The Musée du Cinema - Henri Langlois was a museum of cinema history located in the Palais de Chaillot, 1, place du Trocadéro, Paris, France. It was destroyed by fire in 1997.[1]
The museum was created in 1972 by Henri Langlois (1914–1977), a cinema enthusiast who also founded the Cinémathèque Française. It presented "the living history of moving pictures, from their origins to the present day and in all countries", with collections including more than 5,000 movie-related objects including cameras, movie scripts, photographic stills, costumes worn by Rudolph Valentino and Marilyn Monroe, and several early movies and movie sets.
The museum was subject to an unusual court case when the Cinémathèque Française attempted to move the collection, in which it was argued (successfully) that the museum was "unquestionably the creative work of one man and therefore protected under the law" and hence could not be disbanded. This decision was unfortunately handed down several months after the museum's destruction by fire on July 22, 1997.