Letter from Paris

 

     The summer of 1977 I turned 17 and spent a month in Geneva, Switzerland. A long time ago. But I remember the one movie playing at the one local theater that showed English films: "Car Wash." Not my favorite. And I remember the movie that was "COMING NEXT" — Led Zeppelin's concert film, "The Song Remains the Same." And recall, sharply, the growing disappointment, as the month ticked by, realizing that "Car Wash" was never going to close, at least not while I was there.

     Quite the different situation in Paris, as regular contributor Jack Clark tells us. You remember Jack. Former Chicago cabbie, current fiction and memoir writer.

     If you ask me, it's time to promote Jack Clark from regular contributor to EGD Paris bureau chief. Though that raises the risk I'll start giving him assignments — for instance, as diverting as these lists of movies are, I'd be more interested in seeing lists of French pastries, perhaps illustrated with a photo of a cup of a coffee and a representative example on a small round table on a street in Paris. Not an assignment, of course. A suggestion, from a faithful reader.

     "What do you do in Paris if you don’t go to museums?" someone asked me recently. Well, it’s a big city, but still a great walking town. You can walk from one side to the other in two hours or so. It would take you decades to visit every bakery. And many of them are truly great, so you don’t want to limit yourself to just one. You never know what specialty you might find inside. When you see a bakery along the way, go in and take a look. I don’t speak the language but I can say pain au chocolat and croissant and a few other standards, and I’ve gotten very good at pointing. If you don’t find something that looks enticing, no one will care if you turn and walk out. But be polite and say, Merci, au revoir and walk down the block or around the corner and try the next one.
     A French friend living in New York told me there were several good French bakeries in town. “Here’s the difference,” he said. “In New York everyone knows the good bakeries. In Paris everyone knows the bad ones.”
     Cafes and restaurants are great too. They really do know how to do food here. And if you stay away from the tourist traps and the ritzy places it’s generally much cheaper than in Chicago. If it’s not lunch or dinner time, you can order a single cup of coffee and sit for hours. It’s a great town for people watching.
     We like to go to a neighborhood market on Sunday morning. You can buy produce, prepared food, and other items. But the best part for me is after the shopping is done, when we’re sitting at the café in the middle of the market, drinking coffee and eating pastries from the bakery across the street, (this is not always permitted, but if they know you, they might let you get away with it) while watching the parade of people pass.

     And I’m working, of course. I’m about a third of the way through a novel tentatively titled, "Long-Lost Friends," and just released another book: "Eddie Miles Drives Again & Other Stories." It’s ten short stories, all set in Chicago. You can find it here and there online and also at www. jackclarkbooks.com.
     One of my favorite pastimes is to go to a movie. There are sixty-some movie theaters in town with 400 screening rooms. On the average day there are about 500 movies playing, which makes my hometown Chicago look like a movie desert, which vast stretches of the city truly are.
     On Wednesdays we usually pick up L’officiel des spectacles, which translates as "The official entertainment guide." This is a small magazine about the dimension of the Reader’s Digest, which lists live theater, comedy, music, art exhibits, and the movies playing in Paris for the week.
     In the current issue, the brief movie descriptions take up 27 small-print pages. This is followed by 22 pages of showtimes at the various theaters. The first two pages of descriptions list movies from France, Tunisia, USA, Slovakia, Jordan, Germany, Italy, Mexico, U.K., Senegal, Morocco, and Canada. If you’re like me and don’t understand French, most of those movies are off limits. French movies are shown in French, of course, most of the rest are shown in the original version with French subtitles. But this means you can go to just about every movie from the US, Canada (as long as it’s not from Quebec), or the UK. If there is a “(vo)” at the end of the listing that means it’s the original version. Here are your choices for the week of Wednesday, May 13th to Tuesday, May 19th, as listed in the magazine.

New releases:
Iron Maiden: Burning Ambition, USA & UK 2026
Obsession, USA 2025
Reeditions: (rereleases, I guess)
Dune, USA & Mexico 1984
Top Gun, USA 1986
Films en exclusivite, which translates to Exclusive Films. I’m not sure what they mean by this but here’s the list:
An Evening Song for Three Voice, USA 2023
Dead Man’s Wire, USA 2025
The Criminals (Fuze), UK 2026
The Devil Wears Prada 2, USA 2026
Die My Love, Canada 2025
The Drama, USA 2026
Drunken Noodles, USA & Argentina, 2025
The Royal Opera, UK 2026
Hamnet, USA 2025
Marty Supreme, USA 2025
Michael, USA 2026
Mortal Kombat 2, USA 2026
The New West (East of Wall), USA 2025
I Swear, UK 2025
Project Hail Mary, USA 2026
Super Mario Galaxy, USA 2026
My Father’s Shadow, UK 2025

The next secrion list Autres films or Other Films.

Eyes Wide Shut, USA 1999
Rear Window, USA 1954
Seven Chances, USA 1925
Fight Club, USA 1999
The Rain People, USA 1969
Inland Empire, USA 2006
Lee, UK 2023
Lost Highway, USA 1997
Lost in Translation, USA 2003
Magnolia, USA 1999
Marie-Antoinette, USA 2005
Mission Impossible, USA 2000
Moonlight, USA 2016
Mulholland Drive, USA 2001
Space Cadet, Canada 2025
The Birds, USA 1963
Pride & Prejudice, UK 2004
Orwell: 2+2=5, USA 2025
The Godfather, USA 1972
Phantom Thread, USA 2017
Pillion, UK 2025
War for the Planet Apes, USA 2017
Psycho, USA 1960
The Metropolitan Opera: I Puritani, USA 2025
Ready Player One, USA 2016
Requiem for a Dream, USA 2000
The Rocky Horror Picture Show, USA 1975
Wild at Heart, USA 1989
Shaun of the Dead, UK 2004
Sherlock Junior, USA 1924
Stop Making Sense, USA 1984
Vertigo, USA 1958
Sweet Thing, USA 2020
Witness For the Prosecution, USA 1957
Thelma and Louise, USA 1991
The Mastermind, USA 2025
Top Gun: Maverick, USA 2022
The Ladykillers, UK 1955
Twin Peaks (Fire Walk with Me), USA 1992
The Virgin Suicides, USA 1999
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, USA 1975
Face/Off, USA 1997
The World is Full of Secrets, USA 2018

     If that’s not enough, check out what the magazine calls Festivals et cycles. There’s a Harold Lloyd retrospective at the Champo theater in the 5th arrondissement. It’s showing four of Lloyd’s silent movies made between 1923 and 1928.
      Then there is: Cycle Le Printemps Du Film Noir. It’s a thick block of type with at least 20 films, with directors and the year of the film listed. All are showing at the Filmotheque — also in the 5th. If the movie was released with a French title that’s the only one they show. But without bothering to translate those, I find plenty of English language movies including, A Most Violent Year, Bad Lieutenant, Body Double, Cutter’s Way, a Don Siegel movie, another by Brian DePalma, and one by Scorsese, all listed with French titles only, The King of New York, Miller’s Crossing, No Country for Old Men, another Don Siegel and one by Jonathan Demme, listed with the French title, and also A Simple Plan. They are all marked vo.
     The Ecoles Cinema Club in the 5th and the Christine Cinema Club in the 6th are putting on something called Spring Break. They are showing Blade Runner, Into the Wild, M.A.S.H., a Clint Eastwood movie, one by Fritz Lang from 1953, Blood Simple, Bonnie and Clyde, Citizen Kane. . . Well, there’s more but my eyes have started to give out.
     When I turn the page I find Cycle Bon Voyage at the Ecoles Cinema Club in the 6th, where you can catch, Fargo, Manchester by the Sea, My Own Private Idaho, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and Casablanca. The last is showing at Christine Cinema Club in the 6th.
     That’s somewhere around 80 movies. I was surprised to not find a single Western showing in Paris. Usually there are several and also maybe a John Wayne, John Ford, or Sam Peckinpah festival or retrospective going on. This might be the wrong time in history for watching Americans with big guns eliminating the bad guys. Many of the French have a somewhat curious viewpoint on America today.
     The magazine costs 2.40 euros. The issue I cited here is number 4071. At one issue a week, that adds up to more than 78 years, pretty much the entire postwar era.
     It’s Wednesday again so we picked up the latest issue, once again without a single Western listed. John Wayne is probably trying to shoot his way out of his grave to catch the next flight to Paris.
     I thought that was a pretty good final line. As far as I was concerned, the story was done. I was chuckling to myself over my John Wayne joke when my wife, the lovely Hélène, looked up. “You forgot the Cinematheque,” she said.
     “I couldn’t find it,” I said. “Maybe they’re taking the week off.”
     She grabbed the magazine, quickly paged past the Paris and suburban movie theater listings, past the listing for children’s films, and pointed at the Cinematheque heading.
     “Why did they put it way back there?” I said. She tossed the magazine my way and left the room.
     According to Google the Cinematheque Française is a French film organization that holds one of the largest archives of film documents and film-related objects in the world. Based in Paris, (12th arrondissement) the archive offers daily screenings of worldwide films. All are shown in their original version.
     Among the English language highlights: A Marilyn Monroe retrospective from April 8 to July 12, 23 films.
     A Greta Garbo retrospective from May 6 to 24, 21 films.
     25 Essential Serial Killer Movies, May 7 to 25. I didn’t look but most of them have to be American, right?
     A Robert Altman retrospective from April 22 to May 24, 37 films. This includes what the French insist on calling John McCabe. It’s one of my favorite movies and also one of Julie Christie’s sexiest roles. In the U.S. we gave Christie equal billing with Warren Beatty and called it McCabe and Mrs. Miller. It played in Paris on May 15th, so I missed my chance this time around. It’s also a Western so John Wayne can relax and put his gun away for now.