The poetry of Marseilles on the screen ! An attempt at understanding the development of its filmed representations (how a happy representation develops into a neurotic one where happiness can only stem from the phantasm of the past) must take into account the city's different locations together with the themes they raise : urban development alone is not sufficient to account for the reasons why these locations are selected, exist, appear or disappear. Hence two models of the city emerge, which are apparently opposite, twofold answers to the same anxiety caused by urban modernity and violence.