by Montparnasse loses another of its monuments: another legendary Paris room is preparing to pull the curtain this Monday.
The Miramar cinema, located in the Montparnasse district of Paris, will definitively close its doors after a very last session of the film Ma Mère, God and Sylvie Vartan, scheduled for this June 9, 2025. After the closure of Brittany cinema in November 2023, it is another high place of the 7th Parisian art which is about to disappear.
As Salles-Cinéma recalls, inaugurated in 1938 by Joseph Rytmann, the Miramar was at the time in front of the old Montparnasse station, before it was moved behind the Montparnasse tower in the late 1960s. Located on the current place of 18-June-1940, it had a large single room with balcony, which was proud.
A historic room
In addition to being a symbol in the field of cinema, Miramar also has a rich history – with a great “H” – by its founder whose fate has changed during the occupation. The anti -Semitic laws of Vichy have indeed deprived it of its two establishments: the Miramar and the Théâtre de Montrouge, located in Alésia. Forced to exile, Joseph Rytmann will only find his property after the war, after a long legal battle.
The following decades were marked by a golden age for this independent operator, nicknamed “the emperor of Montparnasse”. During the Thirty Glorious Years, he developed a real cinematographic empire in the neighborhood with the opening of new rooms such as Brittany (1961), Bienvenue Montparnasse (1972) and Montparnos (1981).
Miramar and Brittany quickly became prestigious rooms, recognized for their exclusive programming on the Parisian left bank. On the death of Joseph Rytmann in 1983, his daughter Benjamine Rytmann-Radwanski took the reins of the family business, modernizing the rooms by providing them with advanced technologies (wide, digital screens) and ensuring their influence until their integration in the Pathé-Gaumont group in 2009.
The closure of the Miramar therefore marks the end of an important chapter of independent cinema in Paris. A project had been envisaged by Pathé to include Miramar in the Pathé Parnasse complex (including 12 rooms) and offer direct access to it from the Place du 18-June-1940. Alas, this project has never seen the light of day and we must now say goodbye to a real monument.
