Monaco on screen, film by film and place by place

Monaco comes ready-made as a film set. The Casino, a harbour full of yachts and streets that turn into a racetrack once a year have drawn directors since the 1940s. But this is a subject full of half-truths, so I built the list the other way round. First I checked which films have a documented shoot in Monaco and what place appears in each, then I set apart the ones linked to the Principality without really being filmed there. The source is Wikipedia, compared across languages where the articles disagree.

GoldenEye, Bond’s Monte-Carlo

If one film fixed Monte-Carlo’s image in modern cinema, it’s GoldenEye, Pierce Brosnan’s first Bond, from 1995. Filming, from January to June 1995, moved between the UK, Russia, Monte-Carlo and Puerto Rico. Two things were shot in Monaco. The casino scenes, with the baccarat game where Bond crosses paths with Xenia Onatopp, were filmed in the Monte-Carlo Casino. And the Tiger helicopter demonstration was shot in the harbour, on the deck of the French frigate La Fayette.

The car chase at the start was filmed on the coast roads of southern France instead. If you want to stand on the set, the Casino opens its rooms for sightseeing in the morning and for gaming in the afternoon, and I cover both in visiting the Monte-Carlo Casino.

Grand Prix, the real race in 1966

For me this is the most valuable film on the list if you love motor racing. John Frankenheimer shot Grand Prix at real races, and Monaco was one of the circuits. The camera was mounted on a Lotus 25 driven during the race by Phil Hill, the 1961 world champion. You see the streets of the 1960s at racing speed. Those same streets can be walked today, corner by corner, and I show you how in walking the Monaco circuit.

Rallies, ballet and a British caper

There are more films with scenes shot here. The Red Shoes, Powell and Pressburger’s ballet drama, was filmed mainly in Paris, with location work in London, Monte-Carlo and on the Riviera. Monte Carlo or Bust!, from 1969, is a UK, French and Italian co-production, a sprawling comedy about the 1920s Monte Carlo Rally, with location filming in 1968 that took in Monaco and Monte-Carlo. What the real rally involves and where to watch it are covered on the Monte Carlo Rally page.

Monte Carlo, the 2011 Selena Gomez film, was shot in Budapest, Paris, Romania and in Monte-Carlo too, and part of the plot plays out at the Hôtel de Paris. It’s not art-house cinema, but if you watched it growing up, you’ll recognise the square.

Grace of Monaco and a square closed for a day

Olivier Dahan’s film with Nicole Kidman, released on 21 May 2014, is about the 1962 stand-off between Rainier and de Gaulle. It was shot in Paris, Menton, Genoa, Belgium and Italian villages near the border, and in Monaco the production won permission to close Casino Square for 24 hours, on 29 and 30 October 2012, to film in front of the building. The Palace interiors, however, were recreated in the Royal Palace in Genoa.

One thing worth knowing before you watch it. In January 2013, Albert II, Caroline and Stéphanie issued a statement saying the film was in no way a biopic. For the real story and the places you can visit, see the Grace Kelly trail in Monaco. Long before Kidman, there was another shoot tied to her here, her 1956 wedding, which Rainier decided would be filmed once only, in colour and CinemaScope.

Was To Catch a Thief filmed in Monaco?

This is the big misunderstanding. Alfred Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief, with Cary Grant and Grace Kelly, came out in 1955 and is the film everyone connects with Monaco. English Wikipedia says it was shot mostly at Paramount’s Hollywood studios and in the Alpes-Maritimes, in Cannes, Nice, Villefranche-sur-Mer, Saint-Jeannet and Tourrettes-sur-Loup. The French article does add Monaco and Monte-Carlo to its locations and sets the old gang’s restaurant in Monaco. My reading is that Monaco appears in passing and the film belongs above all to the French Riviera.

The other myth is the romance. Grace Kelly didn’t meet Rainier during filming, which took place in summer 1954. They first met on 6 May 1955 at the Palace, at a photo session arranged while she was at the Cannes Film Festival. Spanish Wikipedia repeats the on-set version, and I’d go with the account that has a date and a place.

The ones with little or no Monaco footage

Iron Man 2, from 2010, has a famous sequence at the Monaco Historic Grand Prix. The production section of its English Wikipedia article says the race was filmed in a car park at Downey Studios in California, because permission to film in Monaco before the 2009 Grand Prix was withdrawn. The article’s own summary mentions a sequence shot in Monaco, so I’m not calling it settled. What the Historic actually is, I explain in the Historic Grand Prix.

Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo, from 1977, ends its race in Monte-Carlo with the Beetle through the circuit tunnel, but the locations the source documents are in California. To me, those two are best enjoyed as fiction rather than as a location guide. More stories about the Principality, all sourced, are in Monaco facts.