What Lives On, What’s Left Behind
By Kaveh Jalinous
Paris’ Gaumont Champs-Elysées is gone. Its six theaters, spread over three floors, sit empty. Its 1,597 seats have been occupied for the last time. Its lights are dimmed. Its doors are sealed. With its deceptively hidden entrance–on a crowded sidewalk, sandwiched between open and shuttered storefronts, maybe no one has even noticed. But for those who frequented the French national chain’s cinema–the equivalent to Times Square’s AMC, albeit much smaller–the empty marquee is devastating. There used to be posters, there used to be movies, there used to be the possibility of escaping from everything–from the city, from the world, from ourselves. Now, there’s nothing.
The Gaumont Champs-Elysées is gone. Yet, when I walk by its building, I still turn to look at its empty frame, convincing myself that it could still be there, waiting for me to enter its doors.
Le Bretagne cinema, located in Montparnasse, after its closure. Image by Kaveh Jalinous. Paris, France. December 2023.
Cinema facilitates a culture of death and rebirth. Throughout its history, every process of cinema production and exhibition has been phased out and replaced in one way or another. The Lumière brothers’ cinema of actualities was replaced by the cinema of attractions, which was replaced, in turn, by narrative cinema. Talking pictures replaced silent ones when ample sound recording technology was manufactured. Digital cinema replaced analog projection when innovation allowed for it.
Every cycle is driven by nostalgia–we only value what used to be when it’s gone. There’s a reason why people crave seeing the early films and line up to watch films projected in 35mm. There’s a sense of temporarily re-claiming what we can’t have anymore–and for younger generations, a sense of participating in what was once the norm. We chase the second lives of what we perceive as no longer present. Our Lazurus exists in the resurrection of objects and ideas, driven by our intense yearning to cling to the past as the present and future grow increasingly unbearable.
Nowhere is this cycle of nostalgia more at play than in the movie theater. The cinema exhibition space has constantly been forced to adapt in response to changes in the medium itself. The most evident of these changes was the transition from the single-screen cinema–the picture palace–to the multiplex. The origins of the multiplex are hazy, but the multiplex as we know it–a single location housing many screens, all showing different films–is a product of the 1980s. With it, the picture palace became obsolete. No one wanted to travel to a venue that only screened one movie. There was no variety. As such, picture palaces became nearly extinct. Some were destroyed, and others were converted for different uses (churches and ballrooms are primary examples). After the destruction came nostalgia.
Amidst the fleet of newly built/growing AMC multiplexes and disappearing/vanishing repertory theaters, we long for a time when the cinema was visible to all, positioned on the public streets where passersby would stare in awe at the marquee with names of stories and dreams being screened inside, instead of being forced into endlessly-floored malls or stuffed underground. A time when going to the cinema meant visiting different physical spaces, and geographic locations, not just different floors. The nostalgia of the lost movie theater always comes back to the single-screen picture house because that was our only option for decades.
But should Gaumont’s closing warrant the same level of nostalgia and sadness? After all, even though it didn’t begin as a multiplex, by the time it closed, it had become one. When I think of a disappearing movie theater, why do I feel the same as if I lost a single-screen palace? It’s not even a question of something—a place or memory—that is lost; multiplexes exist all around us.
No—my sorrow arises for a different reason. The closing of this Champs-Elysées cinema is more complicated than simply dimming the lights and locking the doors. It is more than a warning sign for both the multiplex and the movie theater as a whole.. The fermeture represents a large turning point in French cultural history–and, by extension, global cultural history. Movie theaters have been removed from the center of entertainment dominance, replaced by an unlikely, out-of-field villain: consumerism. Sadly, the modern-day Champs-Elysées is an accurate representation of this phenomenon.
When it comes to contemporary movie theaters, Paris is unlike most other cities. Today, it’s not too difficult to find single-screen or double-screen cinemas because many of them have been funded by arts grants or the government to continue operating. Sure, the number of existing theaters isn’t nearly as high as it used to be. But, because of a genuine interest in maintaining what once existed–and the valuation of cinema as an art form worth dedicating spaces for–many have been able to live on.
For the most part, Parisian movie theaters also sit clustered in neighborhoods rather than spread across the city. As such, instead of determining which specific theater to go to–be its single screen or multiplex–you only need to determine the area. Chances are you’ll find a theater within that area showing what you’d like to see. Today, neighborhoods like Montparnasse or Saint-Germain/Odéon, both located on the city’s bohemian left bank (the South side of the Seine River), house eight and 14 cinemas each. Within these areas, all the theaters rest within about 10 walking minutes of one another. Consequently, and perhaps intentionally, these neighborhoods are dedicated to the cinematic medium–providing a choice between a dazzling mix of new releases and smart repertory programming. Different places show different things, but together, these quartiers can act as a singular giant, quasi-interactive exhibition space, providing audiences with a well-founded, welcome illusion of choice.
For decades, the Champs-Elysées was one of these neighborhoods. Since its inception as one of Paris’ most prestigious, famed, and premier thoroughfares, the wide avenue has always provided its visitors with options. In the past, visitors or residents could expect various entertainment options: cinemas, live theater spaces, cabarets, and globally-recognized retail stores. You could come to Champs-Elysées for one or more distractions the area offered. The Parisian government established rules and committees to retain the balance, and large, globalized chains were even denied permission to open locations on the street so that the avenue could retain its identity. For years, it was somewhat able to. When the street’s single-screen cinemas transitioned into larger multiplexes, the sheer number of theaters within a confined area allowed the avenue to remain a neighborhood of cinema–just in a grander, more commercial sense. Then, things changed.
In 2010, there were five theaters on the Champs-Élysées: Two owned by Gaumont, two owned by UGC (France’s other large exhibition chain), and one, double-screen independent cinema, Publicis Cinémas, housed in the basement of the tourist-leaning “Publicis Drugstore.” Their marquees towered over the shops around them, taking up valuable space on their blocks to display massive posters of the films in their theaters. None of the theaters were perfect–how could any multiplex on a city’s most-crowded street be?–but they still attracted crowds and played a wide variety of cinema–blockbusters, independent features, foreign films, French films.
By 2020, three were left. Gaumont closed one of its theaters in 2016, and UGC decided not to renew its rent after COVID-19 shuttered cinemas throughout France and the world.
In 2024, only two remain: a UGC theater–likely staying open because its principal auditorium, the 862-seat Grand Normandie, is one of the continent’s, and world’s, largest screening venues–and Publicis.
Now, only two marquees hang over the street. The role of Champs-Elysées has transitioned from opportunity of glitz and glamor if you knew where to look–into one solely of consumerism. Somewhat uniquely, the death of these movie theaters wasn’t caused by inter-industry factors. Neither Gaumont nor the UGC, regardless of their financial backing and corporate ownership, shut down because of streaming services or changing entertainment interests. They shuttered because of altered, newfound consumer interests.
Film is not at the center of culture anymore, but that isn’t surprising. The Champs-Elysées’ transition can be seen as a representation of shopping and consumerism officially taking up the center mantle of our culture. That’s what entertainment is now. It’s not the marquee, the auditorium, the thrill of stepping into a room and letting the world fade around you, transitioning into a vision of a new one. It’s the thrill of looking at products from afar, looking for soul in high-budgeted window displays, and gazing at things that we wish we had, things that we know we never will, and things that we convince ourselves can fill the void left by our desires for escapism.
The product and the act of purchasing products are the all-encompassing sources of entertainment now, because these actions give the false impression that things can be stable, that they can be long-lasting. Cinema doesn’t last. It dies, changes, and morphs into unpredictable and unstable forms. It can never guarantee longevity–it can’t remain constant enough to do so. In the case of the Champs-Elysées, cinema’s sense of riskiness and excitement could no longer fight against consumerism's stability and mass appeal. So, it had to go.
Maybe the other Parisian cinema neighborhoods will remain untouched. After all, they’re situated in better areas for artistic projects to thrive–with less threat from big-name stores, commanding tourist interests, or unaffordable rent increases; in areas like the former Champs-Elysées. But, with the disappearance of Champs-Elysées’ cinemas, Paris’ Right Bank has lost its premier cinema neighborhood. The theaters left near the Avenue are all hidden on side streets, only accessible to those looking for them. Cinema is no longer a commanding element of that area. It’s nowhere to be found.
Even writing this now, I feel a crippling sense of falsity, of hypocrisy, writing about the horror of the dying movie theater through the lens of two already-false things: the multiplex, and a street that exists solely for satisfying people’s illusory desires, longings and false necessities. But, as heartbreaking as the death of the single-screen movie theater is to me–and the affinity I feel seeing old photos of the theaters that once were–there’s something that feels more pressing about the death of a multiplex. After all, all of my experiences growing up and falling in love with cinema have been produced by multiplexes. And, in many ways, the life and design of the multiplex have interested me just as much as the films playing within them.
I remember sitting in the Gaumont’s vast, 500-seat auditorium for the first time as a young child, wondering how a structure so large could be hidden in plain sight on a street where space is so valuable. I remember revisiting the theater in 2022, to see some average horror movie, shocked at how a single film could draw hundreds of people on a Sunday afternoon. Was it the desire for companionship, the need to see a movie with a crowd, or the lack of anything better to do? I always wondered why people would go to the tourist-crammed streets of Champs-Elysées to see a movie of all places when there were smaller, quieter theaters nearby. But, looking back at it, I now realize that I was one of those who chose to frequent the multiplex. And I don’t know what drew me there. Maybe it was convenience, maybe it was nostalgia. Maybe I knew, during all the times I would go to quasi, eerily empty auditoriums, that something this good couldn’t last much longer. Or, maybe I put more faith in it as I slowly watched the street’s other theaters close down, choosing to cherish what remained instead of paying attention to the globalized restaurants or high-fashion stores that kept opening in fallen cinemas’ places.
It doesn’t matter anymore why I chose to go there. It just lives on in my memory, in its beautiful ugliness, its ability to look like every other movie theater in the world yet retain a sense of uniqueness, of surprising personality. And, in that sense, within its consideration as a place that harnesses and recalls a specific nostalgia for a specific person, I am saddened by the closure of a multiplex and what it represents.
But, as it often happens when one spends time away from a familiar place, I also feel the conventions and quirks of the movie theater fading away from my consciousness. I fail to retain the smallest of details. Where was the concession stand? What did the cinema’s smaller theaters look like? Was it always as dark in the hallways, or was that my imagination, a falsity of my memory? At what point does my recall of the theater become one large blur, a projected image of what I think it used to look and feel like?
I think the process of reality fading has already begun, as I start picking up the pieces of my overdrawn, overdramatic sadness and move on. Maybe, as I visit other Parisian neighborhoods where once theaters and cinema were a routine presence, part of the urban social fabric, I will fall into the same trap I did with the Gaumont Champs-Elysées—valuing the cinemas and the neighborhoods because I fear—or maybe know—that one day, they may cease to exist, missing by anticipation what is bound to disappear. Or maybe I will experience them for what they are at that moment: places where I can create new memories–some of which will live on, others will fade away. Their fate, and mine, remains unpredictable.
The Gaumont Champs-Elysées is gone. And when I walk by its building, I no longer turn to look at its empty frame, convincing myself that it could still be there, waiting for me to enter its doors. I just keep moving.
____
Editor’s Note: This piece was completed before news that one of the two theaters left on Paris’ Avenue des Champs-Elysées, the UGC Normandie, may be closing in June 2024.