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Taken

Where Taken was Shot

It makes for good PR if a city can boast that it has provided the backdrop for a major feature film and the tourism office hacks can use that fact in their brochures. And they rarely fail to do so.

The possible exception to this rule is the movie Taken.

What this movie tells its audience can be roughly summed up as follows: Here’s the deal – You send your daughters to Paris and they will be drugged and raped, sold into prostitution, and possibly killed, without the French police batting as much as an eyelid. Actually, the city’s coppers are even in on it and share in the proceeds. Now, form an orderly queue, please. There is room enough for everybody.

Welcome to the City of Lights!

Maybe the shame which the – largely – French crew must have felt about this storyline explains why Paris is shot in such a strange, understated way. The exteriors never give you a feeling for any particular Parisian area or street.

Neither are there lush establishing shots of the type that you find in nearly every other American movie about Paris. Instead, the houses are always shot in isolation and zoomed close-ups, as though they were all protagonists in a 1960s spaghetti western.

Nevertheless, you can spot a few major Parisian landmarks along the way, proof that the film was actually shot on location rather than with the help of some cut-price Eastern European body double.

The Eiffel Tower puts in a cameo appearance behind the house in which the two American girls are “taken“ (on 9, Avenue d’Eylau, nearest metro Trocadero).

And when Liam Neeson meets his policeman friend (in front of the legendary Fouquet’s bar on the Champs Elysees), the Arc de Triomphe at the end of the street provides a little local atmosphere.

“The house” where the American girls are drugged and trained by their Albanian captors is located on no. 5, rue de Paradis, in the 10th arrondissement near the Gare de l’Est , not at all the type of “Southern Bronx” neighbourhood the film appears to suggest but in reality is one of the most interesting and lively quartiers of the capital. (If you go there, do explore the adjacent Rue du Faubourg Saint Denis with its wonderful mix of Mauritian, Kurdish and North African delis and cake shops.)

Action scenes in Paris are always a problem these days. The city administration has become very blasé and reluctant to grant anything more than a one-day permit for a daytime shoot – as even Stephen Spielberg had to find out for Munich.

Taken’s action sequences are consequently shot either indoors or on sites such as the rubbish dump where Liam Neeson eradicates half of the male Albanian population – with two exceptions.

"rue des Pretres Saint Germain l’Auxerrois in Paris, a scene in the movie Taken in Paris"

Firstly, there is the scene where Liam Neeson leads the French police on a wild goose chase by connecting two mobile phones together in such a way that the police trace him down to the restaurant l’Auxerrois on 13, (behind the Samaritaine department store, nearest metro: Pont Neuf) while he is actually standing on top of the church Saint Germain l’Auxerrois across the road. (He is taking the phone call from his policeman “friend” who is sitting on a bench in the Square du Vert Galant, the very tip of the Ile de la Cité).

That scene was tightly edited to give it some pace. But, if you think about it, the film actually contains not much “action” in the common cinematic sense – apart from one shot where the police cars take a screeching-tyre turn from the rue de l’Arbre into rue des Pretres Saint Germain l’Auxerrois.

"rue Eylau Paris where a scene of the movie Taken was shot"

There is a bit more to see in the film’s culminating action sequence, a wild car chase down the quais – the freeway-like road by the banks of the Seine – during which Liam Neeson jumps off the Pont des Arts into a Bateau-Mouche-style pleasure boat (to thwart “pleasures” of a kind that are not normally offered on board, at least not as part of the standard 10-Euro-a-head tourist ride).

But even here, in its signature action scene, Taken finds it hard to shake off its restraints: the pacy editing that needs to substitute for more elaborate stunts ensures – in combination with the effects of a night shoot – that the city’s skyline is condensed into a string of blurry lights. Taken’s Paris, here as in the scenes before, never really comes to life.

14 comments to Taken

  • Great article, very well-written. Yeah, I stayed in the 10th. I can’t imagine white slavers operating out of that neighborhood. Ah, the creative license of fiction.

  • James Molloy

    According to Wikipedias entry of the Cathedral of Notre Dame Liam Neeson makes
    his phone call from “atop one of the bell towers”. Wiki should be told off for
    that error.

  • Larry

    I was mugged in the 10th. So much for the “charm” of this immigrant neighborhood.

  • John Wacker

    I am curious to know where the red door is located, as it is not in the location mentioned here. Maybe the house where the girls are drugged is located on rue Paradis, but the doors to the house are not. The street with the red door I am looking for is cobblestone, does anyone have any ideas?

  • Jackie

    We drove to the red door on rue des paradis with my kids a few years ago – we found it! It was there….. Or at least there was red door at that address – who knows if it is actually the one that was in the film…

  • Doug

    Now that the Rue de Paradis is in the middle of a muslim no-go zone, it sheds an entirely new light on this location! Albanian muzzies doing human trafficking for Arab muzzies.

  • Bealy

    I’ve just travelled around Paris and found locations from the Great Film ‘TAKEN’
    Firstly at the airport, the taxi rank & bridge scene, the street ( go in daytime)
    Rue de Paradis 10th Arr sign on the wall exactly how it is in film, no.5 is an old door not to sure about this? We found the big Red door in the area of Malesherbs,
    The restaurant ‘Fouquets’ bar on champs elysees next to Louis Viton is from the policemen scene, and the bridge I think is the pont de Alma.
    Research and you’ll find it all!!!
    Good Luck!

  • Cynthia Mcdowell

    Interesting: I found a knick knack/what not, maybe chalkware, of a door with a sign saying Rue Du Paraois on the wall beside it and the #4 over the door. Was trying to find info about it before I list it on my Ebay, and all I could find was the reference to the address in “Taken” to the “red door” on this street, still wondering what the significance of this door #4 might be. Looks vintage and has the letters, maybe CISL on bottom. Any ideas?

  • Cynthia Mcdowell

    Spelling is likely off on on my post/Rue Du Paradis, but plaque looks like Du, not De

  • John

    Anyone found the street yet?
    This is the result I get when I google “Rue de Paradis, 5” :

    https://www.google.com/maps/@48.8745398,2.3546329,3a,75y,157.33h,76.72t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s0zJKSkvrFRIkRmKPPFuYFg!2e0!5s20080501T000000!7i13312!8i6656

    I’ve literally searched the whole street and I wasn’t able to find any similar door with paved entrance and road, even wheen looking at the 2008 street view shots.

    In the movie, this is how it looks like :

    https://i.imgur.com/gx2Jb1W.jpg

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