A proposito di Nizza. La città e i suoi abitanti negli immaginari cinematografici (1930 95)

When at the cinema, Nice appears as a mise en abîme in itself, a set for interiors and exteriors, home to countless productions and film screenings. After the first attempts at the beginning of the century, it was Jean Vigo who changed perspective with À propos de Nice (1930), changed perspective, contrasting the modest houses of the modern city with the sumptuous buildings of the belle époque and, above all, staging the Promenade des Anglais, like a large terrace where men and women of all origins seemed to find peace in the Mediterranean sun. Starting from this model, in particular two are the paths followed by the cinema of the second half of the 20th century: on the one hand, Nice is the den of international luxury, for authors such as Alfred Hitchcock or Peter Ustinov; on the other, less frequently but in a more intriguing way, Nice and, especially, its Promenade, are the cradle of the contradictions of contemporary civilization, between wealth and poverty, well-being and discomfort, individual and mass, for authors such as Agnès Varda, Jacques Demy or, more recently, Raymond Depardon.