Le Balzac, a cinema on rue Balzac by the Champs-Élysées since 1935

Le Balzac, an arthouse cinema at 1 rue Balzac, a step from the Champs-Élysées, opened on 6 May 1935 with King Vidor’s The Wedding Night. It was founded by the grandfather of Jean-Jacques Schpoliansky and first showed the great Hollywood productions, in an Art Deco main auditorium.

After the war it turned to French cinema and helped launch René Clément and Jacques Tati, before opening to auteur cinema from around the world. Over the years it has been called the Olympic Balzac, the Reflet Balzac and Les 3 Balzac.

When his father died in 1973, Jean-Jacques Schpoliansky took over and ran the cinema for more than four decades. He kept the main auditorium, turned the foyer and his grandfather’s old offices into two smaller screens, and saw the place as a literary salon for discussion. Since 2018 David Henochsberg, son of a long-standing partner, has run it.

Today Le Balzac has three screens of 400, 145 and 55 seats. Independent, it shows auteur films, evenings with musicians and guests, and each year hosts the César screenings of every nominated film, in the 8th arrondissement.