November 2010

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From time to time a very minor French channel Toute l'histoire screens a dubbed version of what I take to be a British series about sport at the beginning of the 20th century.  This one deals with the years of the First World War. It is very little about sport but turns out to be a well-made documentary on aspects of the First War

France 5 gave us an exceptionally good documentary - the story of Dieulefit, a village of some 3 000 people in the Drôme, which during the Second War, welcomed and hid more than 1 000 Jewish refugees. The mayor's secretary, Jeanne Barnier produced enormous numbers of false papers, and the Mayor himself maintained a strict loyalty to the government of Vichy, while turning a blind eye to the activities of his secretary. Why on earth don't they make a film of this funny and touching story ?

When Des Racines et des Ailes  is good, it is very good. This one was on Paris vu d'en haut - a gift for the cameramen. And because the team try to find unusual aspects of the subject, this finished with the work of the fortunate team of Paris firemen assigned to the Hôtel des Invalides. After putting in their fifteen years of service some of them get what we cynics might call a cushy number - making sure that the rich guests don't panic while watching a perfomance of Carmen

Saturday evening on France 3 saw the return of a variety show very popular in the '80s, Champs Elysées.  The presenter then was Michel Drucker who had the idea of resuscitating it. Another nostalgia show, I thought. But there were a few surprises, among which was a song by Pierre Perret  La femme grillagée.  Given that Great Britain has not passed a law banning the Burqa in public, I had better be careful what I say, but I admire greatly the courage and honesty of this singer. Incidentally, the song takes as point of depart a poem by Verlaine which you'll find in the second half of the text document.

On we go with our old friend Comment c'est fait. This time, it's the Pompe à carburant, and I thought we were to be treated to the thing that you use at a service station. Not so, it's the didgeridoo that makes sure the petrol gets from the petrol tank to the motor. Pretty esoteric, but, as always, the change of register is useful as is the occasional new bit of vocabulary

This is a bonus. Sometimes when I make a transcription for sonsenfrancais.org, I think it would fit well here also, so I add the subtitles for this site. So here is a little piece on Michel Berger, composer of Starmania, and one of the great figures of  French popular music culture

There is an occasional series on Arte, Mystères d'Archives, which is always interesting, although not always mysterious. Here is Charles de Gaulle, at once the greatest French President of the 20th century, and, as he aged, an inveterate troublemaker on the world political scene. Quite simply, his sole priority was France and the French-speaking peoples.  A little diplomatic scandal here or there... Pouf !

Patrick Jeudy is a quite admirable French film maker who specialises in editing archive film footage combined with beautifully written scripts, to produce documentaries of very, very great quality. We have seen his A bomber named Liberty Lily  on this site, and he did a documentary Marilyn, dernières séances, which I thought I had quoted somewhere on the sites, but can no longer find...

This was Il n'ya pas de Kennedy heureux, on the tragedy of the Kennedy family. Overwhelming is the only word for it. The text was written by Gérard Miller, psychoanalyst, communist, chat-show personality.

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