La Victorine
Stéphane Quinson
1998 - 52 min - Betacam SP - Couleur et Noir & Blanc - France

Marcel Carné set up a décor here which was 900 metres long for "Les Enfants du Paradis". François Truffaut re-used the décor for "La Folle de Chaillot", in 1972, for "La Nuit américaine". René Clément defined himself as a "demolisher" of La Victorine studios since he had the partitions knocked down to extend his décor for "Les Maudits". Abel Gance, Jean Cocteau, Henri Verneuil, Peter Ustinov... have all filmed in this "niche of the French cinema" as Annie Girardot calls it, this marvellous place according to Nathalie Baye who started here with... Truffaut.
La Victorine studios were created in Nice in 1919. Their goal was to offer the French cinema its own Hollywood.
Taken over many times but never abandoned, La Victorine belongs above all to its electricians, its decorators, its staffers, stage hands, builders, upholsterers and projectionists... They have all held on to La Victorine as if it was their own home and as, before them, their fathers did.