Baisers volés: some unidentified locations
The excellent Thierry Joliveau's recent post on the 'pneumatique' sequence of Baisers volés (see here) expresses regret that the excellent Paname Urbex has not yet produced a topographical inventory of Truffaut's film. There are several places on the Internet where some locations in Baisers volés are identified (see e.g. L2TC, IMDB, Le Forum des Images, Movie Tourist). This post adds a few more and points out those awaiting identification.
1/ barracks
Two different locations are regularly cited for the barracks at which we first see Antoine Doinel. The exterior is the back of the Ecole militaire, at the junction of the Avenue de Lowendal and the Avenue Duquesne:
Two different locations are regularly cited for the barracks at which we first see Antoine Doinel. The exterior is the back of the Ecole militaire, at the junction of the Avenue de Lowendal and the Avenue Duquesne:
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Helpfully, the film allows us to read the signs bearing these street names, in case there was any mystery about the location.
The other location given is that of the nearby barracks on the Place Dupleix. If this was used in the film it must have been for the interiors. This is where the young Truffaut was himself incarcerated after his desertion. |
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It may be that the identification of the caserne Dupleix as a location for the film results from a confusion between the real Truffaut and the fictional Doinel.
2/ hotels
The hotel where Antoine works as a night porter is the Hotel Alsina, 39 Avenue Junot. Before then he had gone with a prostitute in a hotel just off the Rue Cardinet, 17e:
The hotel where Antoine works as a night porter is the Hotel Alsina, 39 Avenue Junot. Before then he had gone with a prostitute in a hotel just off the Rue Cardinet, 17e:
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Hôtel Jouffroy, 38 Passage Cardinet, 17e - Google Street View
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After the funeral of Monsieur Henri, Antoine goes with a prostitute to a similar but different hotel. In his original outline Truffaut situates this near the Place Blanche. There aren't enough features in this one-shot sequence to enable a positive identification:
3/ cemeteries
Before his crash with Doinel at the junction of the Rue Calaincourt and the Rue Damrémont, Lucien Darbon is seen driving on the bridge that crosses the Cimetière de Montmartre. This bridge is strongly associated with Antoine, who walked along it with his friend René in Les 400 coups (1959):
Antoine returns to the cemetery to visit his mother's grave in L'Amour en fuite (1979):
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In this cemetery Truffaut was buried:
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Given these connections with the cemetery in Montmartre, it has been assumed that this is the cemetery where Monsieur Henri is buried towards the end of Baisers volés, even if the sight of the Sacré Coeur in the far distance is a clue that this is not Montmartre:
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Truffaut's original outline does refer to the Montmartre cemetery as the location, but in the end he used the cemetery at Les Lilas, a suburb just east of Paris. At Philippe Landru's excellent Cimetières de France et d'ailleurs site are presented the cemetery's interesting features, including the statue of a mourning woman visible in the shot above.
The second shot in the cemetery sequence pans down from a view of massed tombs to show Antoine walking by the exterior wall and accosting a prostitute at the angle of the Avenue Faidherbe and the Rue de la Convention: |
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4a/ streets (walking)
Antoine's first filature is along the Avenue Trudaine, 9e, towards the junction with the Rue des Martyrs:
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The Avertisseur de Police he hides behind is the same one he had walked past with René in Les 400 coups nine years before:
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Antoine's walk with a tall woman is on the Avenue de Ségur, towards the Rue Bixio: 
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This is not far from the Avenue de Breteuil, where twice later Antoine and Christine go walking:
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4b/ streets (driving)
Antoine and Monsieur Henri start following their target at this building, as yet unidentified:
Antoine and Monsieur Henri start following their target at this building, as yet unidentified:
They take a taxi, and are firstly on a street I can't identify and then on the Rue Notre Dame de la Lorette, at the junction with the Rue La Bruyère:
5a/ home - chez Antoine
The door of Antoine's apartment building is at 36 Boulevard de Rochechouart:
The window of his room looks north, over the Boulevard de Rochechouart towards the Sacré Coeur:
This is not the same building at which we saw him arriving. Number 36 is on the north side of the Boulevard de Rochechouart, with windows looking south. The window above is at the Hôtel de l'Avenir, 39 Boulevard de Rochechouart, on the south side.
When Madame Tabard visists Antoine in his room, she is followed by a detective whose report gives a different address for this location, 18 Square d'Anvers. The Square d'Anvers is the green space in the middle of the Place d'Anvers. There is no number 18 on the Place d'Anvers.
The detective had been shown looking up at Antoine's window:
The detective had been shown looking up at Antoine's window:
Helpfully, again, the film allows us to read the street sign. She is in front of the Square Willette, on the Place Saint Pierre, looking up at a building on the corner of the Rue de Steinkerque. Earlier the camera had looked up from the Place Saint Pierre in the same direction, singling out Antoine's room:
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Antoine Doinel's home is hence a composite of four locations:
5b/ home - chez les Tabard
The home of Georges and Fabienne Tabard is also a composite of locations. The address on the letter Antoine sends Mme Tabard is not that of the apartment we see in the film. A clue that there is something amiss is in the number of the arrondissement: 82 Rue de Courcelles is in the 8e, not the 17e.
The Tabard apartment is supposed to be in the building above the Maralex shop owned by M. Tabard:
The Tabard apartment is supposed to be in the building above the Maralex shop owned by M. Tabard:
This real shoe shop was not, as most sources claim, on the Rue de la Pompe, 16e, but at 87 Avenue de Wagram, 17e. It is the ground floor of 85bis Avenue de Wagram that we see in the film:
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The address Antoine puts on his letter is only two streets away from the Avenue de Wagram. The actual apartment we see in the film is much further away than that. From its windows can be seen, only a short distance away, the Eiffel Tower:
The apartment used was apparently that of Michael Lonsdale, the actor who played M. Tabard, and was at 15 Place Vauban, 7e.
5c/ home - chez les Darbon
When Christine calls a repair service about the television, the address she gives is exactly the address of the house used as a location, 44 Avenue Edouard Vaillant, in Pantin. The house is now demolished but the ocular evidence is the Café de la Poste across the street:
Google Street View May 2014
6/ le garage Darbon
Antoine calls at the garage run by Christine's parents. Across the street is a shop that sells household goods:
The shop gives no clue as to the location, and there are no clues inside the garage either:
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Or almost no clues. The notice on the wall in front of Antoine as he makes a phone call lists what looks like the occupants of the building. First on the list is the tôlerie, i.e. the garage. After that are four names: Monier, Djekerdjian, something beginning with P and something that looks like Carver. A 1968 phone book might give an address for Djekerdjian, and that address might be the location of the garage. I don't have such a phone book at hand, however.
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7/ Le Cheval d'or
The cabaret where Antoine watches a magic act is identified in the film as Le Cheval d'or, rue Descartes, 5e. No exteriors are shown, and there are some suggestions that the interior was reconstructed elsewhere for the film, but historians of this famous cabaret all say that the sequence was shot in the actual place. It was here that Truffaut saw Boby Lapointe perform and decided to cast him in Tirez sur le pianiste. He also saw Henri Serre perform here, whom he later cast in Jules et Jim. |
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8/ stairs
The hotel on the Avenue Junot where Antoine works is at the top of a set of stairs that lead down to the Rue Caulaincourt and the café where he meets Monsieur Henri after he has been fired:
The hotel on the Avenue Junot where Antoine works is at the top of a set of stairs that lead down to the Rue Caulaincourt and the café where he meets Monsieur Henri after he has been fired:
Later, after he has been working for the detective agency for some time, Antoine takes the stairs up from the Rue Caulaincourt to the Avenue Junot, as if he were still working at the Hôtel Alsina:
9/ the detective agency
The address given in the fake advert for the Blady detective agency is 150 Rue Saint Lazare, referencing the address of the Dubly agency that advised Truffaut on detective practice for Baisers volés.
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10/ maps
Antoine posts his letter at an as-yet unidentified post office. A few years ago I posted a map here of the peculiar journey taken by the letter. I had missed the stamp on the back of the envelope, suggesting that it had finished up at the post office on the Rue Saintonge, so this is an updated version of that map:
Here is a map of the pneumatique network, as reproduced in Thierry Joliveau's post:
Here are the maps in the film:
And here is a map of the film:
