Smiley's People - Paris Locations (Part Six)
In his sixth article exploring the Paris locations of Smiley’s People, Chris will be spending quite a bit of time looking at Karla's attempt to tie up the loose ends left by Oleg Kirov. In the words of Saul Enderby, Karla tries to 'get the toothpaste back in the tube' by arranging for Madame Ostrakova to have a high-speed encounter with a Peugeot 504. We'll see exactly where the film makers created this convincing on-screen 'accident'.
But we're getting ahead of ourselves - let’s first go back to where we last left Madame Ostrakova…
At 53:36 director Simon Langton has placed the camera within the courtyard of 6 Rue de Jarente (Paris 4) so that we see Madame Ostrakova heading out, wearing her overcoat and boots. As we will see in successive articles, her choice of attire isn't entirely by chance. She's carrying a flat iron in that shopping bag which she hopes may offer some defence from the officials watching her. There's the Auberge de Jarente opposite and then Official Number 1 walks into shot.
In the next shot we see that Official Number 1, wearing his brown coat, has caught up with Madame.
In the shot above, although the street name may be indistinct it is Rue Fizeau and the name on the building to the right at number 4, Rue du Sommet des Alpes is F. Barbaud. (We'll see shortly that the Blu-ray presentation reveals information that enables us to confirm this.)
Rue Fizeau - hang on, haven't we been here before? Yes we have. Whilst the location chosen for Madame Ostrakova's apartment is in Paris 4, when she turned the corner, through the magic of television, she was transported across the French capital to Paris 15 as detailed in the following annotated maps.
In part two of this series of articles we examined the location of the bus stop scene outside the horse meat shop at 7 Rue Fizeau. In the article, we referred to this website and here's a close up of one of its photographs;
The 2011 street view below shows that the plot has been redeveloped as apartments.
Because the action was photographed on the pavement, the aspect isn't a perfect match but the 'no entry' road sign remains. The windows on the building at number 20 Rue Fizeau may look different but it's just that that the shutters are closed, the upper story having been painted. Then in 2018 it was also redeveloped.
And today it looks like this...
If we refer back to the shot showing Madame Ostrakova walking up the street with Official Number 1 behind her, we can see a blue awning to the left that bares the name La Parisienne. No, it's not a newsagents. The newspaper is Le Parisien. This is a boulangerie, a bakers, and you can see the cages on the street for the transport of loaves. The street view below, from the opposite direction, shows that the business has now closed down. A number of articles mention the gentrification of the Paris suburbs.
The shot above marks the first appearance of Official Number 2, with the black coat and beard. Whilst VHS and DVD releases of Smiley's People lacked the definition to identify the street name, the Blu-ray release finally reveals that this is Rue du Lieuvin (Paris 15). (It's this piece of information that enables us to reconstruct the precise locations of all the events that occur in the lead up to the accident.)
The above street view looks across to Rue Fizeau on the left (disappearing towards the location of the bus stop scene) and Rue de Cherbourg on the right. The red brick building, the backdrop to the road accident that we're leading up to, is a primary school.
As Official Number 2 crosses Rue du Lieuvin we get a better view of Rue Fizeau behind him and Rue du Sommet des Alpes in the distance. At this point the Third Official appears driving the Peugeot 504.
Our old friends at IMCDb, the Internet Movie Car Database specify a number of the vehicles in this scene but none are reviewed so enthusiastically as the Fourgonette in the background.
This time Kenneth MacMillan has taken his camera into the back seat of the 504 and we look north, along Rue du Lieuvin towards Rue des Morillons in the distance. Left to right, Official Number 2 walking in the gutter, Madame Ostrakova and Official Number 1.
At 54:33 we see Official Number Two splashing through the water in the gutter that has appeared to confound the production's continuity. The water is there as a part of Paris' street cleaning system.
And just after that we see both officials rounding on their quarry as the three of them reach the corner of Rue du Bocage, where the accident is to be staged. None of the officials are credited in the episode because they are, in fact, members of L'Équipe Remy Julienne and the stunt arranger is credited instead.
Today, the location has hardly changed.
In this next shot, Kenneth MacMillan's camera is facing in a northerly direction and a van can be glimpsed emerging from Rue du Bessin on the right. By the way, Official Number 1 is a giant. I met Eileen Atkins last year at Sevenoaks School where she was promoting Will She Do? In her autobiography she remarks that 5'7'' marked her as too tall for some parts she would have liked.
And then, shooting in the same direction, again from the back seat of the Peugeot. Madame Ostrakova must have hit that windscreen hard enough to break it.
...and the viewer is offered an idea of the victim's experience.
Here's a film of a real road accident. It's called a Roof Vault, you'll notice how much more untidy the real thing is. Fortunately the article assures the reader that the victim wasn't seriously hurt.
Poor Madame. And poor Dame Eileen Atkins too. We know that it's a stunt but surely there's only so much that M. Julienne can do to mitigate the effect of filming such a frightening road accident, especially when perpetrated by Moscow Centre.
Next time we're not going to just move onto the next Paris location in the adaptation. No, instead, we're going to look again at this accident and we're going to do it from an entirely different perspective...
Images from Smiley's People (c) BBC 1982
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