Black Orpheus- A 1959 Film Directed by Michael Camus - A Paris in July 2024 Movie

 Black Orpheus- A 1959 Film Directed by Michael Camus - A Paris in July 2024 Movie

Paris in July 2024

Paris in July does not just include books. Contributions on your Paris vacation, your favourite meal or restaurant, French movies, music, art, Parisian history and more are very welcome. On the home page for the event you will inevitably discover perhaps new to you authors, movies as well as recipes to send you if you are lucky to Paris or at least the kitchen.

Set in the favellas of Rio de Janeiro, filmed in luscious color, Black Orpheus is a retelling of the Greek myth of Eurydice and Orpheus. I found myself pondering comparisons between Black Orpheus and Orphée directed by Jean Cocteau.

At the film's genesis, we’re introduced to sun-kissed beauty Eurydice (Marpessa Dawn), in a trance of confusion but determined to reunite with her cousin Serafina (Léa Garcia). The lusciously long days ushers in each character like a storybook play, intentionally yet with a sprinkle of wanderlust so they’re not one-dimensional. Orpheus (Breno Mello) is a bubbly man who is not interested in his pestering, yet bombastic beauty of a girlfriend Mira (Lourdes de Oliveira). Her insecurity and Orpheus’ lack of commitment pulls a strain on their relationship, eventually leaving a gaping hole for Eurydice to fall in between. This love triangle of sorts is played out theatrically intertwining us with each character, their dreams and eventual disaster. Ultimately our two lovers’ fated union cannot be tarnished, showing the power of destiny.

Black Orpheus won the Palme d'Or at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival,[9] the 1960 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film,[10] the 1960 Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Film and was nominated for the 1961 BAFTA Award for Best Film.

"Marcel Camus (born April 21, 1912, Chappes, Ardennes, Fr.—died Jan. 13, 1982, Paris) was a French motion-picture director who won international acclaim for his second film, Orfeu Negro (Black Orpheus) in 1958. The film was praised for its use of exotic settings and brilliant spectacle and won first prize at both the Cannes and Venice film festivals as well as an Oscar from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences." From Enclopedia Britannica 

Cafe Metropole - Set in Paris-A 1937 American romantic comedy film directed by Edward H. Griffith, released by 20th Century Fox and starring Loretta Young, Tyrone Power ...

 

This movie can be seen on YouTube 

https://youtu.be/DRhTohaDFTI

Paris in July 2023 -Hosted  by Words and Peace

https://wordsandpeace.com/2023/06/30/paris-in-july-2023/

   There are no real crimes here, though the police are certainly involved. It’s the sort of film where everyone is conning everyone else, sometimes even themselves.

   Monsieur Victor (Adolphe Menjou) owns the Café Metropole and his accountant Maxl (Christain Rub) has just informed him he is in the red and the auditors are coming. He needs to think and act fast, but luckily for Victor things are already falling in place in the person of an American millionaire Joseph Ridgeway (Charles Winninger), his sister Margaret (Helen Westley) and his daughter Laura (Loretta Young) who are arriving soon and hoping to meet celebrities and royalty. If Victor can arrange a royal romance, he might get the money he needs from Winninger.

Cafe Metropole is fun in a low key, all white tie and tails, elegant settings, good food, great wine, beautiful young people in beautiful clothes quoting François Villon in charming cafes and gorgeous suites, and charming con artists.

It is not high art like The Red Shoes, not as exciting as any of the Pimpernel films but it is fun to see how emigre Russians and rich Americans are portrayed. Ok at times it verges into silly.

I will next post on the 1836 film directed by Alexander Korda, The Elusive Pimpernel 

Mel ulm

Winter Rain - A Short Story by Alice Adams - Set in Paris - 1959

Paris in July, 2020. - Thyme for Tea.

My Posts for Paris in July 2020

1. “Forain” - a set in Paris Short Story by Mavis Gallant
2. “Winter Rain” - a Short story by Alice Adams about an American woman living in Paris after World War Two

“Winter Rain” was her first published stories- 1959 in The New Yorker, and is included in The Short Stories of Alice Adams, 2002

Alice Adams

Born - August 14, 1926 - Fredericksburg, Virginia

She lived in Paris in most of 1947 and 1948 after graduating from Radcliffe.
Like many a Young writer and Artist, her time in Paris was a transformative period.

Died - May 27, 1999 - San Francisco, California

“Whenever in the final unendurable weeks of winter, I am stricken, as now, to the bone with cold—it is raining, the furnace has somehow failed—I remember that winter of 1947–1948 in Paris, when I was colder than ever in my life, when it always headlines. And everyone struck: Métro, garbage, water, electricity, mail—all these daily necessities were at one time or another with difficulty forgone. Also, that was the first winter of American students—boys on the G.I. bill and girls with money from home, Bennington meeting Princeton in the Montana Bar. There were cellar clubs to which French friends guided one mysteriously: on the Rue Dauphine the Tabu, with a band; the Mephisto, just off the Boulevard Saint-Germain; and further out on Rue Blomet the wicked Bal Nègre, where one danced all night to West Indian music, danced with everyone and drank Pernod. It was a crowded, wild, excited year. “

Up until a few months  ago I had never heard of Alice Adams, now i am close to starting a read through of The Short Stories of Alice Adams, 800 pages with fifty one stories, most first published in The New Yorker.

After graduating from Ratcliff College at 19, Adams and her husband spent some time in Post War Paris.  Perhaps drawing a bit on that experience, “Winter Rain” is narrated from Paris by a young American woman studying at the Sorbonne.

The story is told after narrator has returned to the United States, it appears years have gone by, she has not kept up with anyone she knew in Paris.  Her most interesting relationship was with Mme. Frenaye, an older woman, from whom she rented a room.  Mme. Frenaye overcharges her while somehow representing French sophtication to an American ingenue.  I found this a charming and elegant story.

This story is included in sample of the Kindle edition of The  Short Stories of Alice Adams, along with two other stories  and a Forward  by  Victoria Wilson her long time editor at The New Yorker.

Suzanne's Children - A Daring Rescue in Nazi Paris by Anne Nelson - 2017 - 336 Pages

July in Paris - 2019 - Week One

Suzanne's Children: A Daring Rescue in Nazi Paris by Anne Nelson. 2017

An Autodidactic Corner Selection

Works Read so for Paris in July 2019

1. At the Existentialist Cafe:Freedom, Being and Apricot  Cocktails by Sarah Blackwell.  2016 - An exploration of the Parisian origins of French post World War Two Existentialism 
2. Suzanne's Children: A Daring Rescue in Nazi Paris by Anne Nelson. 2017- an important addition to French Holocaust Literature

Please consider participating in Paris in July 2019, hosted by Thyme for Tea.  

Suzanne Spaak

Born July 6, 1905 in Brussels, Belgium

Murdered August 12, 1944 by the Gestapo

April 21, 1985 named by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations for her instrumentality in saving hundreds of Jewish children from death at Auschwitz.

Suzanne's Children: A Daring Rescue in Nazi Paris by Anne Nelson tells in detail for the first time the heroic story of Suzanne Spaak's  role in saving hundreds of Jewish children in Nazi controlled Paris from being sent to Auschwitz (almost all   deported French Jews were sent there).  

From an elite Catholic family, in Brussels, born into a life of privilege seemed on the surface she seemed an unlikely hero.  Spaak, her husband, a well known playwright, and their two children were living in luxury when the Germans took control of Paris.  At first it superficially seemed things might not be do bad for French Jews, many with roots going back to the time of Charlemagne.  French Jews proved their loyalty in World War One.

Spaak had a close French Jewish friend.  There were rumours about what was happening to Jews in Eastern Europe but people at first thought French Jews would be spared.  At first the Germans and the French authorities reached a devil's comprise.  Only foreign born Jews would be deported.  A fiction was kept up that they were just being sent to work on farms and factories, filling in for German soldiers.  Many of the French shared the attitudes of the Germans toward Jews, a mixture of hatred and envy.  Soon the mission of the Gestapo changed.  All Jews were to be deported.  It was understood for most, and for all children, this was a death sentence.  Spaak joined an underground network devoted to saving children.  At first others involved felt a wealthy society woman like Spaak would not be truly dedicated to this cause.  They could not have been more wrong.

Nelson shows us how Spaak raised funds needed to protect children.  She needed to find homes for the children which was an immense task.  She was tireless in her efforts.  Her life had a purpose.  Nelson lets us see the many people who helped her in this cause.  We also learn about the efforts of the Gestspo.  She was questioned several times before her final arrest.  She knew well she was risking her life.

In telling the story of Suzanne Spaak Nelson has to describe Paris under the Germans and Vichy France.  Nelson made this well known period vividly real.

In  At the Existentialist Cafe:Freedom, Being and Apricot  Cocktails by Sarah Blackwell we see how the rise in popularity of French Existentialism was driven in large part by the failure of much of French society to stand up to the Nazis.

I really appreciated learning of the post war history of many involved in the rescues.

This is a wonderful book.

From Anne-nelson.com

Anne Nelson is an author and lecturer in the fields of international affairs, media and human rights. As a journalist she covered the conflicts in El Salvador and Guatemala, and won the Livingston Award for best international reporting from the Philippines. She served as the director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. In 1995 she became the director the international program at the Columbia School of Journalism, where she created the first curriculum in human rights reporting.

Since 2003 Nelson has been teaching at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), where her classes and research explore how digital media can support the underserved populations of the world through public health, education and culture.

See her webpage for more information.

Suzanne's Children: A Daring Rescue in Nazi Paris by Anne Nelson is a very valuable edition to French Holocaust studies.  

On my sidebar there is an image of Irène Némirovsky. 

She moved to Paris as a child with  her parents to escape pograms in the Ukraine.  She died two weeks after arriving at Auschwitz.  She loved Paris and beautifully chronicled it in her many wonderful novels and stories. Murdered at thirty-nine, she would have written many more works.  

As anti-immgrant xenophobia grips America and Europe, with anti-Semitism on the rise, it is good to learn of the heroic activities of Suzanne Spaak.

Mel u

How the French Invented Love: Nine Hundred Years of Passion and Romance by Marilyn Yalom (2012)

Paris in July, Year Ten-- Hosted by Thyme for Tea

How the French Invented Love:  Nine Hundred Years of Passion and Romance by Marilyn Yalom was an enjoyable read.  She attempts to substantiate her claim that the concept of romantic love is a creation of French writers, starting with poetic epics in the 12th century about knights and their lady loves.  I found her claim  not really substantiated but that does not stop the work from being of interest to those quite into French literature.

As I know very little, ok nothing, about medieval French literature I did find her chapters on this kind of a slog through.  My thoughts as I read was that surely the reading matter mocked in Don Quixote testifies to romantic literature in Spain and that the Decameron shows the same is true of Italy. Is there not romantic love all through Shakespeare?

I have read a few plays by Moliere and I am not sure his comedies of mistaken identity are quite romances.

Yalom does talk a good bit about the treatment of the idea of "The Sentimental Education", the initiation into sex of a young man by an older woman, often a near relative.  Is this something that actually was a normal occurrence in France in the 18th and 19th century?  Socially History wise, Yalom deals only with the upper crust in French society.  She occasionally makes generalizations about French society, comparisons to America.  I would speculate her life experiences are largely with wealthy, very educated people.

Her discussion of Rousseau's sentimental education was interesting.

Her observations on Stendhal's The Red and the Black seemed really acute.  She talks about the romantic events portrayed.  I must say she answered the question for me of "what is so great about Stendhal?"

Of course Balzac must have a central part in any history of love in French literature
(I am currently about 90% through a read through of The Comedie Humaine) and Zola as well.  I think Yalom missed something important in both these writers.  Their fixation on virginal pure young girls.  Once a woman has sex, she becomes corrupt and a potential danger.  Yalom also says that Zola writes about the lower levels of society, true of course but about half twenty novels of the Rougon Macquart cycle involve the rich or upper middle class.

I enjoyed her treatment of Flaubert, focused on Madame Bovary, and profited from it.  She helped me see what a supreme work of art he produced.  She states, correctly of course, that Emma Bovary was partially led to adultery by the books she read.  She details her two romances but she does not mention what seems to be Flaubert' very humorously done suggestion she also slept with a neighborhood farm book.  I see this as very important.  I did really enjoy Yalam's account of her own changing attitude toward Emma as she herself matured from young college student to wife and mother.  This was extremely well done.

She next proceeds to Proust, who she loves and knows very well.  From here she proceeds to the Existentialists, Marguerite Duras, focusing largely on the lover, concluding with some contemporary writers.

Yalam lets us see the big role of infidelity in French literature.  In her concluding remarks she generalized her comparisons of French and American society.

This is an interesting book, maybe one only those really into French literature will want to read and I am sure they will find fault with some of her remarks.  That being said I am glad I read it.  If you have not read the basic texts you may be bored at times.

I was given a review copy.  The style and manner are friendly.

From the author's website


Biographical Sketch
Marilyn Yalom grew up in Washington D.C. and was educated at Wellesley College, the Sorbonne, Harvard and Johns Hopkins. She has been married to the psychiatrist Irvin Yalom for fifty years and is the mother of four children and the grandmother of five. She has been a professor of French and comparative literature, director of an institute for research on women, a popular speaker on the lecture circuit, and the author of numerous books and articles on literature and women's history.

Her books have been translated into 20 languages. In 1991 she was decorated as an Officier des Palmes Académiques by the French Government.
Books by Marilyn Yalom include Maternity, Mortality, and the Literature of Madness (out of print), Blood Sisters: The French Revolution in Women's Memory (1993), A History of the Breast (1997), A History of the Wife (2001), Birth of the Chess Queen (2004), The American Resting Place (2008) and How the French Invented Love: 900 Years of Passion and Romance (2012).

The Hotel on Place Verdone: Life, Death, and Betrayal at The Hotel Ritz in Paris

Paris in July - hosted by Thyme for Tea

If you have stayed or eaten at The Ritz, please leave a comment on your experiences 

The very word "Ritz" conjures up visions of elegance, opulence, luxury, decadence, and wealth.  Founded by Cesár Ritz in 1898 it quickly became known as the epitome of the grace, service, comfort of Paris Hotels.  It was among the first hotels to have private bathrooms in suites, telephones and electricity.  The Hotel on Place Verdone:  Life, Death and Betrayal at The Hotel Ritz in Paris, goes into detail about the Early Years of The Ritz but the central focus is on the period from May 10, 1940 when the Germans occupied Paris up to August 8, 1944 when Paris was liberated.  

By the order of Adolf Hitler, The Ritz was the only luxury hotel allowed to remain open.  The Luftwaffe  made The Ritz their French headquarters, Herman Goering maintained a Suite there as did numerous other high ranking German officers.  As a side effect, this meant the hotel restaurant was not subject to war time shortages.  Famously Coco Chanel lived there during the war and had an affair with a German count.  Chanel was probably being used as a possible source of intelligence.  Ernest Hemingway also stated there at times.  Lots of intrigue.  We also see the impact of staff shortages caused by the war.

Mazzeo details all the intrigues, deceptions, treachery and romances of the war years at the Ritz.  We get to vicariously enjoy the amazing suites, the impeccable service, the five star food while we wonder who the other guests think we may be. Of course we must stop in Coco Chanel's boutique.   Marcel Proust also had a suite there, for a mere 3000 Euros you can spend the night these just as they were rooms.  If you want something a bit better, The Coco Chanel Suite, July seven is available, is a trifle more at 25,000 Euros.

The hotel was sold to an Egyptian business man in 1979.  It is still considered one of the great hotels of the world.  

I enjoyed this book a lot.  Amazon reviews are very mixed.  I do recommend this book for anyone who has ever dreamed of Paris and "Putting on the Ritz".  

Dr. Mazzeo is the Clara C. Piper Associate Professor of English at Colby College, in Waterville, Maine. She is the author of numerous works of narrative nonfiction, and several of her books have been New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Los Angeles Times bestsellers.  She divides her time among coastal Maine, New York City, and Saanichton, British Columbia, where she lives with her husband at Parsell Vineyard.  - from the author's website

Mel u

Paris in July - A Wonderful Event Hosted by Thyme for Ten - Year Ten

Paris in July- Hosted by Thyme for Tea

Paris in July, hosted by Thyme, is in Year Ten.  I am in my seventh year of participation, first joining in July, 2011.  This wonderful event is your opportunity to explore and share your experiences on all things Parisian.  I focus on literature but you can tell us about your vacation in Paris, favorite classic recipe, art, museums, music or nonfiction.  Or even post on a movie!  It was in July in Paris 2014 that I first read my beloved Irene Nemirovsky, whose image is on my sidebar permanently.  The posts by the many participants are like a class in French culture at the Sorbonne. The full details are on Thyme for Tea at the link above.

I recently was given a copy of an anthology of Parisian Christmas stories that looks like a good resource.  I will read more of Colette, high priestesses of the City of Love. I will continue my read

through of Balzac's The Comedie Humaine, maybe read a bit of Zola.  I have two books on Paris during WW Two I hope to read.

Paris in July is a great event.  I have found through it new to me writers, read stories about Paris trips, food, and art.  I have found new bloggers to follow.  The international book blog community is a great place, needed more in these dark times than ever before.  

Just sit back,imagine you are on a luxury house boat on the Seine, spending the day in a cafe on the left bank, dining in a four star restaurant or in a corner bistro.  Paris has darker sides, and maybe we will venture there.  

Mel de Ú 

"II Plce:r Dō Mō koe:r" a short story by Hortense Calisher (first published September 1, 1956, in The New Yorker)

A Story about a New York City College woman's semester in Paris, in 1956

Host Webpage for Paris in July 2016

"Certainly, Hortense Calisher’s stories take their place in that central line of narrative that runs from Henry James and William Dean Howells and Edith Wharton through Scott Fitzgerald and Hortense Calisher’s contemporary, the late John Cheever."  - John Hollander, from his Introduction to The Collected Stories of Hortense Calisher.

Hortense Calisher (1911 to 2009, born and died in New York City) published twenty books in her life, mostly novels but some memoirs also.  My knowledge of her work is limited to a few of her short stories I have so far read and posted upon.  The Collected Stories of Hortense Calisher, a world class literary treasure, will appeal to those who like the New York Stories of Edith Wharton and Henry James.  My quick research found no visits to Paris in her life history but in the educated affluent circles she lived in and wrote about many had been there.  Young women often spent a college term there to polish their learned in Americs French.   "

"II Plce:r Dō Mō koe:r" is about a young Female New York high school student  who is enrolled in a class in French being taught by a phonetics expert.  They are not initially taught grammar, word meaning, just how to make the sounds.  The instructor uses a phonetic alaphabet to represent the sounds, it is used in the story title.  Here is the class description:

"I was taught to speak French with tears. It was not I who wept, or the other girls in my high-school class, but the poet Verlaine—the one who wrote “II plœ:r dã mõ kœ:r.” Inside forty slack American mouths, he wept phonetically for almost a semester. During this time, we were not taught a word of French grammar or meaning—only the International Phonetic Alphabet, the sounds the symbols stood for, and Verlaine translated into them.

The story title is meant to be the International Phonetic Alphabet transcription of a line from Verlaine.b

In a few years, midterm in college, she goes to Paris to enroll in a language class.  Paris was still recovering from the war and such classes, which included room and some board, were common.  At first she is concerned the French, who she sees a snobbish, will laugh at her accent but the teacher tells her she speaks beautifully.  She does a tourist walk of the city but she cannot really understand the citizens.  

This is not a story with a big plot or dramatic turns.  Just an elegant account of one young woman's experience in Paris in the 1950s.

French Literature and History on The Reading Life  

Host Webpage for Paris in July 2016

So far for July in Paris I have read

1.  The Dogs and the Wolves by Iréne Nemirovsky 

2.  Mavis Gallant -  Two Set in Paris works, a short story and a note book entry

3.  Five Nights in Paris by John Baxter.

4.  The Little Paris Book Store by Nina George

5.  "The Problem of Summer Time" by Marcel Ayme

6.  "Love Under the Roof" by Emile Zola

7.  "The Purse" by Honore de Balzac 

8.  Favored Stranger:  Gertrude Stein and Family by Leslie Warren

9.  "Czarist Emigres" by Joseph Roth

Mel u 

 

"The Czarist Emigres" by Joseph Roth (first published September 23, 1926, included in Hotel Days Wanderings Between the Wars, Edited And translated by Michael Hoffman, 2015)

Host Webpage for Paris in July 2016

My post also includes scenes from a movie perfect for Paris in July, Ninotchka.

Joseph Roth was born in Brody, now in the Ukraine, in 1894.  It was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire

He left his beloved Vienna on January 30, 1933, the day Hitler became chancellor of Germany, moving to Paris.  Paris was his home for the remaining six years of his life.  He died in Paris May 27, 1939

His most famous work is The Radetzky March.  The Legend of the Holy Drinker, is, as far as i know, his only work of fiction set in Paris.  His novel The Hundred Days is set in the time of Napolean's brief escape but is nor centered in Paria.

For a time he was the best paid journalist in Europe.  Reading his journalism it is a pleasure and an honor to encounter such extreme intelligence and perceptivity.  His personal life can only be described as a "mess".  

I could not let Paris in July come to an end without posting on one of his articles about Paris.

In "The Czarist Emigres" Roth evokes the romantic figures of White Russians living in Paris, Grand Dukes driving taxis, counts working as waiters.  Roth knows that White Russians were almost all very anti-semetic.  Here are Roth's beautifully expressed thoughts

"We were armed with the old literary formula reflexively applied for every transgression and excess: “the Russian soul”. Europe was familiar with music-hall Cossacks, the operatic excesses of Russian peasant weddings, Russian singers and their balalaikas. It never understood (not even after the Russians turned up on our doorstep) how French romanciers—the most conservative in the world—and sentimental Dostoyevsky readers had deformed the Russian to a kitschy figure compounded of divinity and bestiality, alcohol and philosophy, samovar cosiness and the barren steppes of Asia. ....

The longer the emigration went on, the more our Russians resembled the notion we had of them. They flattered us by assimilating themselves to it. Their feeling of playing a part maybe soothed their misery. They bore it more easily once it was appreciated as literature. The Russian count as Paris cabbie takes his fares straight into a storybook. His fate itself may be ghastly. But it is at least literary. The anonymous life of the émigrés became a public production. And then they began to make an exhibition of themselves. Hundreds of them founded theatres, choirs, dance groups, balalaika orchestras."

A perfect movie to accompany this is Ninotchka, made in 1939.  Three Russian envoys have been send to Paris to sell some  Crown Jewels.  They get distracted by the opulence of capitalistic Paris and a special envoy is sent to follow up on the sale. The Grand Duchess who used to own them makes a legal claim on the jewels.  When Ninotchka, played to perfection by Greta Garbo arrives in Paris she is totally dedicated to Russia and abhors the decadence of Paris.  Slowly Paris seduces her.   Niniotchka is one of my favorite movies.  I must have seen it at least six times.  It is hilarious, poignant, the settings and clothes are marvelous.  It has all the Russian cliche figures Roth mentioned.  It premiered the year Roth died so I doubt he saw it.

Here are a few scene shots

      

     Greta researching some legal matters.

Do you have a favorite set in Paris movie?

Mel u

Gigi by Colette (1944). - Copiously Illustrated Post

If Paris is the city of love, then Colette (Sidione-Gabreelle Colette 1873 to 1954) is her high priestess.  For many their image of Paris derives from memories of the movie, Gigi, made from her probably most famous work.  Living to almost eighty, she produced many volumes of writings of all sorts.  When she passed in 1954 she was given the first ever state funeral for a French woman.  

 Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette by Judith Thurman. A truly great biography, must reading for all Francophiles

Gigi is set in the demimonde world of early twentieth century Paris.  "The Demimonde World" refers not to straightforward prostitutes but to women supported by wealthy, often older, married men. Gigi is a girl of sixteen, two years younger than my youngest daughter, who is being trained by her two aunts, both made comfortable by a life in this world, to be a suitable companion for a Baron.  It is a world of glamour and sophistication.  The very real power of Gigi is in the conversations of the aunts with Gigi, their instructions.  When Gigi asks about marriage, she is told "women in our family do not marry".  Her mother is an actress, the theater as Colette knew very well, as closely tied to the demimonde world and was often seen as a place to exhibit your charms.  The role of the mother in the story is very interesting.

 (The hit movie is a visual treat but far different from the original)

Gigi has an admirer very interested in her. Gigi knows what she will soon be expected to do, her aunts are counting on her earnings.  The demimonde world was rife with gossip.  One of the aunts iclose friends had just overdosed on laudanum in an effort to win back Gigi's admiror who had gotten bored with her.  Gigi knows once she has slept with a man of the sort one finds in her world, imagine an aging born to money Maurice Chevalier or a younger Loius Jordan who plays Gigi first lover in the movie, he may begin to lose interest in her.  Thus her aunts coach her how to acquire valuable jewels from your admirors while seemingly having no interest in money matters.

Some will see the sexual pursuit of sixteen year old girls by fifty plus year old wealthy men as nearly crossing into pedeophilia.  

The ending is very interesting.  Gigi has learned her lessons well

French Literature and History on The Reading Life 

Host Webpage for Paris in July 2016

So far for July in Paris I have read

1.  The Dogs and the Wolves by Iréne Nemirovsky 

2.  Mavis Gallant -  Two Set in Paris works, a short story and a note book entry

3.  Five Nights in Paris by John Baxter.

4.  The Little Paris Book Store by Nina George

5.  "The Problem of Summer Time" by Marcel Ayme

6.  "Love Under the Roof" by Emile Zola

7.  "The Purse" by Honore de Balzac 

8.  Favored Stranger:  Gertrude Stein and Family by Leslie Warren

Mel u

Favored Strangers Gertrude Stein and Her Famiily by LindaWagner-Martin(1995)

Gertrude Stein was born in Alleghaney, Pennsylvania, USA 1874, she died in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France in 1946

In 1903 she and her brothers moved to Paris.  France, mostly Paris, was to be her home for the rest of her life.

Her best known literary work was The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, 1933

French Literature and History on The Reading Life 

To most, including me before I read Linda Wagner-Martin's excellent biography, Gertrude Stein is known as the host for decades of literary and artistic salons, held at her Paris homes and for her role as a cultural icon  in the LGBT culture for her long term relationship to Alice B. Toklas.  I am pretty sure they are, in the literary world, the most famous lesbian couple of all time.

          

          ( Stein on the left)

Stein was born into an affluent Jewish-American family.  Her father had extensive real estate holdings.  At one point, when the family lived in California, he was the director of The San Fransisco Street Car Lines.

(Try to imagine Gertrude and Alice hanging on a strap on a street car without smiling.) 

Upon the passing of both parents, Gertrude moved to Paris, along with her brother Michael, who managed the family trust, and her brother Leo with whom she lived from 1903 to 1914.

    Stein and her brothers, Michael and Leo.

Prior to moving to Paris Gertrude went to Radcliffe and then John Hopkins Medical school where she was a student of William James.  She faced significant predjudice  as women doctors were not quite yet accepted.  She did not graduate. It was there she first began to realize her sexual identity.  

From 1903 to 1914 Leo and Gsrtrude used income from the trust fund to buy works of upcoming artists.  Her taste in art was either brilliant or very lucky as she bought large amounts of early works by Picasso, Renoir and other artists who would become world class.  This wonderful art collection became the functional draw for her famous studios.  Greats of world literature like the Americans Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sherwood Anderson were  in regular attendance.  Wagner-Martin goes into lots of interesting detail about Gertrude's occasionally problematic relationship with Hemingway.  She also had a second monthly  salon focusing on the Paris art community.  

     A small portion of her art collection

In time the trust income of Gertrude declined and she partially supported herself by selling of paintings for many times more than she paid for them.  Assembled today, her collection would be worth billions of dollars just for the Picasso's.

     Portrait of Gertrude Stein by Pablo Picasso

Gertrude wrote a number of literary works and the author goes into a lot of detail about her financial dealings.  Much space is devoted to her relationship with Alice Tolkas, which lasted over thirty years.

During World War Two Gertrude and Alice left Paris for the countryside in what would be Vichy France. As a Jew and a homosexual Gertrude was at considerable risk from the Nazis.  The author suggests she survived through a personal friendship with a high ranking Vichy contact and her status as a famous American writer.  The account of the struggles to survive of Gertrude and Alice during the war years was very moving. 

Favored Strangers- Gertrude Stein and her Family is a very interesting well done literary biography.

I was given a copy by the publisher.

French Literature and History on The Reading Life 

Host Webpage for Paris in July 2016

So far for July in Paris I have read

1.  The Dogs and the Wolves by Iréne Nemirovsky 

2.  Mavis Gallant -  Two Set in Paris works, a short story and a note book entry

3.  Five Nights in Paris by John Baxter.

4.  The Little Paris Book Store by Nina George

5.  "The Problem of Summer Time" by Marcel Ayme

6.  "Love Under the Roof" by Emile Zola

7.  "The Purse" by Honore de Balzac 

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