Cinemas c. 1950 in La Petite Voleuse (1988)
(The identification of these cinemas was possible thanks to the wonderful Ciné-Façades website.
This post is a supplement to an earlier post on La Petite Voleuse and L'Epave.)
This post is a supplement to an earlier post on La Petite Voleuse and L'Epave.)
Before we see Janine at the entrance to a cinema, there are two brief montages of signs featuring, among other businesses, four cinemas. The film is set in 'a little town in the centre of France', but these cinemas are all in the Paris region.
The ABC is in Chelles, Seine-et-Marne, at 16 avenue des Abbesses. There are two views of this cinema in La Petite Voleuse:
The ABC is in Chelles, Seine-et-Marne, at 16 avenue des Abbesses. There are two views of this cinema in La Petite Voleuse:
The Palace is in Beaumont-sur-Oise, Val d'Oise, at 6 avenue Anatole France:
The Rex is in Châtenay-Malabry, Hauts-de-Seine, at 364 avenue de la Division Leclerc:
The cinema was built in 1945. As you can see, the façade has been modified. This happened in 2006, according to Ciné-Façades, where two photographs from the 1960s are reproduced:
The Trianon is in Romainville, Seine-Saint-Denis, place Carnot:
The present façade dates from 1953, anachronistically for La Petite Voleuse. At Ciné-Façades the full story of this cinema is told, including a detailed account of its recent restoration.
It is probably not a coincidence that two of these four cinemas, the Palace and the Trianon, feature in the opening sequence of Eddy Mitchell's La Dernière Séance, a television evocation of cinema-going in the 1950s that ran from 1982 to 1998.
The cinema that features in the sequence following the two montages is not in the Paris region but in Normandy, where much of La Petite Voleuse is filmed.
This is the Modern Cinema in Bayeux, on the rue des Bouchers. In style it fits the period of the film, but I don't know when it was built. Nor do I know when it was demolished, but we can see from Google Street View that it has now gone:
It has been replaced by a car park: