincides with the monument’s construction, has remained in the shadows.
When the cinematograph was born in 1895, six years after the Iron Lady, the new medium was immediately drawn to the tower. In the digitised GP Archives catalogue, for example, 121 entries out of 2,091 are given for “ Eiffel Tower ” between 1895 and the start of talking pictures in France. And yet this is a period for which many reels have not survived, notably because 35mm film was made of cellulose nitrate, which is flammable and fragile.
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