Abandoned during lockdown, this film set is a time warp to 1940s Paris

If you want to get a flavour for old-school Paris, they say you should go to Montmartre. And right now, one pocket of this hilly northern neighbourhood looks even more vintage than usual. An abandoned film set has left two streets looking just as they might have done during the Nazi occupation of the 1940s.

Peeling posters announcing curfews, anti-communist propaganda and Jewish deportation notices have been pasted across walls on Rues Berthe and Androuet, while shopfronts have been replaced with old-fashioned signs advertising beer and haberdashery. It’s all part of the set for ‘Adieu Monsieur Haffmann’, a wartime tragicomedy directed by Fred Cavayé and starring Daniel Auteuil, which was filming just as the nationwide French lockdown set in.

Based on a play of the same name, the film tells the story of a Jewish jeweller during the occupation, and was due to be released in 2021. The crew didn’t have time to remove set designer Philippe Chiffre’s handiwork beforehand – and perhaps assumed they may have been able to restart filming again soon. But at this point, who knows how long the time warp will endure for?

_{Photograph: Arthuro Peduzzi}

_{Photograph: Arthuro Peduzzi}

_{Photograph: Arthuro Peduzzi}

_{Photograph: Arthuro Peduzzi}

_{Photograph: Arthuro Peduzzi}

_{Photograph: Arthuro Peduzzi}

_{Photograph: Arthuro Peduzzi}

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