First off, in my after-class wanderings I stumbled upon what might just be my favorite place in the whole city. The Bibliothèque due Cinéma François-Truffaut is an entire library dedicated to film history, with books in both French and English. It's located in the underground shopping mall/cultural center/métro station in Les Halles, right next door to the Forum des Images, a cinema and instructional center with thousands of archived films I unfortunately did not get the chance to peruse. I could have happily camped out here for the entire month, but as there was much else to do I settled for a quick snapshot and a single evening of browsing the stacks. (Apologies for the poor picture quality; my camera was on the wrong setting and I didn't want to make my friend stand there and take it again.)
My second great discovery came in a poster shop in Montmartre. They had stacks and stacks of classic film posters in English and French, but when I saw this French version of Bringing Up Baby I just had to have it. I limited myself to just this one purchase, but I did go back to that shop again to look for more. I would have felt kind of silly coming home from Paris with a suitcase full of English-language movie posters, but I was so, so very tempted.
That's about it for now. There's one more place that gets its own post before I go back to talking about movies, but first I'm going to go watch Notorious and catch up on my blogroll.
So odd, I just commented this afternoon on your last post, asking when you'd be coming back! yay!!
ReplyDeleteNow if I ever go to Paris I'll know to reserve a few, umm.. months for the library & cinema!
Oh my goodness-- sounds like your trip was quite fun. What marvelous finds...that poster is incredible.
ReplyDeletehooray for a great trip! (and hello =]) do you by chance recall what poster shop it was? i'm going to be in london for the fall semester and plan on traveling to paris and mecca aka the bibliotheque du cinema and may just have to try to find it!
ReplyDeleteKate -- I saw that, and it was definitely one of the motivating factors that made me sit down and finish the post right away. If you didn't see my reply to you in the last post, thanks again!
ReplyDeleteJuliette -- It was definitely one of the best experiences I've ever had. And that poster is one of the best things I brought back.
Meredith -- I don't know the actual name of the shop, but it was on Montmartre at the top of the hill. Near Sacre Coeur and the artists' square there are a lot of little touristy shops, and the poster/artwork one was across from a crêperie... which in Paris of course isn't much to go on, but I'm sure you'll find it eventually. It's also quite close to the Dali museum.