Les Fauvettes

Paris is not, as everybody would like to think, the City of Love.
Paris is the City of Cinema. Or, even better: the City of Cinemas.
There are more movie theatres per person in this town than in any other place on planet earth, and the most incredible thing is: they’re always crowded.
If you love cinema, you have so many choices every week that you almost get nuts about it (a while ago I even wrote a post on this subject).
Last week, there were two news, one very bad and one very good, concerning cinemas in Paris.
The bad one is that La Pagode, one of the most historical movie theatres in town, announced that it is closing down starting from today, November 11, and for an undefined time. 
And nobody knows what it will happened next.
I was particularly sad reading this.
I am in love with La Pagode, which has a hall and a magnificent garden decorated in old Japanese style, and where they always show intelligent and interesting movies:

 

 

Few weeks ago I was there for the avant-première of Umimachi Diary (Notre Petite Soeur) by Kore-Eda Hirozaku: the hall was fully booked, the film-maker was there for a debate at the end of his movie and the atmosphere was pretty magical.
I can’t believe I will not have more nights like this! 

For a cinema closing down, though, there is one opening… last week I was invited to the opening night of the cinema Les Fauvettes, a new Pathé multi-screenings set in the 13th arrondissement, which has a very particular characteristic: it shows just old movies!
Only in the City of Cinemas a dream like this could become true…
Imagine: a shiny and bright new cinema with 5 theatres showing your favourite movies from the past! 

The night I was there, together with a great cocktail, there was the possibility of choosing between these movies: Blade Runner-Final Cut (1982) by Ridley Scott, On the Town (1949) by Stanley Donen, Le Corniaud (1965) by Gérard Oury and Dial M for Murder (1954) by Alfred Hitchcock.
My friend Nico and I were very indecise, but in the end we opted for Blade Runner: we both saw the movie several times but so long ago that it felt like a previous life, so we thought it could be a good idea:

I was a bit afraid that the movie would have badly aged but, to my happy surprise, it wasn't.
Well, Rachael's dresses were too '80s, the computers of the future looked like the Commodore 74 and the Vangelis music was a bit too much, but besides these three elements, Blade Runner is still the great science-fiction movie it used to be.
This was the Final Cut version, the director's cut made by Scott in 2007, because the studios at the time obliged him to have a different final scene and, also, to add a voice off that has now been removed. 
I have to confess that I prefer the old end, but who knows, maybe it is just a sentimental thing. 

Anyway, it was so good to see the movie on a big screen and to know that, from now on, this will be the case for so many other old movies!
This is why I find Les Fauvettes' slogan particularly appropriate: Versions Restaurées, Émotions Intactes (Restored Versions, Intact Emotions).

You bet! 

Ciné-balade Truffaut

And when you thought that the "Truffaut's Month" was over, here comes Zazie with another adventure related to her favorite film-maker of all time.
I read many times about these Ciné-Balades, Cinema Walks around Paris, but until last week I never had the chance to follow one. Of course, when I heard that the new ciné-balade was about François Truffaut (in the 9th and 18th arrondissement, where I live!), I immediately decided to participate.
So there I was, last Saturday, with a bunch of unknown but very nice people.
The meeting point with Juliette, our guide, was in a very truffautian endroit, the church of the Trinité, in Place de la Trinité:

In the fountain in front of the church, after a night spent outside, Antoine Doinel in Les 400 Coups famously washes his face:

The second stop-over was an unexpected one: the Hotel Langlois, at 63 Rue Saint Lazare.

This hotel, that was once named Hotel des Croisés, was used in 2001 by the American film-maker Jonathan Demme for the shooting of his movie The Truth about Charlie (remake of Charade, the 1963 Stanley Donen movie with Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant). The film was a massive homage to French cinema in general and Nouvelle Vague in particular. Demme re-named the hotel Hotel Langlois in honor of Henri Langlois, the man behind the Cinematheque Française, and the owners loved so much the name that they decided to keep it. I thought it was a super cute story!

The third place we visited was Place Saint Georges: Truffaut used the Theatre Saint Georges as location for the theatre where the jewish director Lucas Steiner hides himself during the Paris occupation in Le dernier Métro (1980):

The next stop-over was always related to Henri Langlois: when his family moved from Turkey to Paris, he lived in Rue Laferrière, above the Place Saint Georges, and it was in his apartment (quite famously in its bath tub) that he was piling up all the film reels he could find before the creation of the Cinémathèque:

Truffaut spent his (sad) childhood just a couple of streets above this one, at the 33 of Rue de Navarin:

Antoine Doinel, his alter ego in Les 400 Coups, lives very close by, at n° 4 of Place Gustave Toudouze:

The school of Antoine Doinel and François Truffaut was not far away, the Lycée Jacques Decour, in Avenue Trudaine:

Avenue Trudaine is also the street where, in Baisers Volés (1968), Doinel as private detective follows a woman and the woman immediately understands somebody is following her!

In Les 400 Coups, Antoine Doinel very often finds a shelter for the night at his best friend's place. I didn't know that the interiors of René's parents house were filmed in a big apartment at n° 10 of Rue de Douai!

The exteriors, though, were filmed in the private street Avenue Frochot, which was an homage to Truffaut's favorite French film-maker, Jean Renoir, who lived many years in this gorgeous street:

Always in Rue de Douai, but this time at n° 41, there was the apartment of Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, who was the founder of the Cahiers du Cinéma together with André Bazin. In this apartment Truffaut filmed, in 1955, his first short-movie, Une Visite. Truffaut was so unhappy about it, that notoriously destroyed every copy of his first serious attempt to cinema. Probably the most interesting thing to say about this short movie is that the cinematographer was a certain Jacques Rivette, while the editor was a certain Alain Resnais... 

In the near Rue Mansart, there is the restaurant owned by Jeanne Moreau's father, La Cloche D'Or. The place is still open and still looks quite charming:

Paris is a city full of great and beautiful cinemas, but I think that at the time of Truffaut's childhood, there were really incredible salles de cinéma! The greatest one was the famous Gaumont Palace, considered the "biggest cinema in the world": its theater could contain 6000 people. Built in 1899, completely renovated in 1931, the cinema was sadly closed in 1973. Now at the same address of Rue Caulaincourt, you can find an awful Castorama and a miserable Hôtel Mercure... Modern time suck!

The walk took end in front of the Montmartre Cemetery, where Truffaut is buried.
It was time for Juliette to show us the last piece of movie with her i-pad and super cute sound system:

Before leaving, one of the participants, a curator at the Montmartre Cemetery, told us the most incredible story: one day, in his office, Jean-Pierre Léaud showed up asking if it would have been possible to have the grave near the one of Truffaut for himself. When he was told that wasn't feasible, Léaud insisted again and again and left his phone number, praying them to call him if things would have changed. The curator and his colleagues found out, a bit later, that the grave was actually available. They called Léaud's number but in vane: they never had an answer. 
Long live Antoine Doinel!

I wish to thank Juliette of Ciné-Balade for being such a lovely guide.
Dear readers, if you happen to be in Paris in the next weeks, the Ciné-Balade Truffaut is still going on. Don't miss it!