The filming was probably 1963 and walking by the Seine without cars was a luxury to see, and that possibility now all but lost. And that ordinary people on low wages could live in the centre of Paris and have attractive one room studios that now would be impossible. Trains you could get on while they are moving, and individual cafes that had that wonderful thing, atmosphere. Paris for the people who worked in shops, and Jean-Louis Trantignant plays a talentless artist who paints posters for sleazy cinemas. He is penniless most of the time and yet, to use the word luxury again he has the freedom of the city where he lives and not the suburbs where he would be now. ' Les Pas Perdus ' is worth seeing for the filming, and the ease with which the camera takes us on a tour of the place as it once was. For this alone it is worth seeing. As for the plot there is hardly one at all, and it solely revolves around the passionate affair between the artist and an older, richer woman. Michele Morgan plays her, but I found very little chemistry between the two leads. The dialogue trivial, and without giving away what eventually happens I would like to say it was predictable and stayed well within the moral conventions of the time. But to see Paris back then gave me great pleasure.
Review of Les pas perdus
