16 thoughts on “Top 5 Historical Costume Movies Set in Paris

  1. About your last “where is this supposed to be?”, I think this is the front entrance of the Conseil d’Etat. You should have the entrance of the Musée des arts décoratifs almost in front of it, and the Comédie Française around the corner… I think.

    As for films with views of Paris, you should try Vidocq, the one with Gerard Depardieu.
    It’s another one of those dude films, and big Gégé performance is nothing to write home about, but the visuals are spectacular and very creative!

    PS: I hope you’re surviving the heat! And possibly the long, long line in front of Bertillon, lol!

    1. I’m pretty sure it’s the left wing of the Palais Royale, which is possibly the Conseil d’Etat, as mentioned above. Oh, Paris… j’adore la vie à Paris. <3

  2. Queen Margot’s street scenes were shot on location in Bordeaux, although most of the buildings are 17th and 18th c. but the anachronistic architecture and accessories were deliberate (hell, in one scene they even have 1940s Giacometti lamps with a candle stuck in the light bulb socket).
    They filled the streets with dirt to hide the asphalt. Other scenes were done in Portugal and in a file studio. Only one shot was actually done in Paris, in the underground passage that attaches the canal Saint-Martin to the Seine.

  3. In Queen Margot, most of the action happens in the Louvre, at least in the book. There are some scenes in the Tuilleries, but most of the big sets are meant to represent the Louvre: Margot’s Wedding feast, the Massacre, Margot’s escape… But, of course, it wasn’t shot there.

  4. The streets are always so clean. Where’s the horse poop? There was tons of it and you never see a speck!

  5. Cousin Bette is very entertaining–it’s really racy, dark and twisty! Plus it looks beautiful, and has a great cast. Give it a try.

  6. Jan-
    The muckrakers gathered it all for the tanners. Otherwise no one could wear all those lovely leather shoes and kid skinned gloves. ;)

  7. Michelle Pfeiffer was miscast in “Cheri,” but her dresses were SO good. (Her character was supposed to be a sumptuous Belle Epoque lady of a certain age, not a California beach girl.) And there’s one scene where she and Kathy Bates are strolling through the latter’s garden and down a broad and rose-shaded grassy path that made me want to die and go to heaven there.

  8. Enjoy Paris, and eat lots of macaron. Don’t miss the Luxembourg Gardens– not the part by the building, but the sides and southern allées.

  9. I found the Paris scenes of The Perfume extremely vivid. But then vivacity and variety and their impact on the protagonist made the scenery a character of its own which is kind of cheating. But I found that take on the urban past in which the ugly and the beautiful were part of the same picture preferable to the more usual one-dimensional takes of either rose-colored, clean streets or the “Dung Ages”.

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