Follow the Paris Film Trails and explore famous or little-known parts of the city that have featured in classic movies. Over 650 lm shoots take place in Paris each year, and some 4,000 different outside loca tions have been used. The Film Trails are pocket guides for lovers of Paris and the cinema.

From poverty to glory, from triumph to despair, from the faubourgs of Paris to New York, this lm tells the dramatic story of la Môme, the great French singer Edith Piaf. Portraying a life that was more incredible than fiction, La Môme reveals the soul of the artist and the heart of the woman. Intimate, intense, fragile yet indestructible, totally dedicated to her art, Piaf is the most charismatic chanteuse of them all…

1. Boulevard Lannes

2. Olympia Variety Theater

3. Rue Androuet

4. Flight of steps, rue Drevet

5. Père-Lachaise Cemetery

6. Place Edith Piaf

A mixed group of men and women are waiting for Edith in the living room of her apartment on the Boulevard Lannes. In a few moments Charles Dumont will sit down at the piano to play Edith a new song he has written for her, “Non, je ne regrette rien”.

A discreet plaque on an apartment building at 67 Boulevard Lannes states that Edith Piaf lived here for the last ten years of her life. This wide, tree-lined boulevard running along the edge of the Bois de Boulogne is named after Jean Lannes (1769-1809), Marshal of France. The metro station at nearby Porte Dauphine is one of only two to have retained its original glass canopy designed by Hector Guimard.

1st January 1961. Everybody who is anybody has come for Piaf’s return to the Olympia stage. The house is full and the boxes are humming with expectation.

Opened in 1893 by Joseph Oller, founder of the Moulin Rouge, the Olympia is the oldest and most famous music hall in Paris. Later turned into a cinema, it reopened as a music hall in 1954 and was revived by artistic director Bruno Coquatrix. But in 1960 it was on the verge of bankruptcy. In desperation Coquatrix called Edith Piaf’s manager and the singer agreed to perform there for four months, thus saving the music hall from closure. With its sumptuous interior and the huge red letters displayed on its façade, the Olympia is a Paris landmark. All of the greatest French and international singers have appeared on its stage.

Edith is now a young woman of 20. She sings for her supper in the streets of Belleville, while her best friend Momone passes round the hat. A few coins are thrown from windows.

The Belleville faubourg of the 1930s was recreated in Montmartre for La Môme. At the heart of Montmartre village is the Place des Abbesses, where you will find the other metro station that still has its original Hector Guimard glass canopy. Take the Passage des Abbesses and you will come to the Rue Androuet, a typical small Montmartre street just below the Rue Lepic.

The streets of Montmartre hold no secrets for Edith. Day and night, she earns her living singing for passers-by and for audiences in the cabarets.

Montmartre is famous for its steep fl ights of stepsfl anked by old houses. Linking the Rue des Trois Frères with the Rue Gabrielle is the narrow Rue Drevet, named in honour of the engraver Pierre Drevet (1664- 1738), whose portraits included Louis XIV, Louis XV and the Prince de Conti. Many of the streets in Montmartre bear the names of their former owners, such as the Rue Gabrielle or the Rue des Trois Frères.

On 11 October 1963, Edith Piaf is buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery, surrounded by a vast crowd of over 40,000 people.

The Cimetière de l’Est, commonly known as the Cimetière du Père Lachaise, is the most famous and frequently visited cemetery in Paris. Covering 44 hectares, it contains 70,000 tombs and receives over two million visitors each year. It was designed in 1803 by Alexandre Théodore Brongniart, future architect of the Paris Stock Exchange. He conceived a new type of cemetery, creating a place of contemplation in a beautifully landscaped park. The perfect harmony between nature and sculpture makes for a remarkable open-air museum of 19th and 20th-century funerary art. Some of the tombs in Père Lachaise have achieved cult status, such of those of Oscar Wilde (89th division), Simone Signoret (44th division), and of course Edith Piaf (97th division).