The other maps in the film are all in the set representing police headquarters, quai des Orfèvres:
There are two métro maps in the film, one in a studio set, the other in the real streets of Paris.
The other maps in the film are all in the set representing police headquarters, quai des Orfèvres:
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This pre-credit sequence shifts to street signage to identify more precisely the district of Paris around which the film is centred. The dissolve from street view to map signals that a sense of topography may be useful in reading the film, or at least suggests two that there are levels of reading. The human figure who passes in front of the map, and who will be followed by the film until he is shot dead, introduces another level of reading (for the story). This opening is matched towards the end of the film when the gangland boss who had ordered the killing of the man above is himself on the run, first in the métro and that at the surface, emerging in the same place as his victim, earlier: Between these sights of modern métro station signage we glimpse a vestige from an older world, in a more salubrious district: (For other maps at métro entrances, see here.) The other map in the film is where we would expect to find it, at the police station, but it takes some time to appear. We see much of the detail of what the police inspectors have put up on the walls of their office (posters for Star Wars and The Enforcer, photos of the Rolling Stones and ads for a rock radio station, objects associated with the Corsican football team Bastia, a pair of underpants framed with a medal...), none of which is connected to the practicalities of their work, as a map might be: Eventually we see a map of Paris in a corner of the room, as background to the interrogation of suspects:
Murielle Wenger on the 'Police-Secours' locale in Simenon's writings, shown above in an adaptation of his novel Signé Picpus:
‘Mention of this locale does not occur before the story The North-Star,written around 1937-38. This can no doubt be explained by the fact that Simenon didn't actually "discover" it until the 1930s, when Xavier Guichard invited him backstage at the police, as reported by Simenon in texts appearing in 1934 in Paris-Soir. In 1937, he would put out another series of texts, entitled "Police-Secours, or, The New Mysteries of Paris", in which he describes precisely the locale of Police-Secours and the activities taking place there. These two sets of texts have been collected in the volume, "Simenon, my apprenticeship" (Simenon, mes apprentissages)", from Omnibus. Here are some extracts... "In the large room with the iron door, but two windows open to the night, there are four, four peaceful officers, with two of them wearing gray smocks... On the left, an enormous piece of furniture which resembles a telephone switchboard, in which hundreds of little lamps are ready to light. On the right, a telegraphic device which runs from one moment to the next. Finally, above... we hear the steps of a "solitary", a fifth officer who, he alone, waits before his equipment to send out radio calls. ... Just now a lamp, as big as a lozenge, lights up on the map of Paris attached to the wall. It's the lamp of the 13th arrondissement and its blinking signifies that the Police-Secours car of that arrondissement has just left. ... Already the operator has taken up the telephone which will put him in direct connection with the principal station of the 13th. ... The station there, Place d'Italie, is not yet aware. It's one of their agents who has broken the glass of the call box on the Rue de Tolbiac, thus requesting reinforcements. ... I am once again in this vast room at Police Headquarters where hundreds of bulbs, lit or unlit, are such witnesses of the dramas of Paris. ... I am for the last time at the heart of this network of lines which transcribe to the illuminated table of the Central Bureau all the diverse facts of Paris. It is night. There are five of us in the midst of the apparatus which goes on and off intermittently." As said above, this department is mentioned in l'Etoile du nord, where it's a call from the officer on duty at Police-Secours which will clinch Maigret's investigation. Police-Secours is mentioned in many novels, sometimes when Maigret receives a call from them, sometimes when he calls them himself to learn if something has happened in Paris. A more precise description of the room is found in three novels. It's how Maigret and the Fortune-Teller (Signé Picpus) opens, at Police-Secours... "Three minutes to five. A white bulb lights up on the immense map of Paris which covers one entire section of wall. A worker sets down his sandwich, inserts a plug into one of a thousand holes of a telephone switchboard." Later, the locale is described as a "room which is like the brain of Police-Secours." It's there that Maigret has come to await the announcement of the possible murder of a fortune-teller…’. See here for Wenger's fuller discussion of this locale. See here for representations of this locale in other Simenon adaptations. - Do you have a Michelin map of the area? - Just behind you. - Where are we exactly? - At Meursault-L’Hôpital. - What’s the road? - The D.23. (…) - Set up roadblocks on all the routes, including between Arney-le-Duc, Nuits-Saint-Georges, Beaune, Chalon-sur Saône, Le Creusot, Autun. I’m at the level crossing at Meursault-L’Hôpital, it cuts across the D.23, that’s right. The escape of a prisoner from a train is followed by this close scrutiny of the surrounding area on a road map. A sense of identifiable location is very strong, especially with all those names of classic Burgundies. The other maps are conventional for such a film. In contrast to Rififi (this film's pre-text, see here), we hardly get a glimpse of the map used in the heist: At police headquarters there is a map of Paris in one office, and in another room a set of maps of specific districts:
Astruc's film, a Balzacian precursor to Rivette's Paris nous appartient (see here), shows the conquest of Paris by a young woman from the provinces; soon after arrival she says that Paris 'belongs to us now'.
The one map of Paris in the film is at at police headquarters, where she is being interrogated regarding an illegal abortion.The film presents the story through a series of flashbacks, returning periodically to the quai des Orfèvres and its cartographic backdrop. Leon: Can I be of any assistance to you? Ninotchka: You might hold this for me. Leon: I’d love to. Ninotchka: Correct me if I’m wrong. We are facing north, aren’t we? Leon: Facing north? Well now, I’d hate to commit myself without my compass. Pardon me, are you an explorer? Ninotchka: No, I am looking for the Eiffel Tower. Leon: Good heavens, is that thing lost again? Oh, are you interested in a view? Ninotchka: I’m interested in the Eiffel Tower from a technical standpoint. Leon: Technical? No, no, I’m afraid I couldn’t be of much help from that angle. You see, a Parisian only goes to the Tower in moments of despair to jump off. Ninotchka: How long does it take a man to land? Leon: Now isn’t that too bad. The last time I jumped, I forgot to time it. Leon: Let me see now, the Eiffel Tower - ah, your finger please? Ninotchka: Why do you need my finger? Leon: It’s bad manners to point with your own. There, the Eiffel Tower. Ninotchka: And where are we? Leon: Where are we? Now let me see. Where are we? Ah, here we are. There you are, and here am I. Feel it? Ninotchka: I am interested only in the shortest distance between these two points. Must you flirt?
Leon: Well, I don’t have to, but I find it natural. Ninotchka: Suppress it. Leon: I’ll try. Ninotchka: For my own information, would you call your approach toward me typical of the local morale? Leon: Mademoiselle, it is that approach which has made Paris what it is. Ninotchka: You’re very sure of yourself, aren’t you? Leon: Well, nothing’s happened recently to shake my self-confidence. Ninotchka: I have heard of the arrogant male in capitalistic society. It is having a superior earning power that makes you that way. Leon: A Russian! I love Russians! Comrade. I’ve been fascinated by your Five-Year Plan for the last fifteen years. Ninotchka: Your type will soon be extinct. When, as here, the map-en-abîme is a map made in the film, there is a strong identification with filmmaking itself as a cartographic activity. A pre-existing map, either scrutinised by characters or simply positioned within their framing décor, argues rather for an identification between character and spectator, for both of whom maps are a part of their real world. Here is the first of the three other places with maps in Du rififi chez les hommes: A place-centred reading might use this map of France to bring out the film's thematics of national identity, with the regional Frenchness of the protagonist -Tony 'le Stéphanois' (i.e. he is from Saint Etienne) - set against a variety of names denoting foreignness: Le Suédois, Ferrati, Grutter, Teddy le Levantin, even the English jeweller's Mappin & Webb (which the anglophone in me cannot help but here as 'mapping' and 'web'). In the second place with maps they are familiar street furniture, positioned at the entrance to Port Royal station, and there is a further map on the platform. This is the ligne de Sceaux, which would later become part of the RER: The protagonist has no need to consult these maps, knowing exactly the direction to be taken by the person he is following. The last maps in the film are at the entrance to La Chapelle station, on Ligne 2 of the métro (part of the elevated section to the north): These maps are passed in the course of Tony's breakneck car journey backto Paris, and hardly attract our attention, given the intensity of this climactic sequence.
174/ The Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa 1954) & Un flic (Jean-Pierre Melville 1972): pointing28/9/2011 Two moments of pointing from the several map scenes collected by artist Thomas Klimowski, who has posted maps in films on his blog here, here and here.
He also has a nice shot of a map of Paris from a terrible film with a wonderful title: Comment reussir quand on est con et pleurnichard ('How to succeed when you're an idiot and a crybaby') (Michel Audiard 1974): We get a brief glimpse in an outer office of this splendid map of the Paris region, but the principal room at police headquarters is dominated, unusually, by a map of France rather than Paris (though it has a tiny map of the Paris region in the corner): Towards the end of the film we see a map of Paris spread out on a coffee table. This overhead view connects to the aerial views of Paris in the film's opening sequence and later in several vertiginous action scenes: The one other map in the film is in a control room of the métro system, where the train on which the hero is chasing a villain is being tracked: We see a similar control-room map in Claire Denis's 35 rhums (2008):
A plan to rescue Marie Antoinette from the guillotine involves tunnelling from a house on the rue de la Corderie into the Tour du Temple. This is an early example of a map scrutinised in detail (see here for others). The map itself, hand drawn, is relatively correct as regards layout and nomenclature (see, at the end of this post, the corresponding segment from a 1797 map).
In 'the Benches of Paris', the second of the three sketches in Rohmer's film, a man and a woman discuss at length what it is to live in the centre of Paris or in the suburbs. We see them at intervals in various Paris locations, all of which are identified for us by a narrating notebook, by dialogue or by signage in the mise-en-scène: The climax of their story comes when they pretend to visit Paris as tourists, meeting at a railway station (the Gare de l'Est) as if they had just arrived in the city, and heading for a Montmartre hotel to spend the night. In the métro on the way there, they act as if they don't know Paris, asking a local 'Is Montmartre this way?', then she looks out of the window (it's an overground section of the métro) and asks 'Where's the Eiffel Tower' (which is on the other side of the city). The man plays the game by pointing to the wrong place on his map. As Parisians, they find all this very funny. (There are more images from Les Rendez-vous de Paris in my slideshow of Parisian stairways, here.)
Through characters called Jeanne Moreau, Jean Seberg and Stéphane Audran, posters of Belmondo and Delon, and the re-enactment of iconic scenes such as the death of Michel in A bout de souffle, Unmade Beds realises its protagonist's cinephilic fantasies, transposing the French New Wave c. 1959 to 1976 New York. One shot shows us the imagined territory on a map, panning down from a postcard of the Eiffel Tower through to Paris, identified as a place in time. The shot continues down the map towards Italy, as if realising Michel's own fantasy of escaping from Paris with Patricia, at the end of A bout de souffle.
Maps at entrances to the métro are often just an incidental part of the street scene, like any other characteristic piece of Parisian street furniture: But they can serve more specific purposes. Since they often have displayed above them the name of the station, they enable us to identify exactly where we are in the city: These place names can be an important part of a narrative development, as in Le Samourai, where the protagonist's location underground is exactly traced on a map at police headquarters (see here and here), while the location of policemen waiting for him above ground is just as precisely identified for us: Unlike, for example, the London Underground map, on which the only overground feature is the river, this Paris map combines both levels on the one surface. For Le Samourai this corresponds to an idealised levelling, in contrast with the city's layered complexity (where, for example, the underground figures the criminal underworld). Dichotomies of under- and over-ground are common in Paris cinema, and the métro entrance map, when associated with a stairway, can serve as a simple figure of that multi-layered reality. This is true of the Fantômas image (near the top of this post) and also here, where visitors to Paris in Petit à petit embark on a fantasy-ascent through Paris, from underground to funicular and cable car (ending up in another world entirely): Among other functions served by these maps is the occasion to show a protagonist attempting to orient themselves in the city, allowing the cine-tourist in the audience a comfortable space of identification, the reassurance that he is not alone in trying to work out where he is in the film: Several of these images also appear in The Stairs: Paris, a slideshow.
Zig-Zag, like Rivette's Paris s'en va from the following year, is based on the 'jeu de l'oie'. Ruiz's film is subtitled 'a didactic fiction about cartography'. Taking inspiration and materials from a map-related exhibition at the Centre Pompidou ("Cartes et Figures de la Terre"), Ruiz shows many maps and map-like figures. The film ends with the injunction: 'To know more, visit the exhibition.' See here for the excellent analysis of spatial machinery in this film, at the site (e)space & fiction.
For a discussion of Ruiz illustrated with several maps, see Jonathan Rosenbaum's 'Mapping the Territory of Raúl Ruiz' here. For a precious assemblage of links in memory of Ruiz, see Film Studies For Free, 'Double Vision', here. The map of the film can be very exactly drawn, from its opening in Marseille, through Michel’s journey up to Paris and his movements in and around the city, to the film’s close at the junction of the rue Campagne Première and the boulevard Raspail. The maps in the film are incidental, of interest only to the collector. The first is in the hand of the American officer whose Oldsmobile 88 Michel will steal (see the IMCDB here for more detail on the cars in A bout de souffle). The officer’s wife has in her hand a camera: it's a rare pleasure to find a film with map and camera in the same frame (see here the four other cameras in A bout de souffle). There are several maps in the travel agency on the Champs Elysées where Michel goes to find Tolmatchoff, all adjuncts of the film’s preoccupation with the world beyond France: The last map is in the film's last interior, the apartment on the rue Campagne Première where Michel and Patricia spend the night. The décor of the bedroom includes a blow up of an antique ‘perspective’ map of Paris: This seems to have been a fashion. A similar décor occurs in another Belmondo film from the same year:
‘From childhood holidays at Santander and San Sebastian, Bunuel remembered the tradition of a pilgrimage to the shrine of St James of Compostela at Santiago in the same far northwestern corner of Spain, only 50 kilometres from the Atlantic. The route from northern Europe was known as the Milky Way, because in ad 813 a hermit was supposed to have . followed that field of stars (campus Stellas) to the body of St James (Santiago in Spanish), hidden there for centuries.’
John Baxter, Buñuel (London: Fourth Estate, 1995), p.288. To bring to a close the theme of the last few days, this is a selection of more Nazis with maps. The map scene towards the end of La Guerre est finie shows that place can be exactly identified, scrutinised, negotiated. (Time, on the other hand, remains a variable, subject to subjectivity.) There are two other places with maps. The métro: And an apartment:
The ‘Paris’ sequence of Orphée invents an unreal city by linking unconnected but familiar parts of Paris (the rue Vilin, the square Bolivar, the place des Vosges and the covered market at Billancourt). Here are these apparently contiguous places on a map: There is only one map in Orphée, on the wall of the office of the Chief Inspector of Police, who has summoned Orphée to meet him. Try as I might, I cannot tell of what this is a map (it is not Paris). The line of the river is distinctive, but I don't recognise it. Perhaps the map is upside down.
‘A film is not its shots, but the way they have been joined. As a general once told me, a battle often occurs at the point where two maps touch.’
Robert Bresson, ‘Encountering Robert Bresson’, interview with Charles Thomas Samuels, republished in The Films of Robert Bresson: Casebook (London: Anthem, 2009), p. 96. Below are more maps from Bresson films. (an occasional feature in which I post all of the maps visible in a particular film) Diva is en eminently mappable film, with its spread of locations across Paris and its recurrent journeys through the city (by métro, moped, car and on foot), but it is not a film interested in displaying maps of its territory. And that despite there being visible in this film a total of eleven different maps, if we include two limit cases: the linear diagram of a train line and the schematic terrain of an arcade game. The first of these, at the Gare Saint Lazare, features in a compositional contrast of horizontal and vertical, as the camera moves up an escalator towards the map stretching across the top of the screen, revealing more of the map as it advances: The other limit case is from the 1977 Sega game 'Heli-Shooter': 'enemy territory is visible below with airports, harbors and structures dotting the landscape' (as described in Sega's publicity material): Between these extremes the maps in the film are more conventional. Two (or perhaps the same map twice) are part of the establishing decor in a police station (for examples from other French police stations see here): Another type of map in the film is the plan of a building, shown here as establishing decor. This type is often displayed in films where a building's specific layout is foregrounded, as in heist films (see here for a different application of this type): Five of the maps in Diva are directly associated with the film's famous use of the métro as location. Three are seen on the platform in passing as a policeman chases the protagonist onto and off a train: These are maps of the métro and of the wider Parisian transport network (including overground trains and buses). Two maps are visible in the same shot in the métro station's ticket hall, one being the distinctive journey-planner map with electric lights indicating routes (see here and here for better views from other films), and the other is the map of the local area above ground: None of these maps is foregrounded, and it would be difficult to thematise from this recurring motif other than to highlight the film's visualisation of Paris as a succession of spectacular views, rather than as a topographical construct (compare with Rivette's Le Pont du nord, from the same year). The last map in Diva, symptomatically, is perhaps not a map at all. I am guessing that the rectangular thing pinned to the wall in this apartment is a map, but visually it is just a blank, an unreadable gap in a space otherwise loaded with readable signs: (See here for the two 'blowup' moments in Diva. See below for Paris as a succession of spectacular views) The police station is the other of the two settings in which a map in a film is most likely to be found. This is the earliest example I know of a map in such a setting, though the map is of the whole country rather than - as it will almost always be thereafter - of the city in which the action plays out. Below are some later illustrations from French police stations, all of them maps of the city or the immediate region.
‘Workers do not produce themselves, they produce a power independent of themselves. The success of this production, the abundance it generates, is experienced by the producers as an abundance of dispossession. As their alienated products accumulate, all time and space become foreign to them. The spectacle is the map of this new world—a map that is identical to the territory it represents. The forces that have escaped us display themselves to us in all their power.’
Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle (London: Rebel Press, 1983 [1967]), p.16. ‘Some Métro stations in Paris have maps with colored bulbs along each line of the system. To use the map, passengers push a button with the name of a desired destination, and the bulbs display the recommended itinerary. Like the lines on the palm of a hand, those of the Métro system can be read, especially given the multicolored display of routes whose configuration passengers soon memorize. But what makes an itinerary efficient does not always make it desirable, especially when, in a mode of flânerie, movement becomes an end in itself.
Maps show place-names that can be plotted, but they also function in other ways. Michel de Certeau writes that “proper names carve out pockets of hidden and familiar meanings. They ‘make sense’ as the impetus of movements, like vocations and calls that turn or divert an itinerary by giving it a meaning (or a direction) that was previously unseen. These names create a nowhere in places, they change them into passages.” Maps show where the Place des Vosges used to be and how to find the hillside park at Buttes-Chaumont. But it is almost as if, in order to function as formal ensembles of abstract places, maps must erase their genesis. From log to itinerary, the history of maps seems to have evolved in the name of science — from recording a route taken in the past to prescribing one to be followed in the future.’ Dudley Andrew and Steven Ungar, Popular Front Paris and the Poetics of Culture (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), pp. 292-93. |
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