Paris lockdown leaves streets stuck in 1942 for abandoned film set

Residents confined to their homes in a corner of northern Paris have been plunged back to one of the darkest moments of the city’s past.

Two streets – Rue Berthe and Rue Androuet – in Montmartre in the shadow of the Sacré-Coeur basilica have been left in a timewarp of the Nazi occupation after they were returned to 1942 for a film set.

The film-makers were forced to abandon the set when France went into coronavirus lockdown, leaving the streets with fake facades for corset shops, tailors, a shoe repairer and mirror-maker, and dotted with war propaganda, anti-communist tracts and signs in German.

The film, Adieu Monsieur Haffmann, directed by Fred Cavayé, is an adaptation of an award-winning play telling the story of Joseph Haffmann, a Jewish jeweller in Paris at the start of the war who is forced to hide in the cellar of his shop as the Nazis take over the city.

Described as a black comedy, the film stars Daniel Auteuil, who despite dozens of international films to his name including 1999’s The Lost Son, is still best remembered for his role in the 1980s films Jean de Florette with Gérard Depardieu and Manon des Sources, with Emmanuelle Béart. The film is due out next year and the set was supposed to have been dismantled last weekend.

Instead, it provides an eerie reminder of a bygone era when the streets were similarly deserted by many in fear of the German occupiers. A sign in the window of the fake pharmacy: “Dear customers, because of a lack of deliveries certain articles are out of stock”, is an example of life imitating art imitating life.

Paris was occupied by Nazi Germany from 14 June 1940 until 24 August 1944. The puppet French state under Marshal Philippe Pétain relocated to Vichy, while Gen Charles de Gaulle organised the Free French and Resistance forces from London. During Nazi control of the city, French police rounded up Jews who were sent to the death camps.

Meanwhile, the nightclubs of Montmartre remained open, profiting from a new clientele of German officers and soldiers, while night-time brought black marketeers on to the ’ streets.

Tim McInerney, a university lecturer in British and Irish cultural history in Paris and co-host of the Irish Passport podcast, tweeted: “Just in case quarantined Paris wasn’t disorientating enough: my neighbourhood was being used as a film set when the lockdown hit. Now the whole block has been left frozen in 1941”.

He later said: “Paris is of course haunted by the legacy of the occupation. There’s a school down the road that has a plaque telling you how many Jewish children were deported.

“The dark shadows are already there so to recreate it is quite unsettling, even more so as a lot of things written on the posters are happening right now. One poster [from the film set] said everyone must keep off the streets between 11.30m and 4am, which seemed a little close to home as just before I’d had to show my permit [to be outside] to the police. It’s a strange situation.”

He said parts of the film set had been pillaged and ripped down by souvenir hunters.