Invisible Paris: Film locations

The Morrison Hotel Mystery

The death of Jim Morrison is not the only mystery in the Rue Beautreillis. On this street where the leader of The Doors spent the last few months of his life and where he (probably) died, another door stands curiously alone. But what is it?

The last bastion standing

Today only one significant element of the city’s 19th century fortifications remains standing. Where is the Bastion n°1 and what purpose does it serve today?

The World's Oldest Surviving Basketball Court

How did a game invented by the YMCA in America cross the Atlantic in the late 19th century, and why has this Paris court survived so long?

The Longest Street in Paris

An attempt to find the soul of the city's longest thoroughfare.

Belgium by the Seine

A trip to Elisabethville on the trace of old postcard locations leads me to abandoned beach resorts and experimental 1950s architecture.

Showing posts with label Film locations. Show all posts

Friday, 2 May 2014

A ‘Frantic’ search for Polanski's Paris

Filmed in 1987 and released in 1988, Roman Polanski’s ‘Frantic’ is not the best film ever to be set in Paris. It is though one that continues to intrigue, perhaps because it plays the city against type, relentlessly capturing a paranoid rather than a picturesque Paris. It is this visual aspect that is the focus here, following a request from a reader to hunt down some of the filming locations. More than 25 years after the film was made, could I find places that are perhaps no longer there - or maybe never even existed in the first place?