A summer of cinema and champagne in the city of love

Forget Los Angeles. Paris is aiming to be the cinematic capital of the world this summer. There will be any number of options for devoted film fans – fitting for a city that boasts hundreds of screens, close to one for every 5,000 of its citizens.

In June, just off the Champs Elysées, they will be able to watch classic movies all night while lying in a double bed drinking champagne. Alternatively, in July and August, they will be able to watch movies while sitting on the grass in a park.

It is not just the summer months either. From October there will be a floating cinema on the river Seine, shifting its mooring place every two days and showing new films while audiences eat.

It used to be said that the French capital had so many cinemas that you could sit in front of a different screen each day of the year. That remains true but a year no longer suffices to visit them all; three new cinemas are to open in the coming weeks, bringing the number of screens to 431. The real boom, however, is in experimental and convivial forms of movie-going, both permanent and ephemeral.

For 12 days in June the Grand Palais, a gigantic art exhibition hall in the Beaux Arts style near the Champs Elysées, covered by one of the largest glass roofs in the world, will become a cinema with 4,000 seats. Classic US movies from the 1980s to the present day will be shown from 7pm to 6am.

At the front of the house there will be 44 double beds. For €180 (£129) a few lucky couples will be able to lie down together and watch films.

The first Cinema Paradiso season in the Grand Palais, in 2013, was a commercial success, but had a number of issues. The organisers insist that they have learned from their mistakes.

Last time the vast nave of the exhibition hall was dotted with cars to create the atmosphere of an American drive-in movie theatre from the 1950s. There were endless queues for hot-dogs and ice-cream. Discos and rock concerts drowned out the films.

This year the cars have gone. Instead, there will be 10 trucks to supply French and American fast food. Customers can choose between ordinary seats (from €22 for the under-26s), double love-seats at €56 per person and the double-beds at €90 a person. The simultaneous musical performances will, it is promised, not interfere with the sound-tracks of the films. Popcorn is free.

The organiser of Cinema Paradiso is MK2, a French company that runs cinemas and produces movies. Its managing director, Elisha Karmitz, said: “Parisians have a great hunger for unusual and ephemeral events. We will have two screens 25 metres wide. There will be ordinary seats in tiers as well as double seats for lovers and real double beds. You will be able to watch a movie while looking up through the glass of the [Grand Palais] dome at the night sky.”

open image in gallery

Mr Karmitz organised another special cinematic event in Paris last December. Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather was shown in the Palais de Tokyo modern art museum while a young chef, Jean Imbert, winner of the French TV version of Top Chef, served a gastronomic meal.

An offer you couldn’t refuse? It was tame compared to an event organised for the premiere of the new Planet of the Apes movie last July.

Movie-goers were transported by shuttle bus to a secret location in the Paris suburbs. They were brought to a derelict industrial site beside a motorway where they watched the apocalyptic film surrounded by abandoned buildings and rusting old cars.

These were one-off shows. The new floating cinema, Etoile sur Seine, it is hoped will be permanent. From October, it will offer 100 seats for high-class meals and new French and American movies, as it shifts its location along the quays of the Seine every two days.

If a film fan’s budget for a Paris visit does not extend to champagne or fine dining, they can fall back on the annual free, open air movie festival in the Parc de la Villette in northern Paris from 24 July to 28 August. A deckchair costs a couple of euros. Anyone who brings a blanket and sprawls on the grass needs pay nothing.

Despite the advent of movie channels and DVDs, the appetite of Parisians for “real cinema” remains voracious. Paris claims it has the world’s densest concentration of public screens, although geographically where the cinemas are appears to be changing. Those in the traditional entertainment areas in western Paris have been closing, while new ones are opening in the gentrified areas to the east.