“IT’S him,” shouted Angie, a tourist from Shrewsbury, pointing at a grey Mercedes Smart car attached to the back of a lorry speeding down the Rue de Rivoli past the Louvre.

“Who?” said a middle-aged Frenchman in a dark blue suit.

“Tom Hanks. Behind the wheel.” “Are you sure?” “No.”

Nobody was sure. There were too many security guards and police officers around the Louvre to get anywhere near the museum on Thursday night as Columbia Pictures began filming an adaptation of Dan Brown’s best-selling novel, The Da Vinci Code.

Starring Sir Ian McKellen, Alfred Molina, Audrey Tautou and Jean Reno, with Hanks in the lead role, the £55 million production will enjoy huge hype when it opens next May — and the French authorities are determined to cash in. Despite having dismissed The Da Vinci Code as historical gobbledegook, they have welcomed the Oscar-winning director, Ron Howard, and his crew with open arms.

The Louvre, which tends to be sniffy about accepting film-makers and has not done so for five years, was even persuaded to let Howard shoot in la Grande Galerie, where Brown’s tale opens with a murder. One reason was the money. Columbia Pictures are thought to be paying the maximum rate of €24,000 (£16,000) a day to use the museum on six occasions when it is closed to the public, between 8.30pm and 6am, over the next two weeks.

A second, and perhaps more important reason, is the publicity. The French Government is keen to attract American tourists, who spend more than any other visitors, and it is banking on The Da Vinci Code to bolster a flagging economy.

Tens of thousands of Americans have crossed the Atlantic to follow the trail laid out in the book, from the Denon Wing of the Louvre to St Sulpice Church on the Left Bank. Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, the Culture Minister, believes that many more will follow when they see the screen version of a novel which has sold 20 million copies. “Cinema is a vehicle of economic health,” he said.

Gone were the condescending smiles that the French elite usually reserves for Brown’s story of secrets, conspiracies and murder within Christianity. Instead, the full force of the French state was laid on for benefit of Columbia Pictures.

On Thursday night, the normally busy road past the glass pyramid at the entrance to the Louvre was closed to traffic and pedestrians. The Rue de Rivoli, one of the most important arteries in central Paris, was first restricted then shut during the scene with the Smart car.

A giant bottleneck formed at the bottom of the Avenue de l’Opéra as Parisian police waited for instructions from Columbia Pictures’ security staff.

“You need to keep the road shut a little longer,” a young Columbia employee in an anorak told a muscular traffic police officer. He duly stuck out his arm to halt cars crossing the Seine from south to north.

“Are the Americans getting on your nerves again?” a British tourist asked a couple of French pedestrians who had to take a long diversion in the rain to reach the Quai du Louvre on the far side of the museum.

“Yes, but it’s in a good cause,” the woman replied.

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