Music meets film at Paris festival

The festival, which takes place on the summer solstice, is celebrating this year a hundred years of music and cinema. Taking a collaboration between the French composer Camille St-Saëns and the directors André Calmettes and Charles Le Bargy for the 1908 film “L’assassinat du Duc de Guise” as its departure point, the festival is set to pay hommage to musicians who, the program states, have “dedicated their talent to the seventh art.”

This high-minded theme means that as well as the usual crowds of enthusiastic amateur musicians lining the Paris streets, there will be special events in the courtyard of the Palais Royal in the first arrondisement.

Pour sa 27è édition, la Fête de la Musique est placée sous le signe du cinéma, et plus précisément du centenaire de la musique de film. En effet, si la musique a toujours été associée au cinéma, Camille Saint-Saëns fut le premier compositeur de renom à écrire une musique spécialement pour un film en 1908.

In the fifth and thirteenth arrondisements, the musée de la sculpture en plein air, an open air sculpture park by the banks of the Seine, provides a sophisticated stopping point to enjoy music while admiring works by Brancusi and Gilioli. For a trendier vibe, up in the tenth arrondisement the canal Saint Martin, lined with bars, cafés and restaurants, provides a hip destination for strolling, eating and people-watching while soaking up a variety of sounds.

And if hearing the umpteenth strains of “La Vie en Rose” trickling over the canal, while lights sparkle on the water and picnickers share cheese and wine, still leaves you cynical, then you can always fantasize about pushing the musicians in.