October 2011
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1st October 2011. The Rugby World Cup is being played in New Zealand and
France have just been defeated by Tonga.. although they have still
qualified for the quarter final... where they will play England ... or,
as Laurent Delahousse calls us, through gritted teeth Nos amis
anglais. But listen to this wonderful man, Daniel Herrero, ex rugby
player and now expert. According to them, the French have not
forgotten the Hundred Years War, and it makes them see red. Me too matey, me too.. We will see who wins the next battle |
Now, this is what I call a woman politician. Rama Yade is an intelligent, shrewd political animal. She is also a strong personality, principled and willing to annoy the President of the Republic if need be. And she's drop-dead gorgeous. | |
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| Let's have an extract from an American film. Here is Planète Rouge... space exploration. These can be a little tricky to pick up, because of the technical language and the background noise of machines humming away. But this isn't so bad. | Here us un jour un destin on one of my heroes.. Michel Berger, composer of Starmania, extracts of which you'll find on this site. His mother was a concert pianist, his father an eminent French surgeon who suddenly left his wife and children without a word. After a relationship with the singer Véronique Sanson Berger found happiness with France Gall. It makes a nice piece. | |
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| Having started a page on the 2012 Presidential
elections, I have found little to put there recently but DSK.
The Sénat has gone to the left, the Socialist
party has had a boring set of primaires to decide their
candidate, and England lost to France in the Rugby World Cup. The
world has gone topsy-turvy. However we're waiting for Carla to have her baby. That might be interesting.. In the meantime, Tout l'histoire gave us a rattling good documentary on the presidential elections between 1965 and 1995. Here's a first instalment. |
One of my favourite French actors is Christophe Malavoy, and here he is in the film Mission sacrée, based on the Corsican Préfet Bonnet whose career came to an unhappy end in 1998. A good telefilm and the wonderful speaking voice of Malavoy makes his dialogue always clear. | |
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| Here's a documentary which says something about a certain difference between our cultures. From the series Un jour un destin, it describes the life and career of Madame Claude, who, in the '60s ran a very high-class prostitution network in Paris. One is irresistibly reminded of the British equivalent, where in 1963 a certain Stephen Ward was doing much the same. One might say though, that the French version was done with considerably more style. I don't think Madame Claude would have thought much of Mandy Rice-Davies... | Sunday morning on Arte is when you can improve your mind with Philosophie, with Raphaël Enthoven who is something that doesn't exist outside France : a glamorous philosopher, ex-partner of Carla Bruni. Having said that, he knows his stuff. Here he debates the subject of war with the fearsome and quite admirable Monique Canto-Sperber, another philosopher, and director of the Ecole normale supérieure. | |
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| Here's a news story I wouldn't normally comment. The sad events of 17 October 1961 are well known. But it's fifty years, and the original documents held by the Préfecture de police de Paris are open to the public for the first time. France 2's evening news decided to make it their principal dossier. The voice-over done by a staff journalist is excellent as always. Unfortunately, she had before her the gentleman in the picture who seemed not to understand that this was not the moment to defend the Préfet Maurice Papon. Incidentally, I missed the introduction by David Pujadas. No problem, because TV5 Monde carries France 2's evening news half an hour later for the benefit of the French overseas. Not this time... this article had been edited out. | Here is one of my favourite comic actors, Michel Leeb, an extract from a show he must have done a few years ago, because he parodies the then President, Jacques Chirac. | |
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| Friday night on France 5, and we have a new popular science programme, and it's a good one. On n'est pas que des cobayes features this hapless young man, Vincent, who is the guinea pig, here suffering terribly from sea-sickness, and a cheerful young woman, Agathe who laughs gaily at his discomfort. Just like being married in fact. Linguistically, it is very trendy and occasionally hard to decipher | Nestor Burma was a French private detective created in the '40s by Léo Malet, and very much on the American model. I must say it works very well, and because much French film material is very difficult indeed to follow, I was surprised to findthat this was fairly comprehensible | |
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| Politics again, as the presidential campaign starts to take shape. On the right, indeed the extreme right, is Marine Le Pen, who has taken over le Front national from her dad, Jean-Marie, fascist, antisemite, etc etc. Marine has renounced much of that, and kept the bits that ordinary French people are quite likely to vote for - she is against immigration for instance. She is also an intelligent, articulate lady with a sense of humour. | A recent number of Des racines et des ailes included a piece on Toulouse Lautrec and the dancers of the Moulin Rouge who inspired him. It made a nice little piece. You'll notice, incidentally that the dance rehearsals are in English - not surprising ... about two thirds of the girls are English or Australian | |
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| We finish October with the last five minutes of the interview with Nicolas Sarkozy with Yves Calvi and Jean-Pierre Perrault. I'll comment it more fully on the election page, but I found the attitude of Yves Calvi interesting. Traditionally, those who interview the French President have been just a touch sycophantic. Calvi is still a long way from Jeremy Paxman of the BBC.. but he's getting there. | ||
