"This film won the award for Best Short Film at the Cannes International Film Festival 1 958." "The Seine meets Paris" "A film by Joris Ivens After an idea by Georges Sadoul" "Poem by Jaques Prévert Spoken by Serge Reggiani" "Photography by André Dumaitre and Philippe Brun" "Assistant directors:" "Guy Blanc and Claude Souef" "Edited by Gisèle Chézeau" "Music by M. Philippe-Gérard" "Ensemble conducted by the composer" "Music published by:" "Diffusion Musicale Française" "Harpsichord furnished by Pleyel Costumes:" "Pierre Balmain" "A GARANCE production" "Laboratory:" "L.T.C. Sound:" "Studio Marignan" "No actors appear in this film, just men, women and children who love the Seine." "Who's there, always there in the city and yet always coming and always going?" ""It's a river," answers a child that unriddles riddles." "And then with sparkling eyes, he adds..." ""And the river is called the Seine while the city is called Paris."" "The Seine is like a person sometimes she runs and rushes past hurrying her step when evening falls." "Sometimes in spring she pulls up short and gazes at you like a mirror." "And if you cry she cries or smiles to cheer you up and always breaks into laughter when the summer sun appears." ""The Seine," says a labourer, a man of sorrows, of dreams of muscles and sweat." ""The Seine is a factory the Seine is work."" "Up and downstream always the same turning handle fortunes in wine, coal and wheat which rise and fall with the river according to the tide of the market." "Fortunes in bottles and broken glass, treasure troves of rusted scrap of old bedsteads abandoned, reclaimed." "The Seine is a factory." "Even when the weather's fresh, it's always work." "The Seine, she's a song from the headsprings." ""She has the voice of youth", says a woman in love, smiling a woman in love from the Vert Galant." "A woman from the ÎIe des Cygnes, telling herself the same in her dreams." ""The Seine I know her as if I'd made her myself," says a tug boat pilot in a stained boiler suit streaked with oil and sun and smoke." "Risky, dangerous, tumultuous and dreamy all at once." "That's the way she is malice, caress, romance, tenderness, ...caprice, bitchiness, idleness." "If you must know, that's her real pedigree." ""The Seine is a river like any other," says a disenchanted voice of a correct and blasé man one of the first passengers of the latest sterilized tourist boats." "A river with bridges, docks and quays a river with eddies from sewers and sometimes a drowned man, if it is not a dead dog." "With anglers who never catch a thing." "A river like any other, and I'll be the first to lament her." "And the Seine hears laughter and slips away like a cat." "A river like any other any other any other." "A waterway like any other waterway." "Water from glaciers and torrents and underground lakes and melted snow and vanished clouds." "A river like the Durance or the Guadalquivir or the Amazon or Moselle, the Rhine, the Thames or the Nile." "A river like the River Love like the River Love, sings the broadening Seine and at night the Milky Way accompanies its tender golden murmur and also the railway with its usual muffled din." ""A river like the River Love..." ""Do you hear the beauty, the cooing?" says a lord of the barges, a summer visitor on the Rapee quay." "The River Love you speak as if I'm indifferent." "It isn't a river, the Seine it's love in person." "It's my river." "My little daybreak, my little trip round the world my life's holidays." "The Louvre, Tuileries, Eiffel and Pointue Towers and Notre Dame, Obelisk, Gare de Lyon, Austerlitz they are my châteaux of the Loire." "The Seine, it's my Rivièra and me, I'm its true tourist and when it runs cold and naked, howling complaints against strangers you have to be short on memory to call it distress, misery or despair but fairy tales and nightmares should not be confused." "And then when below the Pont Neuf the dying day's wind blows out my candle when I withdraw from the business of life when I'm finally at ease in the grand palace of those at rest at Bagneux at Père Lachaise, I shall smile and say to myself:" "There once was the Seine once there once was love there once was misfortune and another time forgetfulness." "There once was the Seine and once there was life." "The End"