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Film-lovers swarm City of Light's moonlight festival
2009-08-06
PARIS (AFP) - Thousands massed in the shadow of one of Paris' most iconic monuments, the towering Sacre Coeur, Wednesday for a magical moonlight screening kicking off a film festival dedicated to the City of Light. Under a starlit sky and with city lights twinkling, at least 8,000 people crammed into the gardens of Montmartre's Sacre Coeur cathedral to watch a cult 1950s French movie on a giant blow-up screen, "Casque d'Or" by Jacques Becker. Like all 13 of the films showing through to August 23 at the "Cinema by Moonlight" festival, "Casque d'Or" evokes quintessential Paris, in this case its low life of prostitutes and petty gangsters in the early 20th century. "The City of Light," say the organisers, "has shone throughout the history of film." To further hammer home this message, the movies dating from the 1930s to 2006 are each shown in one of the city's most prestigious sites, from the Champs-Elysees to the Trocadero gardens by the Eiffel Tower to a 17th century square, the Place des Vosges. The old square will be the apt setting for the screening of a 1953 French version of "The Three Musketeers", while Billy Wilder's 1957 Paris-set romance "Ariane" between Audrey Hepburn and Gary Cooper will show in the leafy setting of the Montsouris park. Details of the programme are available on www.forumdesimages.fr
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