THE PROMENADE DES PLANCHES
One of the symbols of Deauville, inaugurated on July 5, 1924. Now Deauville's most famous promenade, it remains the town's most visited, surveyed and photographed site.
Les Planches borders the Bains Pompéiens establishment, built in the same year by the municipality to replace the first wooden bathing cabins, which had fallen into disrepair. This architectural achievement, inspired by orientalism and the Art Deco movement, is the work of architect Charles Adda. Its clean lines and use of concrete, combined with the incorporation of remarkable mosaics, reflect its period. From a length of 444 meters in 1924, they now extend, after successive extensions, to 762 meters.
Initially made from pine, they were replaced after the Second World War by Iroko, a tropical African wood. As Iroko became hard to find, Azobé, a dense wood from Cameroon with a reputation for being rot-proof and submersible, was chosen in 1952, and remains the wood used to this day.
In 1966, Claude Lelouch made the Planches - where a square bears his name - known to the whole world with the film "Un homme et une femme".
"Dark, city crowd on the Boards.
If I flew by, the open-air bar would look like a lentil dish."
Jacques Henri Lartigue (1894-1986), "Notebooks".
Photographs B.n.F, Seeberger collection (from left to right): Boxer Georges Carpentier, Kees Van Dongen, Josephine Baker, André Citroën and his wife, Tristan Bernard and Sem, Buster Keaton and his wife.
NAMES OF AMERICAN ACTORS AND DIRECTORS
1975 was marked in Deauville by the creation of the American Film Festival. In the 1990s, Anne d'Ornano, then Mayor of Deauville, decided to inscribe the names of actors and directors on the "lices" that line the promenade. A "Sunset boulevard" in the French style surveyed by the greatest talents of the American film culture every year in September.
