World Film Locations: Paris

By Intellect Books Ltd

World Film Locations: Paris presents reviews of 46 film scenes in their encounters with Parisian topography as it intersects with characters, plots, and narrative. The imagined Paris which has for centuries haunted the collective unconscious is reenacted in these scenes. Along with revisiting iconic tourist sites/attractions such as the Eiffel Tower and the Moulin Rouge, spectators discover lesser known, yet intriguing quartiers usually tucked away from the tourists’ gaze: decaying neighborhoods about to be demolished in an effort to gentrify/rehaussmannize Paris. This volume examines how the City of Light is reinvented through each director’s lenses: successive representations add magic to the already mythical city. Paris, capital of letters as extolled in Alan Rudolph’s The Moderns, Philip Kaufman’s Henry and June and Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris draws upon its past as well as looks towards the future – as in the creation of provocative futuristic renditions projected by Chris Marker’s La jetée and Julien Leclercq’s Chrysalis. Reviewers consider cinematic movements and genres such as Poetic Realism; the New Wave; the Left Bank Group; cinéma-vérité; the Cinéma du Look, while essays foreground contributions from francophone African directors, émigré filmmakers, and the occasionally demonized Paris of some of Claire Denis’ films. Striking screengrabs illustrate the importance of location, while contemporary photographs coincide with cinematic narratives set in the storied City of Light. For centuries Paris has reigned over the imagination: sung as 'Queen of the World' by Mistinguett in 1926, upheld as 'Capital of the 19th Century' by Walter Benjamin in 1935, and more recently as 'Capital of the World' by Patice Higonnet and as 'Capital of Modernity' in David Harvey’s words – thus embodying the struggle among Paris’ plural realities and 'mythical and magical' aspects expressed by each director who selects it as a favored filming location. Directors/viewers/actors/spectators resemantize Humphrey Bogart’s words towards the end of Casablanca: 'we’ll always have Paris' – in spite of Billy Crystal’s Forget Paris, Paris is unforgettable for those who have seen it and those who have only imagined it through literature, painting, poetry and film. The reader of this volume of World Film Locations will delight in recognizing, again and again, not only the familiar and unfamiliar aspects of Paris, but in being reassured that it is and will always be there: as Luciano Emmer aptly states, Paris is Always Paris.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Intellect Books Ltd
• Release date: Jan 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781841505916

Book preview

WORLD

FILM

LOCATIONS

PARIS

EDITOR

Marcelline Block

SERIES EDITOR & DESIGN

Gabriel Solomons

CONTRIBUTORS

Adrienne Angelo, Adam Bingham,

Henri-Simon Blanc-Hoang,

Marcelline Block, Marco Bohr,

Warren Buckland, Oana Chivoiu,

Georgiana M.M. Colvile,

J. Brandon Colvin, Michael Ray Fitzgerald,

Christopher Garland, Marco Grosoli,

Malini Guha, Kristiina Hackel,

Dennis Hanlon, Andrew Howe,

Zachary Ingle, Annette Insdorf,

Douglas King, Arthur Lizie,

Lance Lubelski, Alison McMahan,

Françoise Pfaff, Alastair Phillips,

Rebecca Prime, Keith Reader,

Adam Rosenthal, Zachariah Rush,

Giovanna Summerfield,

Phillip John Usher, Tina Wasserman

Benjamin Wiggins

LOCATION PHOTOGRAPHY

Gabriel Solomons

(unless otherwise credited)

LOCATION MAPS

Joel Keightley

Bookends: Hollywood sign (Gabriel Solomons)

This page: Union Station (Kobal)

Overleaf: Somewhere (Kobal)

CONTENTS

Maps/Scenes

Scenes 1–8

1932–1959

Scenes 9–16

1932–1959

Scenes 17–24

1932–1959

Scenes 25–32

1932–1959

Scenes 33–39

1932–1959

Scenes 40–46

1932–1959

Essays

Paris: City of the Imagination

Keith Reader

Paris in the Films of Alice Guy-Blache (1896-1907)

Alison McMahan

Émigré Film-makers in 1930s Paris

Alastair Phillips

‘A Parisian Pari’: Agnès Varda's Cleo de 5 à 7

Georgiana M.M. Colvile

La Bella Città: Paris Through the Lens of Italian Directors

Giovanna Summerfield

City of Light, City of Darkness: Paris in Francophone African Films

Françoise Pfaff

Remaking the Cinematic City: Claire Denis' Paris

Malini Guha

Backpages

Resources

Contributor Bios

Filmography

DEDICATION AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My deepest gratitude goes to Gabriel Solomons, editor of the entire World Film Locations series, for his inspirational dedication, invaluable mentorship, and insightful guidance, as well as to the contributors of this volume for their hard work, enthusiasm and devotion. At Intellect, I wish to thank in particular Amy Damutz, Melanie Marshall, and May Yao, along with all the other staff members and editors who helped this project come to fruition.

MARCELLINE BLOCK

INTRODUCTION

World Film Locations Paris

THAT "THE HISTORY OF FILM in Paris is of ancient and noble vintage" (Patrice Higonnet, p. 13) continues to be reflected in 21st century cinema is exemplified by Woody Allen's 2011 film Midnight in Paris. This volume examines scenes of the French capital in 46 films, whose common thread is their encounter with the multifaceted Paris-scape.

World Film Locations: Paris discusses Agnès Varda—Grandmother of the New Wave— and Chris Marker of the Left Bank Group; Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohm-er and François Truffaut of the New Wave; Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch, practitioners of cinéma-vérité, and the Cinéma du look privileging 1980s aesthetic (bright colors, punk) coupled with sound and visuals that create the imaginary worlds of Subway (Luc Besson, 1985) and The Lovers on the Bridge (Leos Carax, 1991).

Love, always central to the French, is reflected in its iterations on the big screen, reminding spectators that Paris is the City of Love—and lovers: Vicente Minnelli's musical Gigi (1958); Billy Crystal's 1995 Forget Paris, following an American couple whose meet-cute passion was sparked at a Paris airport; and Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Amélie (2001)—a poetic vision of the City of Light—about a well intentioned young woman playing matchmaker who ends up struck by Cupid's arrow.

As opposed to Amélie's Paris of fantasy, Cédric Klapisch's Chacun cherche son chat (1996) describes the gentrification of neighborhoods: as impersonal façades rise above newly sanitized streets, inhabitants accustomed to uneven pavés resent the modernization of their beloved quartiers.

From the mid-eighteenth century onward, when Paris was the cradle of the Enlightenment—with its constellation of philosophes (called les lumières/the luminaries)—the city, originally known as Lutèce and referred to, in slang, as Pantruche, was baptized La ville lumière (City of Light). On Saturday night, December 28th, 1895, two brothers, coincidentally named Lumière (light)—a name with a destiny—publicly screened short motion pictures to a paying audience—for the first time in history—in the basement of the Grand Café, 14, Boulevard des Capucines in the 9th arrondissement of Paris. Unbeknownst to them, they started a worldwide tradition: going to the movies on Saturday night became an institution for generations ever since. Therefore, Paris was once more known as La ville des Lumières—the City of Light(s)—this time, due to an overdeter-mined metaphor of light: the light embedded in the proper name Lumière and the light used in making movies as well as in projecting them onscreen.

Paris' celebrated avenues radiate from the star-shaped Place de l'Etoile (Square of the Star). From the Place de l'Etoile and from the brothers Lumière, Paris throws its beams in an unequalled firework that challenges any city in the world staking a claim upon cinematic history and culture. From Paris' Place de l'Etoile to Hollywood stars, and from the City of Light (Ville lumière) to the City of the Light Brothers (Ville des frères Lumière) one can trace a line of flight: from star to stars and from light to lights, since the frères Lumière ignited the celluloid narrative which continues to burn in the hearts and minds—the Deleuzian brain-as-screen—illuminating the dreams, fantasies, and wishes of enchanted spectators.

Marcelline Block, Editor

PARIS IS THE MOST visited city in the world and probably the most visually recognisable in Europe, on a global scale second only to New York. As the unquestioned hub of French cultural life, and the centre of Europe's most prolific and successful film industry, it unsurprisingly dominates cinematic representations of the country to an extent unequalled almost anywhere else. Only Marseille among other French cities, as in the works of Marcel Pagnol and more recently Robert Guédiguian, has a statistically significant presence. Yet, the monumental Paris beloved of tourists — the home of Notre-Dame and the Eiffel Tower — figures comparatively little in filmic representations. The characteristic Parisian cinematic vista is a street, boulevard or café scene, using the city as setting for working-class life, criminality and that quintessential Parisian activity, flânerie — strolling with no specific goal in mind, something to which the city's compactness compared to London or New York lends itself particularly well.

Such scenes were in the early days of cinema generally shot in the studio, and the work of the set designer thus played an important part. The émigré Hungarian Alexander Trauner is an emblematic figure here, responsible for the sets of Marcel Carné's 1938 Poetic Realist drama Hôtel du Nord and his 1830s-set theatre drama Les Enfants du Paradis/Children of Paradise (1945), as well as, almost fifty years later, Luc Besson's Subway (1985). René Clair used location shooting and trick photography to striking effect in his 1925 silent Paris qui dort/Paris Asleep (with a sequence set on the Eiffel Tower), but more characteristic of the romantic populist Paris of the 1930s are his studio-shot Sous les toits de Paris/Under the Roofs of Paris (1930) and 14 Juillet/Bastille Day (1933). Paris city life is overwhelmingly apartment — rather than house — based, and this structures Jean Renoir's 1936 Le crime de Monsieur Langp/The Crime of Monsieur Lange, perhaps the greatest pre-WW II representation of Paris working-class life, set around a courtyard which houses a publishing firm and a laundry as well as being home to many of its characters, whose personal and professional interactions intertwine to memorable effect.

Location shooting became the norm after the Second World War thanks to the availability of lighter equipment and the burgeoning of low-budget film-making, notably in the work of the New Wave directors. Éric Rohmer's Le signe du lion/The Sign of Leo (1962) takes place in a Paris deserted by its inhabitants, as the city often is, during a stifling August, while Jacques Rivette's 1961 Paris nous appartient — literally ‘Paris belongs to us’ — sets before us, despite its joyous title, a world of paranoia reminiscent of film noir, a genre more explicitly evoked in Jean-Luc Godard's 1960 À bout de souffle/Breathless. The city in these three films becomes more threatening, and in Godard's case more Americanised, than in much pre-WW II cinema; something connected with the loss or absence of a sense of neighbourhood in these films. This is by contrast strikingly present in François Truffaut's 1959 Les quatre cents coups/ The 400 Blows, set in a working-class area of inner Paris, though one less affectionately evoked than in Clair or Renoir.

Opposite The Lovers on the Bridge / Below Inception