« Paris is the Americans' favorite cliché ! Ask them where they want to spend their honeymoon, and which European city they see as the most romantic : they'll all answer Paris. Me, too ».

- Woody Allen

« There is Paramount Paris and Metro Paris, and of course the real Paris. Paramount's is the most Parisian of all ! »

- Ernst Lubitsch

Romantic, elegant, and enticing, Paris has enchanted American filmmakers for over a century. More than eight hundred Hollywood productions have been shot in Paris or set in the city using studio reconstructions, making Paris the foreign city that appears most frequently in American movies. Yet it is Hollywood-fabricated clichés that the viewer sees in these films, such as those in the opening scenes of Vincente Minnelli's iconic An American in Paris (1951). Hollywood has reinvented Paris un its own crucible, with its own decors and ambiance, conveying an air of reality rather than reality itself.

Through fifteen essays by eminent film experts and critics, Paris by Hollywood explores over one hundred years of motion pictures-from silent movies, to Cancan films, to modern action-packed blockbusters-and offers a new, insightful analysis of the work of great American filmmakers such as Ernst Lubitsch, Blake Edwards, and Woody Allen, in whose films Paris has often taken a starring role. The influence of the City of Light on Tinseltown is examined in all its aspects : the portrayal of the Parisienne ; the role of Paris in action movies ; Hollywood icons inextricably linked with the city-from Audrey Hepburn to French musical comedy star Maurice Chevalier ; and the depiction of Paris in animated Disney movies. Interviews with celebrated filmmakers and actors including Martin Scorsese. Julie Delpy, and Leslie Caron take the reader behind the scenes to provide an intimate insider's perspective.

Each chapter includes a related filmography, and the volume is richly supplemented with photographs, film stills, movie posters, and rarely published archival material, along with a chronology of American film, a bibliography, and an index.