Smiley's People - Paris Locations (Part Four)

Welcome once again to our on-going series of articles about the Paris locations featured in Smiley's People. As Chris and I prepare these articles we frequently debate how many parts we think this series will eventually contain. The projected number keeps going up because each new chapter throws up interesting details or discrepancies we weren't previously aware of. This part is no exception - one location, long thought to be ticked off on our list, turned out to be somewhere else entirely.

We do hope you are enjoying these articles - if you'd like to get in touch with us feel free to email  guinnessissmiley@icloud.com We're always delighted to hear from people who admire these series. 

That's enough from me, so it's over to Chris as we get back to business...

At 10:32 we see Madame Ostrakova on the Paris Metro going home from the Embassy. 

Notice the girders out of the window on the left of shot, all told there's six shown, firstly three smaller and then three larger. The latter must be in place to support the elevated tracks over a wider span and indeed, below a road can be glimpsed. When I first saw it I thought I'd be able to identify the location easily and even jumped to the conclusion that it must be at Gare d'Austerlitz because I saw some girders in this video filmed in 1988.

However I then discovered that many of Paris's metro lines have elevated stretches and ALL of them have those girders. Line 6 is nearly all elevated and I've spent weeks watching cab rides on youtube and cross referencing them with Streetview. Even though its photographed from a train travelling in the opposite direction, this video (recorded in 2020) reveals a building on the corner, on the right at 10:20, whose architecture looks similar to that seen in the episode.

That building led me to investigate the surrounding roads on Streetview and we're going to look at them first and then come back to the corner building later on. Here's the view from the carriage window and I think that that's Rue Miollis, Paris 15. 

The view looks peculiar to me because the buildings all seem to be on top of each other and I think that's another example of the foreshortening effect of the camera lens. We're going to look at three buildings in that shot, firstly the two four story buildings in the middle, then the high-rise building at the top and finally the corner of what appears to be a balcony at the bottom left.

Here's the aerial view annotated to show the area we are talking about.

These are the two four story buildings at 6 and 8 Rue Miollis on Streetview.

The high-rise building is in fact some way down Rue Miollis and whilst in many cities such an impressive building would have been given a name, in Paris it just seems to be identified by the numbers on the road in question, as shown on this Emporis website.

Here's a view of it, firstly from Rue Cepre (which is roughly from the same perspectve) and then from Rue Miollis itself.

Now for the white balcony with the black horizontal line on it. That must've been the building on the corner of Rue Miollis at number 50 Boulevard Garibaldi. You can see in this Streetview image from 2011 that it's been redeveloped, creating the Hotel Eiffel Villa Garibaldi at both that address and across Rue Miollis at number 48 Boulevard Garibaldi. 

In the foreground, is number 48 and here's another view of it illustrating it's position on the corner, together with a reminder of it's brief appearance in the episode...

And there's a problem. Looking closely in the episode there are little windows located between the floors, whereas in Streetview they're in line with them. Perhaps the building was rebuilt and the developer may have been permitted to alter something like windows on a stairwell. So that's not a match, but everything else correlates.

The first clue that led to me locating Ostrakova's journey was the change in the dimensions of the Metro's girders and although the girders throughout the length of Boulevard Garibaldi are obscured by trees, I did find another Streetview image that illustrates the difference in size.

By the way, we are aware that we've accumilated several followers in France. Bienvenue to you. Can you help us? I've searched for so long trying to identify what type of trees those are, planted to obscure the girders.

I've also been able to identify the rolling stock - it's the MA51 that was withdrawn in 1994.

There's another indication of a deleted scene here as the credits at the end of the episode include Louba Guetchikoff. Typically those credited would have had a speaking role. Perhaps Madame Ostrakova would have struck up a conversation with her fellow passenger concerning the photographs of her daughter.

At this point IMDb comes to the aid of the location enthusiast by advising that Madam Ostrakova visits the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral at 12 Rue Daru and the A la Ville de Petrograd cafe at number 13 Rue Daru, Paris 8. Here's the first view we see of the cathedral's interior at 10:54.

To check IMDb I started by looking for the icons highlighted above in photographs of the actual cathedral I'd found online. The photograph below shows icons, and above an arch too but they don't match those seen in the episode. 

And here's a 360 degree panorama of the interior I've found that's very useful for comparison purposes. I think it's unlikely that the decor will have changed much since 1981 but let's try the next screenshot.

We can't see the tops of the windows in the background but even if they are arched, windows (particularly two windows) don't appear in the above panorama either. That could a real church somewhere or Austen Sprigg's art department might have dressed up a building with some candles and a bit of ecclesiastical looking woodwork. Let's move on to the next shot.

Now that might be the top of one of those windows and there's a rose window which they definitely have in churches but again, such a window doesn't appear in the panorama, nor in the many views available online showing the outside of the cathedral. 

Today churches and even cathedrals are offering their services to the industry in support of that roof fund. They describe themselves as 'film friendly' and certainly back in the Eighties the Corporation could easily have found somewhere to film. Another part of the sequence features this image.

I think we're meant to conclude that Madame Ostrakova is looking at it whilst standing at the altar but again the picture isn't in the panorama. There's a lot of these pictures online but this particular one has intrigued a member of the clergy for some years.

I suspect that they couldn't get permission to film in the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral and found somewhere else. Location enthusiasts will know that it's all about the search terms you enter and it took me a couple of days until I stopped entering 'Russian Orthodox' and just tried 'Orthodox', before I caught sight of a tiny picture that looked familiar:

And there it was, Saint Sophia's Greek Orthodox Cathedral, Moscow Road, Bayswater, London W2 4LQ

The irony that it was another London building standing in for one in Paris wasn't lost on me and here's a look inside courtesy of Vic Stefanu. You'll notice all the features indicated - the icons, the arches, the windows. It's a match!

Now IMDb isn't wrong per se, there are some shots of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral on Rue Daru but the interiors aren't filmed there. IMDb confirms the next location accurately though. A la Ville de Petrograd Cafe across the road from the cathedral, Paris 8.

There is the Cathedral to the right (above) and there is the cafe on the left. As you can see Rue Daru isn't exactly a Paris Boulevard. Not that the Cathedral isn't an immensely impressive building, here's the view in the opposite direction, with the cafe on the right.

Comparisons can also be made with this screenshot from the episode at 11:44 where Kenneth Macmillan's camera is positioned within the cafe where the men are playing chess. The sign can be seen over the door on the building at number eleven but it is missing in the Streetview image, the ground floor now being a chemists.

Next time we take up the story when Madame Ostrakova is prevented from adhering to her arrangements by the intervention of Moscow Centre.