Paris will be Paris.
If you want to catch a glimpse of early fifties Paris ,this is the movie to choose : a bunch of Italian football supporters come to the French capital to cheer up their players ;but don't panic if you don 't like football :only three minutes are given over to the game in the whole movie.
The first part takes you to all the places you've got to see before you die ;please remember the guide!It'smuch fun to watch the cars ,the metro (subway) stations,and the clothes of yore : France seems to be years ahead of Italy as far as women's fashion is concerned :some tourists are much more interested in the way female Parisians are dressed and walk along the streets than in the famous monuments .
The second part is devoted to the de rigueur Paris by night ;this is a pretext to show music hall acts ;in the fifties ,it was a recurrent feature in the French movies ,for today's audience it's mostly filler,except for sociologists and for Yves Montand 's fans :he performs two songs live :" A Paris " (obvious) "Les Enfants Qui S'Aiment ";besides, his "Un Gamin De Paris" is heard during the river boat for sightseeing scene It also includes ,which was a bit daring for the time,a short scene in a gay nightclub ,complete with drag artist ,but the tourists mistook the place for a girls show.
As for the story , it does not rise above the anecdotal; we follow the tourists in their pregrinations through the streets of the capital: fiancés (Marcello Mastroianni and Lucia Bosé) have an argument in a metro station and go their own way ;a young clueless man is helped by the newspapers kiosk girl to find his way and falls in love with her ; a matron experiments French hairstyle which makes her look like Marie-antoinette ;two pals try to pick up girls in front of the metro stations ....and more .Anyway ,do not expect Duvivier's masterful " Sous Le Ciel De Paris" ,you would be diappointed.