Again Amélie

by Karel Thönissen

I have watched Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain another time. The errors that were referred to in my earlier blogging, indeed exist, except for the presumed timing error (16:08 vs. 16:00) which refers to different days.

There indeed is a Wallace-fountain in the movie, namely in the scene where M. Dominique Bretodeau enters the telephone booth at the end of the Rue Mouffetard. In the background the fountain is clearly visible. According to the list in the Wikipedia, this fountain must be a prop, because the nearest fountain in the 5th arrondissement is in the Place des Patriarches. The telephone booth, itself a dummy, is in the park at the end of the Rue Mouffetard near the Rue Censier [satellite]. I haven not seen the fountain on Place des Abbesses in the movie.

I found some other new errors:

• When Amélie is shopping at Collignon's in the rain, one can see that the rain is only falling directly in front of the camera.
• When Amélie captures her father's gnome, she arrives at the Gare du Nord at 08:10, meets Nino, and leaves the Gare de l'Est around 13:46 (on platform display).
• In the same scene: between the moment Nino runs into Amélie and when they run outside the other side of the Gare de l'Est, a complete electric locomotive and a white double decker carriage can be seen to magically appear and disappear.
• In the scene on and around the stairs of the Sacré Coeur: watch the shadows and notice that this has been filmed between around 12:00 and 18:00 with shots taken in random order. Watch the shadow of the ticket booth of the carroussel in particular.
• In the scene when Amélie helps the blind man to cross the road: the water on one side of the road is flowing in another direction than on the other side of the road. That is unlikely for the sloped roads in Montmartre.
• In the same scene: the same black VW Golf can be seen twice: first driving by, then standing parked at the end of the road.
• Still in the same scene: the metro station station she enters is not Abbesses, which has a typical Guimard-style entrance [photo][Nederlandse beschrijving]. This is the entrance to the metro station of Lamarck Caulaincourt.

These source have more information on various locations that were filmed for Amélie. [Nederlands][Nederlands]