EPISODE  3 (Season 2)

EPISODE  1 (Season 2)

Episode 2 features three actresses who, each in their own way, have become icons of American popular cinema.

ROBE  AIR  DEUX  NID  ROT     (Robert de Niro)

ALPE  HÂCHIS  NÔ     (Al Pacino) 

JAUNE  TRAVAUX  LE  TAS     (John Travolta)

EPISODE 4 (Season 1)

Episode 4 features nine films whose titles in French include the word “L’homme” (that means the man) that were screened at the Plaza between 1956 and 1998.

L’homme qui en savait trop (Alfred Hitchcock, 1956) – original title The Man Who Knew Too Much
L’homme aux mains d’argile (Léon Mathot, 1949)
L’homme qui aimait les rousses (Harold French, 1955) – original title The Man Who Loved Redheads
L’homme orgchestre (Serge Korber, 1970)
L’homme au pistolet d’or (Guy Hamilton, 1974) – original title The Man with the Golden Gun
L’homme qui comprenait les femmes (1) (Nunnally Johnson, 1959)
L’homme au masque de fer (Randall Wallace, 1958) – original title The Man in the Iron Mask
L’homme qui n’a jamais existé (Ronald Neame, 1956) – original title The Man Who Never Was
Un homme en laisse (2) (Philip Leacock, 1958)

1-We reproduce here the exact translation of the original title (The Man who understood women) that Mr. Carlo Sartorelli, projectionist at the Plaza from 1952 to 1983, noted in his notebooks where he scrupulously recorded by hand all the indications of the films shown at the Plaza: title, year, director, actors and actresses, production company, format, duration, screening dates. In the reviews of the time, the film is titled in French with a present tense verb: The man who understands women. We have chosen to keep the formula of Mr. Sartorelli, The man who understood women, both more accurate and more elegant.

2-The original title of the film is The Rabbit Trap
In the projectionist’s notebooks, the film is recorded under the curious French title, Un homme en laisse, (A man on a leash) followed by the original English title. It is impossible to know where Mr. Sartorelli got this formula from: we found no trace of it during our research. Nevertheless, it seems to correspond to the content of the film, which tells the story of an unfortunate cartoonist (Ernest Borgnine) torn between his professional imperatives and his family obligations… Here again, we decided to keep the title noted by Mr. Sartorelli (a title that he probably found in a critical review of the time). This allowed us to have one more man in our list.

EPISODE 2 (Season 1)

Il était une fois le Plaza, episode 2, features twelve titles of films shown at the Plaza cinema in Geneva between 1956 and 1976*:

Un Américain à Paris (Vincente Minelli, 1951) original title – An American in Paris
Deux sur la balançoire* (Robert Wise, 1962) original title – Two for the Seesaw
Le train sifflera trois fois (Fred Zinnemann, 1952) original title – High Noon
Les quatre filles du docteur March (Mervyn LeRoy, 1949) original title – Little Women
Sept ans de réflexion (Billy Wilder, 1955) original title – The Seven Year Itch
Huit et demi (Federico Fellini, 1963) original title – Otto e mezzo 
À neuf heures de Rama (Mark Robson, 1963) original title – Nine Hours to Rama
Les Dix Commandements (Cecil B. DeMille, 1956) original title – The Ten Commandments
Les douze travaux d’Astérix (René Goscinny et Albert Uderzo, 1976)
À vingt-trois pas du mystère (Henry Hathaway, 1956) original title – 23 Paces to Baker Street
Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours (Michael Anderson, 1956) original title – Around the World in 80 Days)
Cent mille dollars au soleil (Henri Verneuil, 1964)

* * Two for the Seesaw was shown at the Broadway Cinema from April 25 to May 8, 1963, according to the precious notebooks of Mr. Carlo Sartorelli, projectionist of the Plaza Cinema for more than 30 years. In the 1960s, Mr. Sartorelli was also a projectionist at the Broadway cinema. He had to cross the “rue du Cendrier” several times a day to change the reels of one or the other of the two theaters – at the time there were four showings a day.