Fanspot
Garnier Opera
“- Thank you, gentlemen, that was very good! It was very good! You guys, it was good out there. You, it was … like this, like that. Tell me, you, we didn’t hear you. We never hear you! You don’t stop chattering! Be careful, be very careful. Listen, I have a personal conception of the work. It’s not triumphant enough, not proud enough! Pride, damn it! At last! Pinpinpin pinpin pinpin. Oh, for God’s sake… Gnignignigni This is all mush! It wasn’t bad, it was very bad, that’s what it was! Exactly! Exactly! So, let’s start again. On the 17th. Hop! Let’s go.”
Stanislas Lefort (Louis de Funès)
The English soldier MacIntosh (Mike Marshall) lands by parachute on the roof of the Opera, whose conductor is Stanislas Lefort (Louis de Funès).
He went, in spite of himself, to hide the soldier in his private dressing room, but he was quickly caught by the German officer in charge of finding the paratrooper.
The scenes were shot in July, the date of the annual closure of the Opera House so as not to interfere with the operation of the establishment.
It was the first time a film was shot at the Opéra Garnier. This was made possible thanks to the special authorisation of the Minister of Culture, André Malraux, and the director at the time, Georges Auric. The latter composed the music for the film.
If we see the characters escaping by boat through an underground lake under the building, this would not have been possible in reality. There is, however, a huge water reservoir under the building to combat the pressure of underground infiltration and also serves as a water reserve for the fire brigade.
In order to perfectly embody his character, Louis de Funès rehearsed the conductor’s gestures for three months for perfect credibility.
Palais Garnier
The construction of the Palais Garnier was decided in 1858, in the aftermath of an attack from which Napoleon III miraculously escaped on his way to the opera house in rue Le Peletier.
To prevent such a misadventure from happening again, the emperor launched the project of a new theater in a safer place and in December 1860, the young architect Charles Garnier won the competition in which 172 projects were in competition.
The building site was colossal and the inauguration of this 19,000-seat opera house did not take place until 1875.
In the meantime, the war of 1870 stopped the work and it was also necessary to solve technical constraints, imposed by the town planner and prefect Georges Eugène Haussmann with a trapezoid shape on the ground, or by the topography of the place since a water table was discovered nearby during the excavation work.
So that the water would not weaken the monument, it was decided to build a huge reservoir to withstand the pressure and better support the weight of the building.
This later gave rise to the urban legend of an underground lake under the Palais Garnier, fed by the Grange-Batelière, although this buried river is further away.
The Fantrippers Buying Board
The Paris guide to the 1000 cult places of films, series, music, comics and novels
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The café of Amélie, the mansion of Untouchables, the jazz club of the finale of La La Land, the Hôtel du Nord of the mythical replica of Arletty “Atmosphere”, the cinema of A bout de souffle, the restaurant of Ratatouille, the quays of the Seine of Midnight in Paris, the secret places of the Da Vinci Code, the grocery store of January in La Traversée de Paris , the Bridge of Inception and Peur sur la ville, the addresses of the spectacular scenes of Mission Impossible 6, but also series Call my agent, Gears, Le Bureau des légendes, Sense8, Sex and The City, Gossip Girl…
Etienne Daho’s Café de Flore, Jay-Z and Kanye West’s hotel in Nas in Paris, Serge Gainsbourg’s Poinçonneur des Lilas metro station, Serge Reggiani and Marc Lavoine’s Mirabeau Bridge, Mc Solaar’s Lyon station…
The places evoked in the comics Adèle Blanc-Sec, Largo Winch, Blake and Mortimer, Michel Vaillant…
But also in the novels of Ernest Hemingway, Victor Hugo, Leo Malet, Daniel Pennac, Marc Levy, Guillaume Musso… you’ll find all the must-see places of Parisian Pop Culture in this new guide.
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By Damien Duarte
Passionné par la culture pop depuis son enfance, ses références vont de Donald Duck à Batman en passant par Marty McFly. Fantripper dans l'âme, voyager sur les traces de Ghostbusters, James Bond ou des héros de romans comme Cotton Malone fait partie d'un séjour idéal et réussi !