Expressions with ‘color’ in French

Claudette Castonguay “Les couleurs du temps”

Couleurs/ Colors in French

Une couleur (it is a feminine word)

Derived: un colori- une nuance, une teinte, un ton, une tonalité, Chromatique,

Adjectives: Couleur claire, foncée, sombre, obscure…. Couleur ardente, chaude, éclatante, fraîche, gaie, vive. Couleur chargée, choquante, criarde, crue, poussée, tranchée, voyante. Couleur franche, nette; couleur fausse, imprécise, indéfinissable, rompue. Couleur délavée (washed-out), éteinte, neutre, tendre, pâle. Couleur fanée (faded) morne, passée, pisseuse (pop.), sale, terne, triste. Couleur mate, couleur végétale, animale, artificielle, naturelle (vegetal, animal, artificial, natural colors)

Camaieu [Arabic word =bouton de fleur] – One color that is used with different tones in a painting. Ie. Grey]

Plusieurs couleurs: (several colors): Bariolé, bigarré, chamarré, chiné, diapré, jaspé, moucheté, multicolore, panaché, polychrome, taché, truité;

Couleurs spectrales (spectral), couleurs de l’arc-en-ciel (=rainbow colors)

Couleurs primaires (primary colors).

Idioms.

“des goûts et des couleurs, on ne discute pas” (on ne juge pas, les goûts diffèrent) literally: ‘of tastes and colors’ [an expression meaning there are so many different tastes that one cannot discuss or judge them.]

la couleur du temps: litt. ‘the color of time’ = a changing color from grey to blue. Can be said of eyes.Rather poetic if one thinks of it.  

En faire voir “De toutes les couleurs” = faire subir toutes sortes d’épreuves à quelqu’un. Litt. ‘of all colors’– Someone who has undergone a series of trials and tribulations. “En voir de toutes les couleurs” – en faire voir de toutes les couleurs : he/she made me see all colors. Literally to take someone through the ringer.

‘Porter les couleurs d’une dame.’ To wear the same colors as a lady one loves. Most likely from medieval imagery

‘Avoir les 4 couleurs:’ to have all four family cards in one’s hands. (card game: to have the 4 colors)

“Annoncer la couleur”- say what you have to say. (probably originated from card game talk)

‘un marchand de couleurs’ = un droguiste. A store where you can buy brooms or paint, etc. still used in early 20^th century.

“Haut en couleurs” ex. ‘Un personnage haut en couleurs.’ (pittoresque). Somebody who is excentric, a character ‘high in color’ or colorful.

“la couleur locale”. Characteristics of each person (personality, traits etc..) but also the distribution of objects and color in a location. picturesque.

“sous couleur de” (under the color of) ex. Attaquer sous couleurs de se défendre/sous couleur d’amitié = to pretend, under false pretense/under the appearance of …ex. Under the pretense of friendship.

Perdre ses couleurs: to lose one’s colors (to become pale).

Une couleur politique (a political color): i.e. ce journal est d’une couleur politique indécise. (this newspaper is politically undecided)

Geographic- name of a city: Vaucouleurs. (for instance)

 

My students’ colors + favorite expressions

Fall 2015

 

Black

• ‘black as my soul’
• black as night
• death
• ‘the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice’
• black sheep

Blue:

• I think the color blue is interesting: light blue=sadness, dark blue=calm + relaxing          
• Feeling blue (3x)
• Winter blues
• Out of the blue (6X)
• Sad
• ‘she wore blue velvet’ (is that a song?)

Brown

• dirty
• brown as berries (an old Southern saying)

Gray/Grey

• Gray area (not clearly defined)

Green:

• Green with envy (6X)
• Green thumb
• Rich ($)
• Green around the gills (looking ill)
• The grass is always greener on the other side
• Green (inexperienced)      

Lavender

reflecting pond/Amethyst orchid

• tranquility

Orange

• Hot (feeling)

Pink                                                

• ‘tickled pink’ (2x)
• ‘pretty in pink’

Purple

• Lust

Red

• Blood red eyes
• Seeing red
• Passion
• ‘caught red-handed’
• to paint the town red (have a great time)

Silver

• Fed with a silver spoon

White

• White as a ghost
• White as a sheet
• White lie (2x ‘harmless lie’)
• White Christmas
• As pure as white

Yellow                   

• Happy
• Yellow-bellied (2x)
• ‘you’re yellow’ (cowardice)

 

• the x denotes the amount of people who noted that expression.
• PS: being musically inclined, I can’t help but notice the many songs named after colors.  you may want to try this as an exercise.
• ex. Yellow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKNxeF4KMsY
• Blue velvet (1954) by Lana del Rey. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwCitgDib-g    She wore blue velvet
• Bluer than velvet was the night
• Softer than satin was the lightFrom the stars
• Johnny Halliday (French) “Noir c’est noir” (black is black): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99phlP_e2Rw
• Nina Simone: Black is the color of my true love’s hair https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWmCbEbMmeU
• Procol Harum: A whiter shade of pale.
• Les Yeux noirs (Dark eyes) Marc Chagall – the painter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLv48Djp3T8

 

COLORS (or reading Michel Pastoureau’s book “BLACK”

Middle Ages colors (affecting clothes, books, manuscripts, images, heraldry, class etc.)

Middle Ages – clothes

Social structure and garments

wedding gown

Vowels

A black, E white, I red, U green, O blue: vowels,
I shall tell, one day, of your mysterious origins:
A, black velvety jacket of brilliant flies
which buzz around cruel smells,

Gulfs of shadow; E, whiteness of vapours and of tents,
lances of proud glaciers, white kings, shivers of cow-parsley;
I, purples, spat blood, smile of beautiful lips
in anger or in the raptures of penitence;

U, waves, divine shudderings of viridian seas,
the peace of pastures dotted with animals, the peace of the furrows
which alchemy prints on broad studious foreheads;

O, sublime Trumpet full of strange piercing sounds,
silences crossed by [Worlds and by Angels]:
–O the Omega! the violet ray of [His] Eyes!

. . .

Voyelles

A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, O bleu: voyelles,
Je dirai quelque jour vos naissances latentes:
A, noir corset velu des mouches éclatantes
Qui bombinent autour des puanteurs cruelles,

Golfes d’ombre; E, candeurs des vapeurs et des tentes,
Lances des glaciers fiers, rois blancs, frissons d’ombelles;
I, pourpres, sang craché, rire des lèvres belles
Dans la colère ou les ivresses pénitentes;

U, cycles, vibrements divins des mers virides,
Paix des pâtis semés d’animaux, paix des rides
Que l’alchimie imprime aux grands fronts studieux;

O, suprême Clairon plein des strideurs étranges,
Silences traversés des [Mondes et des Anges]:
—O l’Oméga, rayon violet de [Ses] Yeux!

. . .

Arthur Rimbaud, (1854-1891) the anarchic visionary, precocious boy-poet of French symbolism, wrote some of the most remarkable poetry and prose of the

Arthur Rimbaud

19th century. Especially in ‘A Season in Hell’ (1873), Rimbaud is the poet of crystallized attitudes, of flash-frozen poses. His highly suggestive, subtle work drew on subconscious sources, and its form was correspondingly supple and novel. Rimbaud has been identified as one of the creators of free verse because of the rhythmic experiments in his prose poems ‘Illuminations’ (1886). Paul Claudel, saw Rimbaud as “a mystic in the savage state”. *Synesthesia: his Sonnet of the ‘Vowels’ (1871) in which each vowel is assigned a color, helped popularize synesthesia.

Roland Barthes

When I buy colours, it is by the mere sight of their name. The name of the colour (Indian yellow, Persian red, celadon green) outlines a kind of generic region within which the exact, special effect of the colour is unforeseeable; the name is then the promise of a pleasure, the program of an operation: there is always a certain future in the complete names.  Similarly, when I say that a word is beautiful, when I use it because I like it, it is never by virtue of its sonorous charm or of the originality of meaning, or of a “poetic” combination of the two.  The word transports me because of the notion that I am going to do something with it: it is the thrill of a future praxis, something like an appetite.  This desire makes the entire motionless chart of language vibrate. [Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes]

Fall-Winter 2015 Colors and tendencies:

1) According to Marie Claire and based on fashion shows (summer):
Red (for winter) [Dior, Hermes, Isabelle Marant, Lanvin, Saint-Laurent….

Purple  [Christine Phung, Balmain, Cédric Charlier, Manish Arora…]

Beige. Max Mara, BCBG…

To which are added the following nuances: grey, black and white….

PRINTS: stripes and floral designs.

Accessories: boots to the thigh. Gloves. The spirit of the 70s is back.

And belts, no matter what garment (dress, skirt, pants)

Three majors must have garments: mini-biker jacket, midday skirt, and bohemian dress.

Fabrics: vinyl and fur.

2) However according to Cosmo France, the colors for winter are: vintage orange + vert d’eau (water green) about patchwork. http://www.cosmopolitan.fr/photo/1921764/1/tendance-mode-automne-hiver-2015#autoSlide

Vintage Orange

Velours is making a come-back (corduroy).

1540: the printing Press

Printing Press

Rubens

2015#autoSlide

Some colors

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L’Amant/The Lover –J.J. Annaud (1992)

23 years after the film was originally released.

Crossing the Mekong river

Cast:

the young girl: Jane March

the Chinese man: Tony Leung (Ka Fai)

the mother: Frédérique Meininger

the younger brother: Melvil Poupaud

the older brother: Arnaud Giovaninetti

….

Script: Gerard Brach, JJ Annaud

Cinematography: Robert Fraisse

Music: Gabriel Yared.

Costume Designer: Yvonne Sassinot de Nesle.

In the Limousine

Cinematographic patterns in the film/text:

1) circular structure  2) repetitions  3)voice-over narration (Jeanne Moreau)

Franco-British Production: Burrill Prod. Films A2, + Giai Phong Film (Ho Chi Minh)

Training: Yvonne Sassinot de Nesle

Passionate about history, Yvonne Sassinot de Nesle studied at the  Marcel Roche academy and becomes a painter/sculptor.  Obtains a degree in Art History. Begins creating costumes for television and theater.

Film career

Her career as a costume designer in film spans 24 years (1981-2005) . She worked on about 20 films. She is particularly interested in historical (period) films and collaborated with Andrzej Wajda (Danton, 1982), Bertrand Tavernier (Un dimanche à la campagne, Sunday in the country, 1983), Youssef Chahine (Adieu Bonaparte, 1984, (Le Sixième Jour, the Sixth Day, 1986), Jean-Jacques Annaud (L’Amant, The Lover, 1991), Philippe de Broca (Chouans !, 1987), Francis Girod (Lacenaire, 1990), ou encore Roland Joffé (Vatel, 1999).  She received several Césars and Molières nominations; her work was awarded a prize in , 1985 at the Césars (best costumes, for the film Un amour de Swann, (Swann in Love) by Volker Schlöndorff– adaptation of Proust’s novel).

Other activities

She was also a theatre costume designer  (1970-2003),  an opera costume designer  (1987-2001), and a television costume designer  (between 1965 & 1979,  worked on Les Dames de la Côte, by Nina Companeez), also worked for circus design (Alexis Grüss, 2001-2002) ;  as well as a painter.

Yvonne Sassinot de Nesle

Example of Sassinot’s work in Swann in Love

Film poster

Work for L’Amant: Sassinot de Nesle returns to Vietnam. It becomes a personal adventure: She was born there in 1937, and left when she was 12 years old, and had not returned since then.  She spent 8 months there for the shoot and preparations, between October 1990 and May 1991. The language she used to speak with her governess returns (her ‘tiba’).  Before leaving for Vietnam, she looked into family pictures, and retrieves a Chinese wedding gown that had been offered her mother; she will use it for the wedding sequence.  She is surrounded by a small team of 5 persons, and one assistant. Forty people work for her in workshops (sewing), and 200 outside.  They were to produce 2.200 costumes in 13 weeks.  The ‘little hands’ were to help her. She discovers exceptional embroiderers…Organizes afternoon naps, beneficial before any fitting.

Will spend hours researching in encyclopedias, photo albums, museums…she has to calculate the discrepancy between European fashion in the metropolis, (Paris) and what people used to wear at the colony– slightly off then.

The Vietnamese are dressed in browns, greens, and nuances that evoke water and earth. Their clothes back then were large, with layered tunics (ao dai, pants etc.) The Tonkinese had large flat and round hats, not the pointed hats found in the South.  In Sadec, men and women would wear a ‘sarong’, a piece of cloth sown as a large skirt that is to be found in Bali or Burma.  (all this worn very elegantly).

The Chinese, in Cholon, were often wealthy, and were shown wearing different colours: blue, black and sometimes red.

Tussor silk saree

Several characters navigate between these two worlds (colonizer/colonized): i.e. Asian people dressed in Western style. The most difficult part was to find the silk fabric; some of which had to be purchased in Lyon. Also, bought “Tussor” fabric (the name comes from a silk work used to make this type of silk): the Chinese man’s costume is in Tussor.

THE PICTURE- THE TEXT

this picture has been lost and i will never again feel that same emotion…i suspect that [a] recomposed image will no longer please me in the same way, or with as much force, since it will have had time to make its way to my head, there to crystallize into a perfect image, and the photographic abstraction will happen by itself on the sensitized surface of memory, to be developed and fixed by writing, which i resorted only to free myself of my photographic regret.

—hervé guibert, ghost image

“My memory of men is never lit up and illuminated like my memory of women” (Duras, The Lover 66)

The Clothes: fabric. Accessories and Women

I’m wearing a dress of real silk, but it’s threadbare, almost transparent. It used to belong to my mother. One day she decided the color was too light for her and she gave it to me. It’s a sleeveless dress with a very low neck. It’s the sepia color real silk takes on with wear. It’s a dress I remember. I think it suits me. I’m wearing a leather belt with it, perhaps a belt belong to one of my brothers. I can’t remember the shoes I used to wear in those days, only certain dresses. Most of the the time I wore canvas sandals, no stockings. …

This particular day I must be wearing the famous pair of gold  lamé high heels. I can’t see any others I could have been wearing, so I’m wearing them. Bargains, final reductions bought for me by my mother [in fh: ‘soldes soldées’]

…. these high heels are the first in my life, they’re beautiful, they’ve eclipsed all the shoes that went before, the flat ones, for playing and running about, made of white canvas. (12)

It’s not the shoes, though, that make the girl look so strangely, so weirdly dressed. No, it’s the fact that she’s wearing a man’s flat-brimmed hat, a

the ambiguity of the image lies in the hat

brownish-pink fedora with a broad black ribbon.

The crucial ambiguity of the image lies in the hat. (12)

How I came by it I’ve forgotten. I can’t think who could have given it to me. It must have been my mother who bought it for me because I asked her. The one thing certain is that it was another markdown, another final reduction. But why was it bought? No woman, no girl wore a man’s fedora in that colony then. No native woman, either….Suddenly it’s deliberate. Suddenly I see myself as another, as another would be seen, outside myself, available to all eyes, in circulation for cities, journeys, desire. I take the hat, and am never parted from it… (13)

…. Inside the limousine there’s a very elegant man looking at me. He’s not a white man. He’s wearing European clothes- the light tussore suit of the Saigon bankers. He’s looking at me.  (17)

…. I already know a thing or two. I know it’s not clothes that make women beautiful or otherwise, nor beauty care, nor expensive creams, nor the distinction or costliness of their finery. I know the problem lies elsewhere. I don’t know where. I only know it isn’t where women think. I look at the women in the streets of Saigon and upcountry. Some of them are very beautiful, very white, they take enormous care of their beauty here, especially upcountry. They don’t do anything, just save themselves up for Europe, for lovers, holidays in Italy, the long six-months leaves every three years, when at last they’ll be able to talk about what it’s like there, this peculiar colonial existence, the marvelous domestic service provided by the houseboys, the vegetation, the dances, the white villas… They wait these women…. (18-19)

… Fifteen and a half. The body is thin, undersized almost, childish breasts still, red and pale-pink make-up. And then the clothes, the clothes that might make people laugh, but I don’t.  I can see it’s all there. All there, but nothing yet done. I can see it in the eyes, all there already in the eyes. I want to write. (20-21)

Marguerite Duras (Marguerite Donnadieu, Gia Dinh 1914, Paris 1996)

between 18 and 25 my face took off in a new direction…

Heritage:  Maison de L’Indochine in Paris: cruise “L’Amant”: http://www.maisondelindochine.com/

Nostalgia and France in the 1990s.

Parallel trajectories:

Jeanne Moreau: voice-over – for the girl (Duras) — a Louis Malle/ Truffaut actress from the 1950s-60s. (also a director)

Jules et Jim, Truffaut

Peau d’âne/ Donkey’s Skin. Jacques Demy (1970)

“But what are we going to do with all these pleasures?” = “Mais qu’allons-nous faire de tous ces plaisirs?”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rw7sCNtYOd0

(translation below this one)

A 17th century tale by Charles Perrault: author of Sleeping Beauty (La Belle au bois dormant), Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood…

Cast:  Father (King: Jean Marais), his wife (queen: Catherine Deneuve), the godmother (lilac fairy: Delphine Seyric), the court, the prince Jacques Perrin and his parents: The Red queen (Micheline Presle/the red King, the farm people and the farm woman called “the old one” (La vieille), the donkey.

The dresses/attires: costume designer Gitt Magrini (Italian)

1)     A dress the color of time/ weather

2)     Dress, moon color

3)     Dress: Sun color

4)    Donkey’s skin dress

Donkey’s skin

the moon-dress

“beneath her dirt and rags she still had the heart of a princess” (2)

1. Elements of supernatural

2. Cinematography: framing devices, slow motion, mirrors…

3. the tale as a social/cultural text

4. Ugliness/beauty –  innocence/purity

5. Literary and filmic references: Cocteau, other fairy tales such as Beauty and the Beast.

6. the 70s. Anachronisms.

7. Use of colors.

8. Music: songs and melancholia.  1) Love (Amour) 2) Cake of love 3)But what are we to do with all these pleasures?

9. Cross-dressing

10. Deneuve. Her breakthrough came in Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (Demy 1963). …She has paid tribute to the pivotal role of Demy in establishing her career…while Bardot continued her role as explicit sex goddess and dark-haired New Wave actresses such as Anouk Aimee, Anna Karina and Jeanne Moreau embodied ‘intellectual’ versions of French femininity, Deneuve triumphed as a sexy but innocent blonde, a persona reinforced by 2 further Demy films: the musicals Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (66) and the costume fairy tale Peau d’Ane (70)….(Ginette Vincendeau, “Catherine Deneuve and French Womanhood” )

11. The morality of the tale.

12. Jean Marais.

Jean Marais

Inspiration for Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, French designer.

2005 creation of three dream bedrooms in the colors of the moon, the sun and the weather for the home design Roset line.

2010 Castelbajac collection inspired by Peau d’Ane.

http://aliceaupaysdesarts.blogspot.com/2010/03/jean-charles-de-castelbajac-collection.html

Canadian New Media artist Valerie Lamontagne and her three dresses named after Perrault’s tale.

http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/10/view/9244/valerie-lamontagne-interactive-weather-dresses.html

Jacques Demy returns from his stay in Hollywood and directs Peau d’Ane. Set design by San Francisco designer Jim Leon.

Demy returns to the museum of Modern Art in order to surround himself with paintings and sculptures. Imagines superimpositions of paintings by Botticelli, and also remembers a collage by Prevert of a man with the head of a deer- Also meets with Leonor Fini in 1969.

[Transform and read the following paragraph by the feminine form/pronoun and noun]:

The fairy tale begins with the hero at the mercy of those who think little of him and his abilities, who mistreat him and even threaten his life, as the wicked queen does in “Snow White”. As the story unfolds, the hero is often forced to depend on friendly helpers: creatures of the underworld…or magic animals like the birds in Cinderella. At the tale’s end the hero has mastered all trials and despite them remained true to himself, or in successfully undergoing them, has achieved his true selfhood. He has become an autocrat in the best sense of the word- a self-ruler- a truly autonomous person, not a person who rules over others… victory is not over others but only over oneself….(Bruno Bettelheim, The Use of Enchantment. The meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, 127)

Prevert

Cléo de 5 à 7- Agnès Varda

Agnes Varda, born in Brussels (1928) of a French mother and Greek father. Spent her childhood in Sete, near Montpellier (South of France). It is in the region that she will shoot her first feature-length film: La Pointe Courte (1954) with Sylvia Montfort and Philippe Noiret, and local people (non-actors). The film predates the New Wave cinema and announces it: use of natural decors, non-actors, no studio/sets, improvisation, and artisanal production.

She was been perceived as the mother or grand-mother of the New Wave. Is a feminist filmmaker, after such figures as Alice Guy-Blache (silent period), Germaine Dulac, Marie Epstein, Jacqueline Audry and Nicole Vedres.  Varda is still active in directing and producing her films. Her production house: Tamaris films.

She is known for her documentaries : Opera Mouffe, Salut les Cubains, Uncle Yanko, Black Panthers, Daguerreotypes, Murs Murs, Documenteur, Ulysse, Les Dites-Cariatides….

“Superficially (Cleo) is about a pop singer who awaiting the results of a test determining whether or not she has a fatal illness, makes a spiritual odyssey through Paris (from the rue de Rivoli to the Salpêtrière hospital) and finds both self-knowledge and friendship in a new understanding of her relation to others.” (Flitterman-Lewis, To Desire Differently, 228-229)

Varda: Self-reflexive cinema. Wants to reassess the work of the filmmaker and the function of the spectator. Varda always emphasizes the act of writing as inherent to the filmmaker’s task.

She started out as a photographer for the Jean Vilar theatre group, in Paris and Avignon (theatre festival).

She is part of the Left-Bank Group of filmmakers comprised of Alain Resnais, Chris Marker, and William Klein. “Interested in mental processes, rather than a cinephilic fanaticism.”

Questions for the film or Varda’s films (in general):

1. Analyze the use of color for Cleo? Black and white, versus color.

2. Varda uses some techniques such as the Jump cut, elliptical editing, sound and narration. Give precise instances in the film where these are adopted.

3. The film shows fashion of the time. What elements does she use to reflect on this?

4a. Woman and the city. The film follows a young woman who goes out into certain areas of Paris. Follow her trajectory. What areas are privileged? A sub-part to this question would entail listing the names of stores that Cleo passes by as they are highly charged names: i.e. Deuil (mourning), a clock store, the hat store “Francine”…

4b. Is there a feminist or woman-oriented discourse in the film?

5. There is a short silent comedic film inserted within the larger narrative Les fiancés du pont Macdonald (1961). Comment on it? What is explored here? and what does it do? Who has a cameo appearance in it?

6. Analyze the different gazes that are used in the film? Where do they come from? Try to use Mulvey’s argument and connect it to the plot.

the looked-at-ness

7. the film is historically marked. How?

8. What elements of style and fashion are presented?

List the type of dresses or clothes worn by Cleo, and how they are different from Dorothee. Antoine’s clothes provide a stark contrast with theirs. How? What are important fashion accessories?

the choice of hat

Never wear new clothes or accessories on a Tuesday

Mirror images: “Trying things intoxicates me”.

9. The use of music runs through the movie. Cleo is a pop singer, surrounded by a composer (Michel Legrand as himself) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Legrand. She performs an entire song live, “Sans toi”….. and tries a few tunes in her apartment. The main theme will be repeated throughout the film. She also hears her song on the radio, in the taxi, and plays her song in a juke-box at a cafe.  The soundtrack is also dominant in certain sequences, i.e. the cafes, the streets etc.

MUSIC:  It is music that triggers her transformation in the second half of the film.  Metamorphosis from object to subject.

Variations on the melodic and chordal accompaniment of the song “La Belle Putain” (the beautiful whore).

Theme 2 is “Sans toi” (without you).

and 3rd, last theme, which melds the two earlier themes, into a ‘melodic and harmonic resolution.’ (McMahon, Listening to the Music of the New Wave 167).

In 1965, yé-yé singer France Gall performed a Serge Gainsbourg song that would become a popular hit, and won the Eurovision (a European) music contest.

Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina – Billy Wilder (1954)

Sabrina [class PPT]

“Balenciaga once said the secret of elegance is elimination. I believe that. That’s why I love Hubert Givenchy… They’re clothes without ornament, with everything stripped away.”
– Audrey Hepburn.

Hubert de Givenchy would meet Audrey Hepburn for the first time on the set of Sabrina in 1953. He was 26 year old.

He studied at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris. His first designs were done for Jacques Fath in 1945, an association that came through family members who knew Fath personally. Later he did designs for Robert Piguet and Lucien Lelong (1946) — working alongside the still-unknown Pierre Balmain and Christian Dior. From 1947 to 1951 he worked for the avantgarde designer Elsa Schiaparelli.

In 1952, Givenchy opened his own design house at the Plaine Monceau in Paris.

https://www.givenchy.com/en/

A night at the ball

Outsider looking in

La vie en rose. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IXdEXTeDko

La vie en rose (life through rosy coloured glasses) has been sung by many American jazz artists: Louis Armstrong, and now John Legend (for Loreal):  http://www.tvpub.fr/musique-pub-loreal-la-vie-en-rose/

Falbalas

Falbalas “Paris Frills” (1945) 

Nota Bene: If you are going to ‘publish’ parts of this blog, as I have seen with the PPT, have the honesty and integrity to credit the blog (exact references) and do not just appropriate it as if you made some of this, especially when it comes to … this film. Merci.

Directed by Jaques Becker

 A Paris native his entire life, during the 1930s Becker worked as an assistant to director Jean Renoir, contributing to such cinematic masterpieces as Grand Illusion and The Rules of the Game. Part of the Comité de libération du cinéma français, during the German occupation of France in World War II, Becker was held by the Nazis in prison for a year. Under the auspices of Vichy France, he also became a director in his own right and went on to direct the brilliant period romance Casque d’or, the influential gangster film Touchez pas au grisbi, and the prison escape drama Le Trou. Long underrated, Becker is now regarded as one of the masters of French cinema. In his personal life he married actress Françoise Fabian, and their son Jean Becker also became a film director.

Writing Credits:

Maurice Aubergé (scenario and adaptation)

Jacques Becker (scenario and adaptation)

Maurice Griffe (scenario and adaptation)

Jacques Becker (decoupage)

Maurice Aubergé (dialogue)

Cast Credits:

Raymond Rouleau … Philippe Clarence

From Brussels, Belgium, Rouleau lived and worked in Paris as an both an actor and director for many films.

Micheline Presle … Micheline Lafaurie

Paris-born Micheline Presle (better known in the States as Micheline Prelle) was discovered by Georg Wilhelm Pabst and cast in Girls in Distress (1939) and Four Flights to Love (1940). She proceeded to make films during the Occupation, and by 1947, was deemed an important young French star, with Devil in the Flesh (1947) gaining her world-wide attention. Her marriage to American actor-turned-producer William Marshall in 1950 led her to attempt Hollywood pictures, though none of them were truly well received in America. After divorce, she gladly returned to Paris with her also actress daughter, and continued to reign in French films while also making appearances on stage.

Jean Chevrier … Daniel Rousseau

Chevrier was a Paris native who acted in 51 titles during the course of his career, including many during the occupation. He was married to actress Marie Bell.

Gabrielle Dorziat … Solange

Dorziat was a French stage and film actress as well as a fashion trend setter in Paris who helped popularize the designs of Coco Chanel; the ThéâtreGabrielle-Dorziat, a theater in Épernay, France is named for her. After her onstage debut in 1898 in Brussels she moved to Paris where her performance as Thérèse Herbault in Chaîne anglaise (1906) brought her public attention.

She became known for her offstage life as well, becoming romantically involved with actors Lucien Guitry and Louis Jouvet. She had close friendships with Jean Cocteau, Jean Giraudoux,  Coco Chanel,  Paul Bourget and Henri Bernstein. During World War I Dorziat left France to tour the United States where she raised money for war refugees. After the war she toured Canada, South America and the rest of Europe.

In 1921 Dorziat appeared in her first film L’Infante à la rose. She went on to play in over sixty films including Mayerling, Les Parents terribles and Manon. In 1925, she married Count Michel de Zogheb, the cousin of King Fuad I of Egypt. She published her memoirs Côté cour, côté jardin in 1968.

Other Cast Members:

Jeanne Fusier-Gir … Paulette

Françoise Lugagne … Anne-Marie

Christiane Barry … Lucienne

Produced by

André Halley des Fontaines

Original Music by

Jean-Jacques Grünenwald

Grünenwald was a French organist, composer, architect, and pedagogue. He studied at the Paris Conservatory, where he received first prizes in organ (1935, class of Marcel Dupré) and composition (1937, class of Henri Busser). Two years later, Grunenwald won the prestigious Second Grand Prix de Rome for his cantata, La farce du Mari fondu. Additionally to his musical education, Grunenwald was enrolled at the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he graduated in 1941 with a diploma in architecture.

In 1955, Grunenwald became organist at St. Pierre-de-Montrouge in Paris. Two years later, he began a recording of the complete organ works of J. S. Bach on 24 LPs (a world premiere). From 1957-1961, he was professor of organ at the Schola Cantorum in Paris, from 1961-1966 organ teacher at the Geneva Conservatory. Among his students were Jean-Pierre Decavèle, Raffi Ourgandijan, and Louis Robilliard.

In January 1973, Jean-Jacques Grunenwald succeeded his former teacher, Marcel Dupré, as titular organist at St. Sulpice in Paris. As an internationally acknowledged concert organist, he played more than 1,500 recitals worldwide. His catalog of compositions contains numerous organ and piano works, chamber music, orchestral works, oratorios, as well as music written for several films, such as Falabalas (1945) and Monsieur Vincent (1947).

Cinematography by

Nicholas Hayer

Film Editing by

Marguerite Renoir

Art Direction by

Max Douy

Costume Design by

Marcel Rochas

Makeup Department

Alex Arxhambault.. hairstylist (as Archambault)

Georges Klein .. makeup artist  (as Klein)

Joseph Mejinsky.. makeup artist (as Mejinsky)

Production Management

Fernand Chaix… unit manager

Lpios Doris… unit manager

Jean Gehret… production supervisor

Maurice Saurel… unit manager

Second Unit Director or Assistant Director

Claude Boissol… assistant director

Stellio Lorenzi… assistant director

Marc Maurette… assistant director

Art Department

James Allan…. Assistant art director

Jean Andre…. Assistant art director

Sound Department

Gérard Brisseau… sound assistant

Pierre- Louis Calvet… sound engineer

André Rameau… sound assistant

Special Effect by

Robert Mezé

Camera and Electrical Department

Henri Caruel… still photographer (as H. Caruel)

E. Laroche… assistant camera

Jacqes Lemarc… camera operator

Gustave Raulet… assistant camera (as G. Raulet)

Henri Thibault… still photographer (as H. Thibault)

Editorial Department

Marie Cadieux…. Assistant editor

Music Department

Roger Roger… conductor

Other Crew

Annie Beaumeli,,, show window

Gabrielle… hat maker

Germain… unit location manager

Paul Payaux… production administrator

Louis Seuret.. unit location manager

Jeanna Witta… script supervisor

Synopsis and Brief Points of Reflection

Philippe Clarence, a renowned Parisian fashion designer, seduces his friend and business associate’s fiancée in the few days she was left alone in Paris. Clarence’s world allows him to be self-absorbed and indulgent, never calling for a serious demeanor. Finally, for the first time in his life, Clarence can not afford to take lightly the impact he holds in his friends’ lives, nor can he continue to make hasty decisions with his emerging collection. He must go against his entire nature to focus and be clear about his goals so as to avoid utter failure. The affairs of Clarence parallel clearly his experience with the creation of dresses and his collection as a whole, shedding a light on women as muses or mules in the male dominated design industry. The affair of Micheline and Clarence demonstrates the ease with which Clarence is able to use his style, success, charm, and allure to prompt women to act as he likes, whether as models or lovers. Clarence’s love affairs with women can be likened to his love of fashion, in recognizing his intense infatuation with new models of women (as with a new model/ style of dress influenced by each one).

Micheline’s maintains a strong screen presence and unwillingness to ultimately cave to Clarence’s long-term desires while still she remains a force in his maison de mode as her dress is being made. This strength foreshadows the rising presence of the female in the fashion world as women began to seize involvement in fashion (not simply as model peons) as a means of empowerment.

The tragic ending highlights the downfall of allowing oneself to completely live as though one can design everything; it’s hazardous for Clarence to have become accustomed to such a fast and loose lifestyle of constant success in the face of the changing role of the woman. The female at that point in history begins to come into her own as a presence in fashion, symbolized by Micheline, who completely upsets the world of Clarence in claiming what is hers and refusing what she does not desire for her greater good. As she takes the power of control from Clarence, he goes mad with desire.

Guiding Questions

Why is cultural expression through film and fashion important in this time in history?

How does the time period influence a rise of women’s participation in industry?

How does the representation of Micheline as a woman differ from that of Lucienne or Anne Marie?

What role does Mère Solange play in the film/ maison de mode?

How can Mère Solange be a constant female figure in the story, when every other female character ends up feeling slighted, misused, or compelled to leave?

Why is Clarence able to be a philanderer with such ease? What attributes has he learned through fashion in relation to understanding how to ‘manage’ women?

Is Clarence truly a womanizer or is he a product of the male dominated fashion environment?

How are the models represented in the film? Are they privileged and revered or mistreated?

Has the role of the model changed over time?

Has the perception of the model changed over time?

What is the dynamic of power between the designer and his model? (i.e. Clarence with Lucienne, who was quickly replaced after a new infatuation entered the life of Clarence)

What trends can you identify in the fashion lines of the film?

As fashion at this time was geared toward modest outfits, how did designers push for forward thinking collections?

Is there an identifiable style or look to the women chosen for the film or more specifically as models?

What does film do for the glamour of fashion? Is that also true of this film?

How do the still photos in the film contribute to the establishment of appreciation for beautiful characters?

Pour aller plus loin…

Consider the confines of producing a feature length film based on the newest fashion while in a Vichy controlled France. War placed many constraints on the production of the film not only in attempting to control artistic freedoms with politics but by creating scarcity of supplies needed for more luxurious and technically demanding arts such as fashion and film production.

contributed by Leah Booth