 |
| Nightfall in the Place de Clichy. Image: public domain |
Films: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)
Screens: 12 Ticket price: 13.20€
Everyone loves the Pathé chicken, don't they? Much better than that star thing that Gaumont has as a logo. These two big-hitters now come under the same umbrella (as the link to the website will testify), and I assumed there'd be far more Gaumonts than Pathés around. So I was mildly surprised to learn that Gaumont only has a poultry lead over their feathered friends, with the scores currently running at 35-34. And that's only because Gaumont broke the deadlock by opening a spanking new multiplex (aren't they all?) in the regenerated docks area of Le Havre. I hope this slightest of edges won't lead to Pathé being squeezed out, Andrew Garfield style. You could just imagine the fried chicken returning from a long, stressful trip, on which he'd been nominally trying to drum(stick) up some advertising revenue (probably from Société Générale) and having his carefully-selected airport gifts flame-grilled by his lady friend, only to find he's been ousted by the apathy of I-can't-believe-it's-not-Michael Cera.
If I'm right (and can operate Allocine correctly, else the above figures may also be way out) the Pathé Wepler is the only cinema that the company (meaning the cockerel half of the operation) have operating in Paris (meaning with a 75 postcode). Gaumonts are everywhere in the capital, though -- 12 at the last count, if we take their arrangement on the Champs-Elysées to be two, which we will. Although, if we take it to be just one, that means the overall score is tied at 34 apiece and the chicken can rest easy. I'd still have a lawyer check it over, though. But those numbers (if at all accurate) prove that Pathé, like Kad in that Dany Boon film, have, in the main, been assigned to the sticks -- what's the crass thinking here? That everyone outside of Paris lives in a Bruno Dumont film where they keep livestock, and will therefore be bewitched by that (admittedly pretty damn rockin') rooster graphic?
We visited the Wepler cinema on back-to-back days, or at least twice in three days. The reason I know this is that they had their summer "3 days, 3 Euro" promotion on so it seemed rude not to exploit it, even if the films we saw were ones we could quite easily have caught at home (although we wouldn't have -- over the past few years, we've spent far more time as a couple going to see films on overseas holidays than we have in UK cinemas). In cosmopolitan, not-remotely-bucolic Paris it's generally not too hard to find a film that's playing in English, and the Pathé Wepler normally has something on in this tongue. The two films we saw (one of which starred a pre-Madge-bothering Freddie Highmore, the other that greeting-faced guy from The Office who was only ever tolerable in that show) provide good examples of how this cinema (and quite a few others in the city) tends to operate: French dubs abound for earlier screenings of the day, but from evening onwards films often revert to their original languages (with French subs, natch).
The cinema is absolutely fine -- I have no real strong feelings about it, to be honest -- and is an easy walk from Montmartre, so if you like you can pop in to the famous cemetery before or after the film and see François Truffaut's grave. The ticket booths are on a fairly noisy corner, and once you've barked your requirements through the glass you will either be heading through the doors right next to where you've grabbed your ticket or will have to nip round the corner to another set of doors, depending on what screen you're headed for. If your destination is the further away entrance the ticket seller will normally gesture in that direction (I've deduced this after a full 2 visits), or the worst case is that you'll try the wrong door and a member of staff will prod you towards the other entrance -- you'll make more friends than Mark Zuckerberg as you fight against the throng of people who actually know where they're going.
Website
