[CLOSED] Le Casino

The expansive Nausicaá aquarium (pictured above) now stands on the site which once hosted Boulogne's first postwar casino, which in turn housed a cinema for a few short years.  Prior to WW2, Boulogne was the home of one of the most beautiful casinos in France but it, like virtually everything in and around the port, was destroyed in the bombardment of the war.  Once the conflict ended, the mass rebuilding of Boulogne commenced and the replacement casino, which was situated not far from where its more ornate predecessor had once stood, was completed in the late 1950s.  

The new casino had been in operation for just a few years when it was used, fairly prominently, as one of the locations in Alain Resnais' Muriel, or The Time of Return, which was released in 1963; in the same year, Johnny Hallyday played a concert at the venue.  Nearly a decade on from Resnais' masterpiece, a cinema was established inside the casino, but the venture was short-lived; back then, there was plenty of competition in Boulogne -- much of it located in the more accessible town centre -- and this was reflected in the beachfront cinema's sparse attendances.  The casino itself operated for a good many years following the closure of the cinema, before the entire building was razed in the late 1980s so that work could begin on Europe's largest aquarium, which opened in 1991.

[CLOSED] L'Eden

There's something rotten in the city of Havre -- at least, there seems to be if you've followed the shenanigans surrounding the closure of two of its cinemas, both of which were shut down within a year or so of each other (you can read about Les Clubs' misfortunes here).  All of this occurred at the beginning of this decade, a period in which I was no stranger to Le Havre yet, to my regret, I never made it to a screening at L'Eden -- although I did visit the striking Volcan building which housed the cinema.  The Volcan is the home of France's very first maison de la culture, which opened in 1961 at what is now the excellent Museé Malraux, before moving on to the Volcan via the Théâtre de l'Hôtel Ville.

Museé Malraux

The maison's first site was where Jacques Rivette's legendary Out 1 enjoyed its first public screening, and it's only right that the museum now carries the name of the man who, in launching the maison de la culture initiative, helped make the French arts scene a lot less Paris-centric.  André Malraux was appointed France's first Minister of Cultural Affairs by Charles de Gaulle, and in 1962 both men survived assassination attempts.  The attempt on Malraux's life -- which nonetheless had dreadful consequences in that it resulted in the blinding of a four-year-old girl -- was carried out by the OAS, a right-wing organisation vehemently opposed to Algerian independence; in 1963, Malraux's future son-in-law Alain Resnais would make the staggering Muriel, a film heavily informed by the Algerian War.

The Volcan's temporary home: la Gare du Havre-Maritime

But I digress.  The Volcan opened in 1982, with the cinema operating right from the off until January 2010, when it "temporarily" closed for renovations which were set for the following year.  Promptly after this closure, the cinema was told that the keys needed to be returned for good; apparently the fermeture was actually definitive (although the building actually did undergo a makeover, during which the Volcan set up a temporary home at one of Havre's old train stations).  The reason given by the suits for the sudden winding up of L'Eden was -- wait for it -- that three security agents (!) would be required to watch over each screening.  Unless they were planning to screen nothing other than workprints from the likes of Scorsese and Tarantino, why on earth would such security measures be needed?  There's something very, very wrong about all of this -- the justification for L'Eden's closure seems not only completely implausible, but ill-thought-out; an Allociné interview with the cinema's ex-directrice Ginette Dislaire makes for a most interesting read.  Oh, I almost forgot to mention: a shiny new 12-screen Gaumont had opened in the city just a few months prior to the curtain coming down on L'Eden.

Website (for Le Volcan)

Cinéma Alhambra

Films: La fille coupée en deux (2007), Camille Claudel 1915 (2013), Aimer, boire et chanter (2014), Ma Loute (2016), Ivan Tsarévitch et la Princesse Changeante (2016), Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), Jeanne (2019)

Screens: 4  Ticket price: 7.50€

In the days when we first started going to France on a regular basis (the late 90s), I remember walking past this place when it was a functioning cinema, but not too long into our French sojourns it closed its doors.  I expect this had something to do with The Man (AKA Gaumont -- see post below) muscling into town and setting up shop in Cité Europe -- it figured that as that mall drew shoppers away, Magneto-style, from Calais town centre, then cinemagoers would go the same way.

Thankfully, a few years on and the cinema re-opened as the Alhambra (not sure what its name was before), a lovely 4-screen establishment that crams in a pile of good films thanks to some obviously quite talented programmers.  I seem to recall that the earlier, pre-Gaumont version of this cinema was a more commercial venture, and though I wouldn't like to bet on it, I got the feeling it was pretty much French-language stuff only.  The Alhambra, unlike The Man along the road, shows all films in their original languages (the exception being kids' films, which are dubbed into French if they aren't in it to begin with).  Which makes it a great place to catch the latest Woody Allen film in the event that you can't wait years for it to open in the Anglophone world (and by which time he'll probably have another film out in France).

It's not too often that we've stayed over in Calais and therefore we tend to have trouble fitting in a screening there, but for my birthday in 2007 we (meaning my wife) decided to make a weekend of it and booked a nice hotel with a friendly dog (read that however you want -- was the dog resident in the hotel, or did he help us make the booking?  I know which is the more tantalising).  It meant we had time for a fine meal and could also catch an evening screening of the new Claude Chabrol (RIP), one of my favourite directors.  I thought the film was great, and my mood was helped no end by the superb experience that is the Alhambra -- friendly box-office staff, fellow audience members who clearly mean business, and an atmospheric, comfortable interior.  And if the excitement of this place gets too much and you get caught short, you don't have to traipse for miles to find the toilets and subsequently miss a big chunk of the film, as they're actually situated inside the auditorium.  Nice.  Although, if nature does call, everyone knows what you've been doing.  And they'll strike up a chant to that effect.  In French.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time at the Alhambra, and it's a pity that potential visits there rarely seem to work out timing-wise. It was great to see a Chabrol film on its initial release in a French cinema, and thankfully it was this one and not his next (sadly also his swansong), Bellamy -- which to me was the worst film he'd made in nigh on 20 years. 

Update:  In August 2012 the cinema decided to sell off all the film posters they'd had since, well, way back when.   This rather unique event merited a Calais excursion in itself, and a friend and I spent an afternoon combing through the endless, orderless piles in search of gems; hard work indeed, especially given that unfolding/re-folding most of these was a slightly tricky job as each tended to be the size of a football pitch.  As it turned out, gems weren't hard to come by and I even found one for the Chabrol I'd seen there, which made for a very nice touch.  I also managed to get a few posters for other films I'd seen in French cinemas -- how many can you spot in the gallery?

Update: In mid-2015 there was another poster sale; peruse the bounty here.

Update: May 2016 saw me visit the Alhambra and chalk up my 50th French cinema experience.  Of course, it's possible that I can't count and I'm still on fortysomething, but having gone through these posts multiple times I'm pretty sure I'm at the half-century mark.  Fittingly, this landmark figure was achieved via a great film (Bruno Dumont's Ma Loute) at a fine cinema.  I honestly can't see me getting another 50 in as it's taken 12 years to get to this point, so I may as well savour this moment...

Update: September 2019 -- more posters, y'all.

Update: October 2019 -- yet more posters.  I've now managed to get the cinema's poster for every film I've seen there.  But should the completist in me jeopardise this fragile status by seeing another film there, knowing that I'm not guaranteed to get hold of the poster?  Of course I should.

Website