Scenes in Paris in 1969

This post features a reasonably long 15 minute clip which was taken in Paris, France during the year 1969.

I bought the film a couple of years ago when I first started collecting home movies. It consists of 200 feet of standard 8 footage which, when you consider film was sold in 50 ft lengths and was fairly expensive, represents a pretty solid outlay for the person making the film. I guess they decided that a trip to Paris was definitely worth recording and were probably seasoned film makers – anyone with only limited experience would probably have just bought a single roll of film to record in case they messed it up.

After I’d scanned the film and digitised it I found that the resultant clip was very shaky and jittery which made it difficult to watch,  so I’ve actually run this clip through a shake reduction process to re-centre the images¹. This has proved to be very effective and makes the whole clip easier to watch, but it does have the effect of the edges of the film sometimes wandering about so please forgive this.

Paris in 1969

This is the video of Paris which was taken in 1969.

The first scenes are of the boat trip across to France from the UK, and this was some of the most jittery and shaky footage of the whole film. Once the water scenes are over the film moves to street shots within the city of Paris and include images of a policeman directing traffic. I noticed in the queue of cars waiting is a very typical Citroen which for me sums up 1960s France.

There are some shots of a newspaper stand, but unfortunately the image is not good enough to make out the date of the newspapers – how I wish it were possible to zoom in and remove the fuzziness as spies in the cinema can!

I guess it would be obvious that a film shot in Paris would feature the Eiffel tower and this clip doesn’t disappoint in that regard. As well as appearing in the film from the ground level, the photographer also ventures up the tower and records some footage looking over the city of Paris. Again it is unfortunate that the definition of the picture makes some of the city look simply mushy.

Throughout the film a couple can be seen in many of the scenes, so I have assumed they are related to the photographer – possibly their parents, or could be another couple who are friends. One of the interesting things about viewing these clips is trying to work out the important people in the film – or at least important to the photographer.

1. For anyone who is interested in the software I used it is Movari video editor [↩]