A Visit to a Performance at the Comédie-Française in Paris
And a Debt Repaid
Last night, I watched the movie Charade, starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, for the first time in over two decades.
I’d forgotten how good a film it was, but what really got me thinking was the fact it was set in Paris — my favourite city out of all the many places I’ve travelled to over the years.
In fact, when I lived in England I used to visit, with my first wife, for a week’s holiday once a year.
It’s always interesting to see places you’ve visited in movies, although it can be disappointing too if they don’t show the parts you know or they get the geography wrong (as in The Spy Who Loved Me, for example).
But with Paris, a city I’ve spent many days walking in, around areas most tourists don’t ever see, it’s all pretty familiar, if not in detail then in ambience.
It was near the end of the movie, a scene set in the Palais Royal, that it brought back the most memories, because not only is it a place I’ve ambled through on numerous occasions, it’s also home, in one corner, to the Comédie-Française, perhaps one of the most famous theatres in France, if not the world.
My wife, who was fluent in French, had always wanted to go to the Comédie-Française, and for some…
