Cine Cities#3: Paris qui dort

3 shots from Raymond Bernard's Les misérables (1934)

Created completely inside the walls of studio. Production Design by Lucien Carré and Jean Perrier - Set Decoration by Paul Colin.

“Perhaps there is something in the air, in the way that the spontaneous spirit of all the collaborators suits my temperament. The French do the work in an instant that the English, who are nonetheless charming, take two hours to do with solemn slowness; or the Germans can only carry out with the most precise orders. The French may grumble but they do it so well!” -- Anatole Litvak about filmmaking in Paris.

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Cine Cities#3: Bolshevik Moscow

Three shots from The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks (1924), directed by Lev Kuleshov and designed by Vsevolod Pudovkin.

Bolshoi Theatre (1776)

Russian Orthodox Church in the background, simply to show "we Bolsheviks, haven't destroyed any church!"

An American cowboy hanging from a telephone cable in Moscow - all streets wide open to a foreigner.

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Cine Cities#2: Expressionist Paris

A rarely seen expressionist Paris of Edgar Poe as directed by Robert Florey in Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932) - designer: Charles D. Hall

Cine Cities#1: Paris

Dernière heure, édition spéciale (Maurice de Canonge, 1949) decors by Jacques Colombier

"Paris is simply an artificial stage, a revolving stage that permits the spectator to glimpse all phases of the conflict. Of itself Paris initiates no dramas. They are begun elsewhere. Paris is simply an obstetrical instrument that tears the living embryo from the womb and puts it in the incubator. Paris is the cradle of artificial births. Rocking here in the cradle each one slips back into his soil: one dreams back to Berlin, New York, Chicago, Vienna, Minsk. Vienna is never more Vienna than in Paris. Everything is raised to apotheosis. The cradle gives up its babes and new ones take their places. You can read here on the walls where Zola lived and Balzac and Dante and Strindberg and everybody who ever was anything. Everyone has lived here some time or other. Nobody dies here…" -- Henry Miller