Château Gaillard, Maisons Alfort, Val de Marne, 94700

Archimède la clochard (Gilles Grangier 1959)

postcard c.1962

In the 1959 film Archimède le Clochard Jean Gabin plays a tramp who has squatted a building on an estate under construction at Maisons Alfort, by the Marne in the eastern suburbs of Paris:

The film show the estate under construction from several angles and in several sequences, episodes which serve to contrast the newness of Fifth Republic France with the older, more familiar areas of Paris where Archimède is mostly to be seen in the film.

Here are views of the Domaine du Château Gaillard on completion, from comtemporary postcards:

And here is a recent photograph contrasting, as Grangier's film had,  the modern estate with a vestige of the old château:

This is not the only film from this period where Jean Gabin, vestige of an older world, is used as contrast with the newness of the grands ensembles. Here, in films from 1959 and 1963, he is at Sarcelles, to the north of Paris:

Rue des Prairies (Denys de la Patellière 1959)

Mélodie en sous-sol (Henri Verneuil 1963)

A future Building Sites post will look more closely at Gabin in Sarcelles. In the meantime here is a slideshow of 1960s postcards of Sarcelles, many of them colourised - like the dvd of Mélodie en sous-sol from which I took the cap above.