If you are interested in immigration to France and speak French, the Cité National d'Histoire de l'Immigration (the national immigration museum located in Paris) has a useful website.
For an overview, watch the film, and for personal stories, listen to the interviews.
On Thursday, we will discuss Leïla Sebbar's novel, The Seine Was Red: Paris, October 1961. Here are some discussion questions to consider as you read it.
1) What story does Sebbar tell about the events of October 1961?
2) What do we learn in her novel about the lives of Algerian immigrants to Paris?
3) What is the relationship between generations in the novel?
4) How does the cityscape of Paris and its suburbs figure in the novel?
In addition to the archival footage of Hitler touring Paris, his collaborator, architect Albert Speer (left), published a description of the visit in his memoirs.
Below is another very good lecture by Yale's Prof. John Merriman on the Nazi occupation of France during World War II.
Film footage of Adolph Hitler in Paris.
The late French film director Louis Malle directed "Au Revoir Les Enfants" (1897) a film about the occupation and the deportation of French Jews by the Nazis and their French collaborators. Malle drew on his own memories of being a school boy during this period. He was a witness to fellow students being taken away to the camps because they were Jews. Read Roger Ebert's review of the film here.
We will discuss Patrick Modiano's novel/memoir/history/detective story, Dora Bruder on Thursday, April 21. Here are some questions to consider as you read it:
1) How much of the life of Dora Bruder is Modiano able to reconstruct? What does he learn about her? Her parents? Other Jews?
2) What do we learn about the fate of Parisian Jews during the German occupation?
3) How has Paris changed or not changed between the 1940s and the 1990s (when Modiano wrote this book)?
4) What part does the cityscape of Paris play in his work?
One of Josephine Baker's most evocative songs was "J'ai deux amours" ["I Have Two Loves"], containing the famous lines:
J'ai deux amours -- Mon pays et Paris Paris toujours C'est mon rêve joli
I have two loves -- My country and Paris Paris forever That's my pretty dream.
The song was originally developed for her role in the show Paris qui remue [Paris Sizzles] in which she played a young native girl from the French empire in love with a dashing young Frenchmen. But audiences assumed that the "my country" was America. Later, Baker changed the line to "My country is Paris."
Hard times beginning in the 1930s resulted in a wave of nostalgia and romanticization of working-class Paris that was especially evident in film and popular song. In René Clair's 1933 film, 14 juillet [14 July], a character sang:
A Paris, dans chaque faubourg Le soleil de chaque journée Fait en quelques destinées Eclore un rêve d'amour In every Paris district The sun, as it rises, For some brings into blossom A dream of love
In 1931, Vincent Scotto and Jean Rodor wrote "Sous les ponts de Paris": Sous les ponts de Paris, Lorsque descend la nuit, Comme il n'a pas de quoi s'payer une chambrette, Un couple heureux vient s'aimer en cachette.
Under the bridges of Paris, When darkness falls, With no money to pay for a room, A happy couple can secretly make love.
No one embodied this trend more than Edith Piaf, a singer who rose from working-class origins in the Belleville neighborhood of Paris to become a successful performer. Her most famous songs, "Je ne regrette rien," and "La vie en rose," both date from 1946, but this song from 1936 evokes the world of Parisian street children. The French lyrics and an approximate English translation can be found here.
Here is the film clip I showed in class regarding the Stavisky Affair riots by the far right in Paris in 1934 and the peaceful counter-demonstration the following year by the Socialist, Radical-Socialist, and Communist parties in which they affirmed their solidarity in advance of the 1936 elections.
The narration is in French, but don't worry if you can't understand it. At about one minute into the clip, the two demonstrations are separated by some shots of the Nazis marching in Germany (not in Paris!). The man making a speech during the 1935 demonstration is Socialist leader Léon Blum, who will become the French premier under the Popular Front government in 1936.
There are two very good documentary films about Josephine Baker: Josephine Baker: The First Black Super Star (2005) and Chasing a Rainbow: The Life of Josephine Baker (1986). A third highly romanticized film version of her life was made for HBO in 1991, The Josephine Baker Story, and starred American actress Lynn Whitfield. The two documentaries are available on Youtube. The third film is not although I have posted the trailer.
The False Mirror, René Magritte, oil on canvas, 1928
SAY THE WORD OUT LOUD
THREE TIMES
IN
FRONT OF A MIRROR
AT
MIDNIGHT
AND
SEE WHAT HAPPENS!
(or just click the links if you don't like scaring yourself or if you believe something incredible could happen and the incredible is something that you are not accustomed to experiencing.)
In the early decades of the 20th century, Paris was the undisputed artistic capital of the world. Cultural titans Gertrude Stein, Colette, Djuna Barnes, painter Marie Laurencin, publishers and booksellers Sylvia Beach and Adrienne Monnier, and New Yorker journalist Janet Flanner (not to mention Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso and James Joyce) were all part of the between-the-wars Left Bank inner circle. Utilizing groundbreaking research, newly-discovered home movies and intimate storytelling that intertwines interview with anecdote, this award-winning documentary re-creates the mood and flavor of a unique female artistic community who flocked to the City of Lights during its most magical era. This Edition features rare home movies of Stein, Alice B. Toklas and Picasso.
In 2009, Scribner published a new, controversial, version of Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, edited by his grandson, Seán Hemingway. (The original version, which is the one we are reading in class, was published by his fourth wife after Hemingway's suicide in 1961.) Some of the controversy is over the portrayals of Hadley, his first wife, and Pauline, his second wife, who appears, unnamed, at the very end of the book. But the new edition is not necessarily more "definitive" than the old edition and many Hemingway scholars do not think it is more authentic, though it does include some new material.
Here is an article about the new edition and the controversy in The New York Times and another in The Globe and Mail.
Hemingway's friend and biographer, A.E. Hotchner, wrote this disapproving op-ed when the new edition came out. Scholars have expressed doubt with his version of events.
And finally, here's a response from Seán Hemingway on Book TV.
On Thursday, we will be discussing Ernest Hemingway's memoir of his time in Paris in the 1920s, A Moveable Feast. Below are some questions to consider:
1) How does Hemingway survive in Paris?
2) In what ways is the city important to his writing?
3) What are his relationships with the other expatriate writers in Paris?
4) What impression of Paris does his memoir leave you with?
