One Hundred And One Things

Last night I went to the cinema for the first time in ages, to see Hugo, Martin Scorsese's latest (only?) attempt at a children's movie. I will not tell a lie: I went because there are a whole three shots of my beloved 3267 (above) in it. The film is set in 1920s Paris and, while 3267 actually dates from 1935, there are few better ways to portray the City of Light between the wars than to have a Renault TN trundle through the background.

Since the action largely happens within an unspecified railway station (more likely to be Montparnasse than anything else, but isn't) one doesn't see much of her, but I counted at least three shots: the back end (I think my father and brother might have been in shot too, but would have to see it again) when ( spoiler ), a side view shortly afterwards, and, when ( spoiler ), you see her nose.

Gricing aside, however, it was a thoroughly good film and I am extremely pleased that I went to see it - and at the cinema and in 3D, no less. I knew that it was based on a book, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, which I hadn't read; I knew that it was set in 20s Paris; and I knew that it involved a little boy who lived in a station.

What I didn't realise was that it was also a beautiful homage to the form of film itself, that it was chock-full of lovely clockwork stuff, that it had some wonderful things to say on the themes of vocation, burnination, and things that do what they're meant to, and that it was a glorious fix-it for ( spoiler! )

Short version: very good film, plays shamelessly on everything that gets me. Highly recommended, though you'd probably best not watch it with me unless you are really interested in Paris buses. (But why would you not be?)