Songs of the City - A weekend in the City of Light

“Look at Paris in the Spring/Where each solitary thing is more beautiful than ever before” (Gigi, Learner & Lowe) A weekend trip to Paris, to celebrate an anniversary or other special occasion, should begin at the new Eurostar station at Ebbsfleet in Kent. On arrival at the Gare du Nord, if your hotel is some distance from the city, be prepared for the walk uphill along the Rue de Dunkirk. The hotels along the Rue de Dunkirk are small but with good views of the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur, a monument to the Franco-Prussian war in 1870 and unfinished till the next great conflagration in 1914. The new arrival can venture out for the classic French dish, steak-frites, at a local bistro and soaked up some local colour. Montmartre, built on a hill at the heart of the city, is easily accessible. Head for the bars and cafés forming the centre of the artists’ colony, previously frequented by artists such as Toulouse-Lautrec. Then visit the studio off the Rue Lepic which, by repute, saw the birth of modern art. Lunch at the Café Sancerre, with tables spilling onto the pavement in haphazard fashion. Then walk back along the Boulevard by way of the Moulin Rouge. Walking through student populated Paris, the Latin Quartier and Sorbonne, the Rue St Germain and Rue St-Michel, the tour was a reminder of the lyrics from Peter Sarsted’s hit song ‘Where do You Go To My Lovely?’ A traditional farmhouse-style restaurant is situated behind the former HQ of the Ècole Polytechnique, where a meal with wine must be purchased with cash scratched together from purse or wallet, is a reminder there are still establishments left in the world that do not accept the ‘carte bleu’, as credit cards are known in France. So the diner resorts to counting the cash and enjoying steak and frites, a glass of wine à la rustic serves admirably. Neither ‘a la carte’ or ‘prix fixe’ but somewhere between the two. The Metro looked more inviting from the surface, with its welcoming ‘belle époque’ signs above, giving way to a down-at-heel feel below. A tour of Paris by commuter bus can be taken with stops at such evocative place names and iconic buildings as Palais Royale and Comédie-Française. The Louvre Museum can be disappointing with crowds let loose with no control. It is also best to remember many Parisian museums and galleries are closed on Monday. This fact can be more than compensated for with a lunch near the Tuilleries Gardens in a typical city centre bar-bistro complete with waist coated waiters. Take a post-prandial stroll along the Seine’s Rive Gauche through the rain, passing green boxes where the artists keep their materials. The imposing riverside buildings of cultural and political Gallic life such as the Institute de France look down upon the artists at their easels, displaying the hauteur of their French Second Empire architectural heritage. Take the last bus to the Gare du Nord through the famous Parisian rush hour and travel homewards on the Eurostar with billboards displaying the glories of the refurbished St Pancras station, running fashionably late as befits the essence and joy of Paree. Songs of the City City profiles in music, film and song – Paris in Season Celebrating the belle époque – “Look at Paris in the Spring/Where each solitary thing is more beautiful than ever before “ (Gigi, Learner & Lowe) Cherie/Coco Before Chanel/Piaf/Moulin Rouge/Gigi Some films in celebration of the period in French history known as the ‘belle époque’ – the decades from the late 19th century (1880s) to the outbreak of the First World War when there seemed to be a flowering of culture, fashion, society manners and the arts among the French bourgeosie (middle classes). It was a time when Paris seemed to be full of charming boulevardiers, all looking like Maurice Chevalier as he is depicted in the Hollywood musical Gigi, and beautiful women driving in open-top carriages whilst exchanging witty repartee about life and love. The belle époque has been celebrated in books and film ever since the invention of café society, and the kinematic camera made moving pictures possible. Writers such as Colette developed the idea of the independent woman free to carve her own career as men did with accompanying affairs, entanglements and multiple marriages; artists such as Toulouse-Lautrec pushed the boundaries of painting, giving birth to modern art in the bars and bistros of Montmartre; the performers of the Moulin Rouge developed risqué revue theatre frequented by figures from high and low society including the future King Edward VII when Prince of Wales. In the long history of the link between the ‘Moulin’ and high society there is a story of a famous dancer spotting the then Prince of Wales, known as Bertie, in the audience and crying out across the floor “hey Wales, the champagne is on you”. No doubt Bertie’s great grandson Harry Wales (Prince Harry) may find an echo in that story about his fun-loving and high-living forebear. All this provides the backdrop for Cherie. Directed by Stephen Frears and starring Michelle Pfieffer it tells the story of society hostess and courtesan who befriends, seduces and falls in love with the son of a sister courtesan. It is a tale dealing with the eternal themes of love, obsession, the ravages of time, the attractions of youth and the hypocrisy of society. The older woman takes the younger man ‘in hand’ on the understanding that she is preparing him for marriage and the life his situation demands of him – respectability through marrying well and playing the game. Love intervenes, surprising both parties, but convention and circumstance dictate that he must return to his emotionally stifling marriage and she to her independent existence. Coco before Chanel (2009, Anne Fontaine (dir)). Nearly forty years after her death aged 88 a French language film starring Audrey Tatou, focuses on the early life of fashion icon style guru, provider of perfume and accessories to generations of women and doyen of sophisticated taste, Coco Chanel. The film is a biopic which tells the story of how a seamstress with the nickname Coco, abandoned by her father in a school run by nuns becomes the legend that is Coco Chanel, by way of a tour d’horizon of French social history in the first three decades of the 20th Century. Coco rises from oppressed seamstress, working for a pittance by day and singing risqué songs by night to drunken café revellers, to mistress of a well-meaning but dim-witted aristocrat: the developing Coco style can be seen in clothing and hair as the ingénue develops confidence and an emerging élan. The audience goes on a journey with her, through heart break, at losing the man she loves in a car crash and passion for the work and business which becomes her driving force. The closing scenes are a montage featuring the Coco Chanel that the world came to know so well in her salon, dressed to perfection in the style she made her own, symbolising grace, elegance and wit for millions. Coco Chanel was truly a daughter of the belle époque, independent and proud. La vie en Rose (2007, Olivier Dahan (dir)) – another biopic of a French legend, starring Marion Cotillard and featuring a cameo performance by Gerard Depardieu the film charts the rise to fame of the singer/chanteuse Edith Piaf. It is another story of triumph over adversity, with much heartbreak along the way. Born into desperate poverty the singer who would win the affections of the world with her heartbreaking, tremulous yet powerful voice was known as the little sparrow. The film follows her journey in early-century France through brutal circumstances and oppressive relationships and battles with drug dependency and ill-health. Depardieu plays the nightclub owner who discovers the street singer, takes her under his wing and promotes her talent as well as giving her the name by which she would be known the world over – Piaf or “sparrow”. Tragically he is killed in an underworld revenge attack and Piaf loses another protector and source of loving comfort, having no parents from an early age. The music provides the backdrop, theme and is a central character of the film in many ways. Piaf was closely indentified with her music – she embodied the lives of the street people about which she sang in haunting songs and these melodies flow through the film. Three of the songs that Piaf made her own and will forever be identified with are the song of the film’s title, La Vie En Rose; Hymn a Lamour (Hymn to Love) and Les Trois Cloches (The Three Bells). Perhaps the seminal cinematic moment in the film comes when Piaf is played the tune that will be become her signature. A young songwriter comes to the singer’s rooms at a time when she is ill and full of sorrow at the death of her boxer lover Marcel Cerdan, and he plays the opening bars of Je ne regrette rien. Piaf instantly recognises that this is the song that encapsulates her life and with this realisation comes the determination to carry on. The film ends with the collapse on stage which presaged her death – sad but uplifting, mournful yet hopeful. An inspiring life of hope transcending adversity. Another heir to the belle époque tradition. Moulin Rouge (dir Baz Luhrman) starring Nicole Kidman, Ewan MacGregor, is a remake of a 1920s film about the famous Parisian nightclub set to a modern pop music score and put to cinematic fanfare treatment by an Australian director renowned for his distinctive cinematic style mixing special effects, live action and a magical realism fantasy that is all his own. MacGregor plays the love-sick , abisenth-drinking writer who takes to his garrett in the City of Light to pine for a showgirl dancer at the Moulin Rouge. With lively production numbers, the ring-master played with great verve by British character actor Jim Broadbent and Nicole Kidman at her most teasingly provocative as the Moulin dancer, the old story is told thrillingly for a late 20thCentury audience with all the flair, pizzazz and showmanship that would be expected from a movie about one of the greatest night venues in Europe. Gigi – (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) – a Hollywood movie adaptation of the Lerner-Loewe stage musical about the life and loves of a French girl destined to be a courtesan in the belle époque era. Starring Leslie Caron, a ballet dancer turned actress, as Gigi; Louis Jourdan, later to play villains as well as lotharios, as the bored playboy who pursues her and the celebrated entertainer Maurice Chevalier as the aging boulevardier who observes the scene with a wry smile and a knowing look as well as the classical British actress Hermione Gingold as Gigi’s mother with big ambitions. It is a boulevard comedy, rather in the style of the farceur Georges Feydau who wrote the late French Empire play The Lady from Maxim’s. It follows the girlhood, growing up and flowering of the Gigi of the title, taken from a short story by the writer Colette, who is destined to be the companion of wealthy men of one type or another. The playboy at first flirts with Gigi and later realises he is in love with her. The music score is penned by the duo who gave the world My Fair Lady and the score features classics such as Thank Heaven for Little Girls, The Night they Invented Champagne and I’m Glad I’m Not Young Anymore. Gigi won thirty Academy Awards (Oscars) in 1958, more than any film up until that time, and legend has it that the singer Tony Martin forgot the lyrics to the title song, only remembering the opening word of it: Gigi…..