A brief history of the French capital on celluloid The city in cinema Romance blooms on a belle époque street corner. A dark-eyed girl in Montmartre runs her hand through a bag of dried beans. In the suburbs, Arabs square up to skinheads. Nicotine-stained tales of sexual misadventure unfold in beds all over the city, while gangsters commit crimes and cartoon rats cook up a storm. Paris, which boasts a higher concentration of picture houses than any other city, has been the inspiration and the backdrop for countless films. Below, we present 50 of the best, organised by era. Be they Nouvelle Vague masterpieces or populist comedies, the capital is always in the starring role... Up to 1960 Les Enfants du Paradis In Marcel Carné’s rich, literary romance from 1945 ('France's answer to "Gone with the Wind'!"), four men tussle for the affections of one woman, the conflicted, sphinx-like Garence (Carné regular Arletty), an ice maiden in the league of Marlene Dietrich who, in nearly every shot, has her eyes masked by a beam of light. Such ethereal, delicately cinematic touches add to a film which is content to let a dazzling, witty script (by Jacques Prévert), sumptuous set design and exceptional performers lend the fiction its lifeblood. An American in Paris An American soldier stays in Paris after World War II to paint and falls in love with a French beauty . La Traversée de Paris Paris, 1943. Martin (Bourvil), a slow-witted spiv, persuades a stranger, Grandgil (Gabin), to help
