A small Montmartre cinema, opened in 1928 and still running. It gave Un Chien andalou an eight-month run from October 1929, and in December 1930 its screening of Buñuel and Dalí's L'Âge d'or ended with far-right groups attacking the auditorium and slashing the paintings hanging in the foyer.
Studio 28 opened on the rue Tholozé in Montmartre in 1928, a few doors below the rue Lepic, and set out to be the cinema of the avant-garde — screening what commercial houses would not, and hanging art in its foyer.
From 1 October 1929 it took Un Chien andalou over from the Studio des Ursulines and ran it for eight months. The Centre Pompidou's account of that run records faintings in the auditorium and somewhere between thirty and fifty complaints made to the police — which is a strange kind of success, and was understood as one at the time.
The sequel was worse. Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel's second film, L'Âge d'or, opened here on 28 November 1930. It is an hour of sustained attack on the Church, the family and bourgeois propriety, and this time the reaction was organised. On 3 December, Catholic youth groups together with members of far-right leagues threw ink at the screen, destroyed the furniture, and wrecked the exhibition of Surrealist paintings hanging in the adjoining room.
The authorities finished what the leagues started. The prefecture of police condemned the cinema's director, Jean-Placide Mauclaire, banned all screenings, and seized the copies on 11 December 1930 — two weeks after the premiere. The film was not shown publicly again until 1981. That is the part worth sitting with. This is one of the few occasions on which a mob attacked an artwork and won outright: fifty-one years of suppression, obtained in a fortnight.
The cinema survived and is still there, still showing films on the rue Tholozé. It is worth combining with the Montmartre walk — it is a short way below the Moulin de la Galette and within reach of the place du Tertre and Le Chat Noir.
Studio 28 opens in Montmartre as a cinema for the avant-garde, with art hung in its foyer.
Un Chien andalou transfers here and runs for eight months.
L'Âge d'or premieres at Studio 28.
Catholic youth groups and members of far-right leagues throw ink at the screen, destroy the furniture and wreck the Surrealist paintings in the adjoining room.
The prefecture condemns the cinema's director Jean-Placide Mauclaire, bans all screenings and seizes the copies.
L'Âge d'or is shown publicly again for the first time in fifty-one years.
Buñuel and Dalí's L'Âge d'or premiered on 28 November. On 3 December, Catholic youth groups with members of far-right leagues threw ink at the screen, destroyed the furniture and wrecked the Surrealist paintings in the adjoining room. On 11 December the prefecture condemned the cinema's director, banned the film and seized the copies. It was not shown publicly again until 1981.
Yes — it transferred here from the Studio des Ursulines on 1 October 1929 and ran for eight months. The Centre Pompidou records faintings in the auditorium and between thirty and fifty complaints to the police during that run.
Yes. It is still a working cinema at 10 rue Tholozé in Montmartre, and one of the oldest in Paris. It sits a short way below the Moulin de la Galette, so it fits easily into a Montmartre walk.
Un Chien andalou ran here for eight months from October 1929. L'Âge d'or premiered on 28 November 1930; on 3 December Catholic youth groups and members of far-right leagues threw ink at the screen and wrecked the Surrealist paintings in the adjoining room, and on 11 December the prefecture banned the film and seized the copies. It was not shown publicly again until 1981.
The Montmartre flat Louis-Ferdinand Céline kept for twelve years, and the desk behind both of his novels — Journey to the End of the Night and Death on the Installment Plan were written at this address.
Visit the placeA ramshackle Montmartre building of cheap artists' studios, where Pablo Picasso lived and worked from 1904 and painted Les Demoiselles d'Avignon in 1907 — the picture that broke the rules of European painting. The original burned down in 1970; the rebuilt version still holds studios.
Visit the placeThe site of the Hôtel du Poirier in Montmartre, where Albert Camus finished writing L'Étranger in early May 1940 — in a hotel room, at twenty-six, in the weeks before the German army reached Paris. The hotel is gone.
Visit the place
Louis-Ferdinand Céline's Montmartre apartment during the Occupation — where Gen Paul came up from his studio a few doors away, and where the manuscripts later famous as 'the lost trove' were left behind in June 1944.
Visit the placeThe Friday Letter
The cafés, studios, and walk-up flats where the work was made — one story from the map in every letter.
