The tower was supposed to be in Paris for only two decades, but has now become part of the city’s mythos. Little wonder that in nearly every Hollywood film it is “painted in” as the cliché of all clichés to indicate the location. It rises 300 metres above sea level, 75 floors of it. Over ten thousand tonnes of steel. When summer envelops the city, the pinnacle of the tower is eight centimetres off, and this film is a hymn to the spire that has pierced our memory.

Captivated by poetic realism, Clair takes us on a roaming visual trip – the film has no clear structure or narrative. It is “all that the eye allows”, blending in mixed media documentary observation, early drafts of the Eiffel Tower design, and stop motion animation. Made nearly 40 years after the completion of the tower in 1889 and its unveiling at the Exposition Universelle, the film continues to explore the obsession and fascination with this architectural icon so deeply ingrained in culture. Beneath it the city sprawls, and all of it is seized by the camera – snippet by snippet, a furtive glance here, an accidental framing there.