"Le Berlitz" à Paris: Train d' Enfer!

After leaving her native country Austria in the mid 60's, Marisa Mell was not sure where her movie home would be for the foreseeable future: would it be Germany, France, England, Spain or Italy? As a starlet still finding her way in the movie business, she had not much to say about accepting a role or not. She was just glad that a major part was offered to her, that it brought in the much needed money to pay the expenses of building a movie career, had a decent director and movie partner, who was not yet at the end of his career, with an acceptable story as a bonus, but that was not a necessity. So it wasn't strange that in the early years of her career, she worked in all the before mentioned countries as an aspiring actress, with even a short stop in South-Africa. Her first movie in France in 1965 was called "Train d'enfer", an agent movie with adventurous elements, directed by Gilles Grangier, most famous as a director at that time for working with Jean Gabin, the ultimate French character actor, regarded by his public as God on Earth. Her partner for this movie was also French actor Jean Marais, who was still en vogue after a stellar career in the 50's, as the hero in many pirate and musketeer movies, but who was also starting to feel his age at 52. He would make in that same period one last impression on his audience as Fantomas in the movie trilogy of the same name with the ultimate French comedian actor Louis de Funès.

The movie "Train d'Enfer" had its première on November 10th 1965 at cinema "Le Berlitz" in Paris, France, situated at 33, Boulevard des Italiens. Le Berlitz was regarded as an important first showing cinema with only "A"-graded movies shown in first run. Almost all famous French movies from that era got their première at Le Berlitz, like movies with sex kitten Brigitte Bardot in "La Femme et le Pantin" in 1959 or Louis de Funès in "La Grande Vadrouille" in 1966.

Every movie producer can tell you that the venue where your movie is shown on its opening night is a major part of getting the necessary box office or not. So opening in Le Berlitz in Paris was a major coup for Marisa Mell as the next step in her movie career that had all the elements of making it big first in Europe and then probably Hollywood. Looking at the numbers from the box office, the movie was not a major runaway success but did quite well when going to the movies was one of the most, if not the most popular spare time activities: 1.346.579 visitors in the whole of France, 92.304 visitors for cinema's with an exclusive screening, 228.099 visitors during the non exclusive screenings and 39.672 visitors in the first week in Paris

Le Berlitz was build on a historical site in Paris. The original site was a garden belonging to the Duke de Richelieu where, between 1758-1760, the Pavilion de Hanovre was build, along the Rue Neuve Saint-Augustin, which later became the Boulevard des Italiens.

But progress could not be stopped in Paris in 1932, so the venue had to make place for a more commercial building then keeping a historical one, because of its historic value, the French government decided to tear down the building stone by stone, and rebuild it again in the Parc de Sceaux, but only to the first floor, the second floor was deleted.

With the historical building removed, there was enough room to build a commercial office building with shops on the ground floor and a cinema with 200 seats for news reels. The building got the name "Palais Berlitz", after the language school located in the offices above the cinema. In the early 50's, the ground floor and underground were rebuild as a cinema with 1500 seats and a restaurant. It became one of the most important first run movie theaters in Paris. The design featured a huge curved lobby with stained glass windows leading to the big auditorium which had club armchairs. Due to two large columns in the auditorium space, the size of the screen was limited.

In the 1980's Gaumont took over the building and devided Le Berlitz, including the restaurant, into six small screens. Sadly the place lost its original design and was not very attractive, so the building was again completely rebuild in the 1990's with only the facade remaining. The design is much nicer now with six cinema's with at total seating capacity of 1137 seats. 

And so once again a bright landmark of Paris Nightlife disappeared forever. What a marvelous and magical time it must have been to walk through the streets of Paris at night in the Boulevard des Italiens, seeing from far already the brightly lit marquis of the cinema announcing the next-must-see movie "Train d'enfer" with enormous cut out boards of Marisa Mell and Jean Marais, against a back ground of painted action scenes of the movie and their names in bright red.

"Les femmes de ma vie" by Alain Delon

On November 8th 2010, the French cult actor Alain Delon became 75 years old. A milestone for the ultimate male sex symbol from France for more than 50 years since his debut on the silver screen at the age of 23. Alain Delon occupies a major place in the history of French and world cinema working with directors among others Luchino Visconti, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Melville, Michelangelo Antonioni and Louis Malle. Contrary to other male sex symbols of that time like Rock Hudson, Richard Chamberlain, Helmut Berger, Jean Marais... Alain Delon was primarely straight loving the most beautiful women of his era. To mark his 75th anniversary Alain Delon has written a book about the 200 (!) most influentual women in his life!

About those women he says:"Je ne serais rien sans les femmes, les actrices, les personnages, les héroïnes qu’elles incarnent. Dans ma vie, comme au cinéma, nous nous sommes aimés. Elles m’ont fait pleurer, elles m’ont fait crier!" Of all those women there are 4 women who became very important. First of all there was the Austrian actress Romy Schneider. “Avec Romy, les souvenirs sont doux et chaleureux. Ce que je garde à jamais dans mon cœur, c’est son sourire. Quand elle souriait, tout s’éclairait, se métamorphosait. En 1958, je suis débutant. Elle est déjà Sissi, star européenne. Elle n’a que 20 ans. Moi, j’étais un jeune loup que l’Indochine avait durci. Tout nous séparait. J’ai fait des essais concluants, et elle m’a choisi pour être à ses côtés dans Christine. Et puis, avec la complicité de mon ami Jean-Claude Brialy qui me manque tant, nous sommes devenus amants.” Then there was the French actress Mireille Darc. “Elle occupe une place à part dans cet album. C’est sans doute, parmi toutes les femmes que j’ai aimées, celle qui me connaît le mieux. Nous nous sommes connus en 1968 pendant le tournage de La piscine. J’étais séparé de Nathalie et je traversais une période compliquée avec des soucis extraprofessionnels. Elle a été là, m’a aimé, m’a soutenu, et ça a duré quinze ans. Et je peux dire que ça dure toujours. Elle reste quelque part la femme de ma vie parce que nos liens, notre complicité, sont inoxydables. Nous avons vécu tant de choses ensemble.”

Or other women like French sexy super star Brigitte Bardot or the Egyptian-French cult singer Dalida. "Nous nous sommes connus dans les années 50. Je vivotais, je travaillais la nuit et au petit matin je m’écroulais dans la petite chambre d’hôtel, rue Jean Mermoz, près des Champs-Élysées. Au même étage, dans une autre mansarde, habitait une certaine Yolanda Gigliotti. Elle venait du Proche-Orient avec, comme seul bagage, un titre de Miss Égypte 1954. Nous rêvions de gloire et de lumière. Dix ans plus tard, elle est devenue Dalida et moi Delon. Nous nous sommes retrouvés à Rome. Nous nous sommes aimés loin des regards et des paparazzis, et les rares témoins de notre liaison restèrent discrets pendant des années. Et quand Eddie Barclay et Orlando, le frère de Dalida, nous proposèrent d’enregistrer le fameux duo "Paroles", paroles, notre complicité était intacte. Je n’ai qu’un regret, qu’un remords, ne pas l’avoir eue au téléphone avant qu’elle ne décide d’en finir avec la vie.” And what about Marisa Mell?

In her own autobiograph "Coverlove" Marisa Mell opens her book with a long first chapter devoted to her liaison with Alain Delon which started in 1962 when both actors where on a plane to Belgrad, Yugoslavia she filming the movie "Dr." while he was on his way to film "La Fabuleuse Aventure de Marco Polo", a movie that he did not finish, and was recast with German actor Horst Bucholz, a main rival to Alain Delon in beefcake department at that time. On first sight Marisa Mell noticed the enormous sex appeal of the French actor and his iron will to seduce all the beautiful women around him. So she was also on his list! At first she tries to resist him but after five weeks even she could not and they became lovers. In her autobiography she then describes in detail her love affair with him, how passionate and animalistic he was in bed. But very soon Marisa Mell discovered that Alain Delon was not an one-women man. Very quickly she was replaced by other famous and non-famous beautiful women who adored him. During the next years they met occassionally during movie premières for movies he played in like "The Yellow Rolls-Royce" with Shirley McLaine in London. Marisa Mell even claims that Alain Delon was in her bed before and after he made a press-conference to announce his marriage to his fiancee Nathalie Barthélemy, later better known as Nathalie Delon. I wonder if there is a photo of Marisa Mell in this book among the 200 other women taken from his private photo archive?

UPDATE July 28th 2011: There are no photos of Marisa Mell in the book "Les femmes de ma vie" by Alain Delon.