Only in heist movies do we pay attention to surveillance cameras. These small misfortunes are now part of the landscape of our cities, just like the fences that surround the smallest residential project. Critics have come to accept them as a concession made to the times, an imposed detail that architecture is forced to accept. So why the ones at the entrance to the Palais Pathé, the new flagship of the Pathé group, installed in the building that once housed the Gaumont Opera, on the corner of Boulevard des Capucines and Rue de la Chaussée-d’Antin in Paris? Are they so striking?
Because between these paranoid objects that Roland Barthes might, if he were alive, have considered a mythology of the present time, and the partially listed, perfectly renovated, carved stone façade of this emblematic building of Belle Epoque Paris, the graft is difficult to accept. A benign hiatus, no doubt, but one whose reverberation persists throughout the visit, like these points of light that continue to vibrate once we close our eyes.
This dissonance acts as a telltale sign. It materialises the semantic shift that underlies the “high-end cinema” project imagined by Jérôme Seydoux, the powerful boss of the Pathé group, for this building that he bought in 2017, and the discomfort it provokes in a visitor who is a bit of a cinephile.
More than a multiplex, the Palais Pathé is a place where people come in search of an “exclusive” experience. Admission costs 25 euros. This may seem expensive and it is. It is done on purpose. It is part of the concept. Because it is not the film we pay for. You are seated in one of the 854 leather armchairs, reclined like a business class airplane seat and, moreover, heated. This is the latest projection technology: Onyx LED screens, Dolby Atmos sound, Dolby Vision projection and, soon, even cinema. It is the concierge service that allows you to order drinks and sweets in advance, to have them placed, before your arrival, on the tablet at your seat, and to be given, once in one of the seven rooms, a blanket (why? Such an obsession with the body temperature of the spectators?), to book a taxi…
Decor plays a role in the experience. The same applies to the signature of Renzo Piano, the 1998 Pritzker Prize-winning architect who was entrusted with the task of transforming the building, as well as that of Jacques Grange, a decorator whose name alone is enough to evoke the idea of Parisian luxury, who was hired to furnish the cocktail bar.
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