Léon: The Professional (1994)
- Documented locations
- 23
- Year
- 1994
- Directed by
- Luc Besson
- Original title
- Léon
- Cities
- New York, Epinay-sur-Seine, Saint-Denis, New York City, Hoboken, West New York
511 9th Avenue (Manhattan)
New York, United States
At 511 9th Avenue, at the corner of 38th Street, Guido's was an unpretentious Italian restaurant located in a room at the back of the Supreme Macaroni Co. grocery store. The building was demolished around 2007.
The scene : 1 min — From the very first minutes, Léon goes to Tony's restaurant, the boss who provides him with his contracts. In the film, the room is supposed to be located in Little Italy.
71 East 97th Street (Manhattan)
New York, United States
The scene : 10 min — The facade of the building where Léon and Mathilda live. After about ten minutes, we see Léon coming home after going out to buy milk.
7th Avenue & West 42nd Street (Manhattan)
New York, United States
The former National Hotel in this part of Times Square has disappeared: the site has been redeveloped since.
The scene : 43 min — Léon and Mathilda walk down the street, in front of the National hotel.
New York, United States
The scene : 50 min — The sequence of the jogger in the park was filmed in Central Park, near Pinebank Arch.
Manhattan Municipal Building
New York, United States
Monumental municipal building in southern Manhattan, renamed David N. Dinkins Municipal Building; a subway station and a covered walkway cross through it.
The scene : 1 hr 7 min — The skyscraper at 1 Centre Street serves as the DEA headquarters: we see Stansfield, the corrupt narcotics cop, arriving.
New York, United States
The scene : 1 hr 46 min — Mathilda enters here with her arms loaded with groceries. It is also through this building entrance that Léon tries to exit before being shot after his turn around the ring.
New York, United States
The scene : 2 hr 4 min — Towards the end of the film, after escaping from the police, Mathilda takes the cable car that connects Manhattan to Roosevelt Island.
Hoxie House (Stevens Institute of Technology)
Hoboken, United States
The scene : 2 hr 4 min — The final minutes of the film take place at Spencer School, with Hoxie House providing the walls.
Chelsea Hotel
New York, United States
The Hotel de West 23rd Street, designed by the firm Hubert, Pirsson & Company in a neo-Gothic style, is classified as a New York City Landmark and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Long a refuge for writers and artists, it has seen Arthur C. Clarke write 2001, Andy Warhol film Chelsea Girls, and Bob Dylan compose Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands; it is also within its walls that Nancy Spungen died and Sid Vicious was arrested.
The scene : The hallways and staircase of Léon and Mathilda's building were filmed here: it is on this landing that Mathilda, a cigarette in hand, encounters Léon for the first time, and where her family is massacred.
East 97th Street & Park Avenue (Manhattan)
New York, United States
A convenience store occupied this corner of the street for a long time: still open at the end of the 1990s, it closed in 2015.
The scene : At the corner of the street, very close to his building, the small grocery store where Léon comes to stock up.
Epinay-sur-Seine, France
The Épinay Studios are a complex of film studios located in Épinay-sur-Seine, in Seine-Saint-Denis, and are among the oldest in France. Their origins date back to 1907, when industrialist Charles Jourjon founded the company Éclair, which became the third French firm behind Pathé and Gaumont in the 1910s. The studio itself was set up in 1913 and was then acquired by Éclair in 1914. By the end of the 1920s, the German company Tobis established one of the first sound studios in France at the same address, utilizing the Tobis-Klangfilm process; these neighboring facilities were absorbed by Éclair in 1938. The site long housed film sets and significant development and post-production laboratories, with its studios being taken over by the TSF group in 2009, before the opening of the nearby Cité du cinéma reduced their activity from 2012.
The scene : Part of the filming took place on the sets of the Épinay studios, north of Paris.
Saint-Denis, France
The scene : At the beginning of the film, in a stairwell, Léon gets rid of the bodyguards: the scene was filmed at this location in Saint-Denis.
New York, United States
The scene : This intersection in Midtown appears in the opening credits.
New York, United States
The scene : On this stretch of 7th Avenue, Mathilda follows closely behind Léon and his green plant.
New York, United States
The scene : Léon and Mathilda walk together through the streets of Manhattan, here at the intersection of 7th Avenue and 58th Street.
New York, United States
The scene : 7th Avenue viewed from Central Park South, sloping down towards Times Square: it is from this perspective that Léon asks Mathilda to stop saying "okay" at every turn.
New York, United States
The scene : This intersection in Little Italy appears in the opening credits.
New York, United States
The scene : The opening credits also pass through this corner of southern Manhattan, at the intersection of East Broadway and Market Street.
New York, United States
The scene : Always flanked by the green plant, Léon and Mathilda pass through this intersection in the Lower East Side.
New York, United States
The scene : This address in Washington Heights, at the corner of Broadway and 159th Street, is among the New York locations featured in the film.
New York City, United States
Iconic crossroads of Manhattan at the intersection of Broadway and 7th Avenue, famous for its giant advertising screens and constant crowds.
The scene : Mathilda crosses Times Square alone.
West New York, United States
The scene : On the New Jersey side, the filming also passed through the city of West New York.
New York, United States
The scene : Léon gazes at the city he lives in from East 42nd Street.