Movie Tours
I’ll start by saying that I’m not a big fan of group tours on vacation, certainly not on large buses or in masses of people where I need to follow a group leader waiving a flag. Overall, I’m not a person who likes crowds – I’ll forgo seeing the Tower of London if there is a line, and the thought of Times Square on New Year’s Eve makes me shiver.
My husband is a cinephile, however, and so often he is interested in seeing the sites in a city where a particular film was shot. Nowhere is this truer than in Paris, one of our favorite cities, and certainly the destination where you can see not only famous spots but ones made more famous by Juliette Binoche, Maurice Chevalier, and Catherine Deneuve, just to name a few. His favorite film set in Paris is Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen’s 2011 homage to the city – and with good reason. Even if you are not a Woody Allen fan, it’s a beautiful cinematic tour through spots both well-known and less familiar.
On one trip a few years ago, my husband was determined that we would, on our own, make our way through Paris, visiting the locales seen in what he happily refers to as “MiP”. And despite my hesitation about hiking through the city (you’ll get those steps in and blow your Fitbit’s mind), I confess it was fun to do such a tour on our own. We saw locations where CGI had been used to hide unsightly obstructions, or where the cinematographers had cleverly made a tight corner appear to be the entrance to a vast boulevard. We had drinks in hotels and cafes that make appearances in the movie; some of them were as enchanting as they appear in the film, others were more prosaic.
My favorite place we visited was the barely noticed site where a sign proclaims “Duluc – Detective”. In MiP, this is the location of a detective agency visited by a character who seeks assistance to determine where the lead actor in the film, Owen Wilson, goes at night when he seemingly disappears into the city. It’s a modest sign – forgotten in the sights of the shopping and bustle of the markets and stores in the nearby Rue di Rivoli, with tourists rushing to get to the Louvre and marveling at the Ritz -- and you could easily miss it, but we were thrilled to find it, including for its aesthetic style.
And yet . . . it’s the sign for a real detective agency, one that recently celebrated over 50 years as one of the oldest private detective agencies in France. While we didn’t have occasion to employ its services, the business behind the sign, and its history are fascinating. For more on that, check out https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-duluc-detective-agency-paris-france
