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      Rediscovering France’s Early Female Playwrights

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      A growing movement within French theater is reclaiming the work of forgotten female artists, and reviving a lost concept: le matrimoine.PARIS — How many women had professional careers as playwrights in prerevolutionary France, between the 16th and 18th centuries? Go on, hazard a guess.The answer, according to recent scholarship, is around 150. Yet if you guessed the number was close to zero, you’re not alone. For decades, the default assumption has been that deep-seated inequality prevented women from writing professionally until the 20th century.Now a growing movement within French theater is reclaiming the work of forgotten female artists, and reviving a lost concept along the way: le matrimoine. Matrimoine is the feminine equivalent of patrimoine — translated as patrimony, or what is inherited from male ancestors. In French, however, patrimoine is also the catchall term to describe cultural heritage. By way of matrimoine, artists and academics are pushing for the belated recognition of women’s contribution to art history, and the return of their plays to the stage.Matrimoine is no neologism. “The word was used in the Middle Ages but has been erased,” said the scholar and stage director Aurore Evain. “Patrimoine and matrimoine once coexisted, yet at the end of the day all we were left with was matrimonial agencies.”When Dr. Evain started researching prerevolutionary female authors, around 2000, she quickly realized that French academics were behind their American peers. In the early 1990s, Perry Gethner, a professor of French at Oklahoma State University, had already translated plays by Françoise Pascal, Catherine Bernard and other 17th- and 18th-century women into English, and published them.At home, on the other hand, the idea that female colleagues of Molière had been overlooked collided with entrenched narratives. The classical French repertoire revolves around a trinity of male playwrights — Molière, Jean Racine and Pierre Corneille — whose works are taught in schools and widely seen as models of national literary genius.Yet all three men crossed paths with acclaimed female peers. “Le Favori” (“The Male Favorite”), a verse tragicomedy written in 1665 by Madame de Villedieu, was performed by Molière’s own company before the king at Versailles. When Dr. Evain staged it again in 2015, over three centuries after it was last performed, the French playwright and director Carole Thibaut was struck by the similarities between “Le Favori,” which revolves around a courtier who challenges the hypocrisy of royal favor, and Molière’s “Misanthrope,” written the next year.A portrait of Madame de Villedieu (1640-1683).The British Museum“I love Molière, but there are two scenes that are basically plagiarism,” Thibaut said in a phone interview. “He borrowed heavily from ‘Le Favori.’”Before the French Revolution, most female playwrights were upper-class single women who needed to earn a living. In the 19th century, their numbers kept growing: Scholars have found at least 350 women who were paid for their writing, from the revolutionary activist Olympe de Gouges to Delphine de Girardin, both of whom had plays in the repertoire of the Comédie-Française. Many of them hosted literary salons, starting with Germaine de Staël; some, like George Sand, also wrote under a pseudonym to get around gender-based prejudice.Yet not a single one of these women has a meaningful presence on the French stage today. Until the late 2000s, even feminist writers knew nothing of their work. The first volume of a French anthology of prerevolutionary female playwrights (edited by Dr. Evain, Gethner and the New York University professor Henriette Goldwyn) wasn’t released until 2007.When Thibaut, who is now at the helm of a National Dramatic Center in the city of Montluçon, first heard Dr. Evain speak at a conference two years later, the notion of matrimoine came as a revelation. “I fell apart. I started crying,” she said. “She taught me that instead of being at the dawn of a feminist awakening, we were part of a cycle, which sees women emerge and then be erased.”That historical insight coincided with a renewed focus on gender inequality in French theater, in the wake of two government audits. Until 2006, none of the five national French theaters had ever had a female director. There has been some progress since: While only 7 percent of national and regional dramatic centers, the next tier of public institutions, were led by women in 2006, the proportion was 27 percent in 2019. Still, in March, an open letter published in the French newspaper Libération complained about the lack of women being appointed to top theater jobs since the start of the pandemic.From 2009 onward, Thibaut, Dr. Evain and other activists joined forces through an association, known as HF, to push for change, and matrimoine became one of their rallying calls. In 2013, Dr. Evain launched the annual “Days of the Matrimoine,” a festival that runs alongside the “Days of the Patrimoine,” a national celebration of France’s cultural heritage.That visibility is now affecting younger generations of scholars and artists, like Julie Rossello Rochet, a playwright who completed a doctoral dissertation last year on her 19th-century predecessors. In a phone interview, she said that studying their work had helped her process the unease she felt as a young writer: “I kept hearing, ‘Oh, it’s so rare, a woman who writes for the stage.’ Actually, it isn’t.”A performance of  Madame Ulrich’s “La Folle Enchère” (“The Mad Bid”) directed by Aurore Evain. The play had its premiere in 1690 at the Comédie-Française.Carmen MariscalThe scholars interviewed agreed that women’s plays offer a different perspective from that of male playwrights — a female gaze, so to speak, shaped by the authors’ life experiences. “They promoted women’s intelligence,” Dr. Rossello Rochet said.“They created strong female characters, who choose politics over love, as well as male characters who choose love,” said Dr. Evain, who also pointed to the attention they paid to the role of fathers.The two prerevolutionary plays Dr. Evain has directed since 2015 speak to that originality. In addition to “Le Favori,” she brought back Madame Ulrich’s “La Folle Enchère” (“The Mad Bid”), a comedy that had its premiere in 1690 at the Comédie-Française. The plot cleverly toys with gendered expectations: In it, an older woman endeavors to marry a younger man, who is himself a woman in disguise. “It’s an early queer play, in which everything is upside down,” Dr. Evain said. “Order is never restored: The leading lady is in drag until the end.”While a handful of smaller theaters, like the Ferme de Bel Ebat in Guyancourt, have welcomed productions like “La Folle Enchère,” persuading programmers to invest in the matrimoine remains a challenge. The Comédie-Française, where multiple women have presented their work over the centuries, has yet to revive a single one of these plays.In an interview with the French newspaper Le Monde in 2017, the troupe’s director, Eric Ruf, said he was “working on it,” but added that it would be hard to sell main-stage tickets for a “little-known” playwright. (A spokeswoman for the Comédie-Française declined to say whether there were plans to bring back plays by women in future seasons.)Yet feminists believe that unless these early women’s plays are performed and taught, history may yet repeat itself. “If we ignore our matrimoine, if we don’t change the way we think about our culture, the women who came after us may not leave a legacy, either,” Thibaut said.In the eyes of Dr. Rossello Rochet, the benefits are obvious for young playwrights. “Having a history has given me deeper roots,” she said. “It has made me feel stronger.” More

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      in Music

      Eddy de Pretto Is the Proud Sound of a New France

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      Born in the Paris suburbs, the singer has made waves with two albums that draw as much from ’60s chanson as contemporary hip-hop.Eddy de Pretto is now 27, and these days he sings on some of the largest stages in France — or he did, when the stages were open. When he was 21, he performed for a smaller audience: the tourists on the bateaux-mouches, the Paris sightseeing cruises that ply millions of people up and down the Seine.“It was a pretty crazy job. I was on the singing cruises, the ones where they serve you dinner,” de Pretto said in a recent video interview from Paris. From the little stage in the boat’s dining room, he recalled, he’d serenade tourists with syrupy Charles Trenet standards, to total indifference. “They were eating, looking out at the Eiffel Tower. They didn’t even realize someone was singing — they thought it was a soundtrack.”“But those three years on the bateaux-mouches were so completely typical of what it’s like to make a career,” he added. “It was totally formative to sing every night in front of people who didn’t give a damn at all.”Those lonely nights on the cruise ship are the origin of “À Tous Les Bâtards” (“To All the Bastards”), de Pretto’s second album, released in France last month. “I was waiting patiently to take the throne/And they’d sing my songs like I sang ‘La Vie en Rose,’” he belts on the first single, “Bateaux-Mouches,” whose started-from-the-bottom lyrics recall many a hip-hop boast. But name-checking both Rihanna and Édith Piaf as your lodestars? That’s rarer.De Pretto burst to fame in 2018 with his triple-platinum album “Cure,” and its blend of urban beats and chanson poetics was not its only uncommon attribute. There was his voice: big and vibrant, with every syllable articulated for the back of the house. There was his look: hoodies and tracksuits, a three-day beard, and a strawberry-blond tonsure like a medieval monk’s. And there was his biography: a young gay man, uninhibited and unperturbed, from the suburbs that Parisians still typecast as a cultural backwater.De Pretto started out singing on the tourist barges that ply the River Seine. “It was totally formative to sing every night in front of people who didn’t give a damn at all,” he said.Elliott Verdier for The New York TimesHe was born in 1993 in Créteil, to the capital’s southeast. His father was a driver, and his mother a medical technician who revered an earlier generation of French singer-songwriters. “We lived in public housing, and my mother listened to a lot of Barbara, Brassens, Brel, Charles Aznavour,” he said. “She listened to it all the time, and really loud, too. Loud enough to hear it over the vacuum cleaner.”De Pretto said he played sports as a child, badly enough that his mother enrolled him in acting classes. The stage suited him. He landed a few small TV and movie roles. But his theatrical tendencies were not in harmony with the macho culture of the Paris suburbs.That tension inspired his breakout single, “Kid,” a mid-tempo ballad about parents and their effeminate sons. “You’ll be manly, my kid,” de Pretto sings over spare piano chords and digital hi-hats, though the song’s video shows him struggling to heed the call. Shirtless and sweat-soaked in the gym, de Pretto looks far too rangy to lift the massive barbells, trapped between family expectations and his true nature.“Every single word of ‘Kid’ is so wonderful,” said the singer Jane Birkin, who performed a duet with de Pretto in 2018. “He faced up to quite a lot of teasing, getting through in quite a tough neighborhood, with tough friends. And I should think he made himself respected — I wouldn’t mess around with him. And, at the same, time he has great fragility and great poignancy.”“Kid” was an instant hit in France, and seemed to come out of nowhere. De Pretto’s weighty voice sounded like a ’60s throwback, but he sang over spare, menacing, bass-heavy beats. The slangy lyrics had the vibrancy of the suburbs, but they were as poetic as they were acidic, with that French fixation on what de Pretto calls “the weight of the word.”For his first big TV appearance, in 2017, he performed with nothing but his own iPhone for accompaniment. The album cover of “Cure” had the same Gen-Z nonchalance: mirror selfie, phone in hand, leg hoisted on the kitchen table. A critic for the French newspaper Libération said astringently — but not without cause — that it looked like a late-night drunk pic sent to a Grindr hookup.Indeed, there was also de Pretto’s subject matter: furtive glances in the locker room, sloppy after-parties in darkened basements, grim evenings trawling the apps. On his spiky single “Fête de Trop” (“One Party Too Many”), he details the malaise of yet another evening getting high and “slipping my tongue into the salivating mouths” of “tonight’s boys.” “Jungle de la Chope” (“The Hookup Jungle”) delves into the “insipid conquests” of casual sex, safe or otherwise.Some gay musicians treat their homosexuality as a nonissue; others want to make it a mark of distinction. What made de Pretto’s debut so thrilling was that he did neither. He assumed his identity to the hilt, and thereby made it nothing special. “I’m writing from my point of view as a gay man,” he said. “But the songs are not a defense of being gay. I mean, yes, I’m gay, and I’m casting an eye on society.”De Pretto said his albums were about “breaking these fantasies and these received ideas of what happens in the suburbs,” and confounding a “stereotypical view of being gay.”Elliott Verdier for The New York TimesHe has, however, recorded one sideways pride anthem. “Grave” (“A Big Deal”) is a funny, filthy encouragement to anxious gay youth — think Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful” for teens whose first view of same-sex intimacy comes through streaming video. It’s a catalog aria of gay rites of passage that, de Pretto sings, are “not a big deal”: scoping out classmates in gym class, fantasizing about your best friend, and many more not printable in a family newspaper. “Not living it: That’s a big deal!” goes the refrain.“If I had to compare him to anyone, it would be Christine and the Queens, although Eddy hasn’t exploded internationally,” said Romain Burrel, the editor of the French gay magazine Têtu. “Christine really opened the way for questions of gender and sexual orientation,” he said. “But Eddy is very, very French. There’s been a globalization of music, but when you listen to Eddy de Pretto, you’re in the 11th Arrondissement.”Musically, “À Tous Les Bâtards” sounds a lot like “Cure”: the same big voice, the same minimal beats. But de Pretto’s writing has become less angry, more confessional. “Désolé Caroline” (“Sorry Caroline”), its second single, sounds at first like a breakup song, addressed from a young gay man to the straight girl he cannot love. (In the interview, De Pretto described this kind of romantic rejection with the charming franglais verb “friendzoné.”)Then again, this “Caroline” — whom the singer wants to get out of “my veins” — may not be an actual girl. She may be a personification of cocaine: a double meaning he underlines in the music video, which features de Pretto in a white parka singing amid flurries of snow.“I love playing with these double meanings,” de Pretto said, “because it opens up the field of possibilities.” He certainly leaves the field open at the end of “À Tous Les Bâtards,” in the ingeniously smutty ballad “La Zone.” Here suburbs and sexuality become interchangeable, as de Pretto entreats us in a smooth falsetto to risk visiting … well, a certain area often considered dirty, or dangerous.“La zone,” in French slang, denotes a rough suburban neighborhood, the sort of place you might go to score drugs. But as de Pretto croons of the “dark pleasures” of a place where “some men are afraid to go,” we realize the particular zone he’s inviting you to is more anatomical than geographical. (Birkin said this song reminded her of “Sonnet du Trou de Cul,” a poem by Verlaine and Rimbaud written in 1871. “It’s a wonder people don’t talk about it more!” she added.)The Paris suburbs have birthed so many of France’s best singers and actors and artists, not to mention the reigning world champions of soccer. And yet western Europe’s largest and most diverse city still treats the towns outside its ring road as inaccessible places. “That was the whole project of the first and, I hope, this second album: breaking these fantasies and these ideas everyone has of what happens in the suburbs,” de Pretto said. “And of a pretty stereotypical view of being gay.”“That’s the job of an artist,” he said, “to find points of view that haven’t been found yet.” More

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      in Theater

      Poems! Songs! Demands! It’s Not Theater, but It’s … Something

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      Performing-arts protesters locked out by the pandemic have occupied playhouses across France, but drama is not allowed. Cue the “agoras.”Dozens of French theater workers walk into a room and occupy it. What happens next? A month later, not nearly as many performances as you might expect.Since early March, the performing arts sector has been in the grip of protests across France, where cultural institutions have been closed since October because of the coronavirus. After trade union representatives in Paris entered the shuttered Odéon Theater, a movement to occupy playhouses spread rapidly. Even as the country has entered a third lockdown, the occupations have shown no sign of diminishing: The number of venues taken over by artists, workers and students has remained around 100.Choreography on the balcony of the Odéon Theater in Paris on Sunday. The sign reads, “Odéon gagged.”Elliott Verdier for The New York TimesYet with the infection rate rising, the movement finds itself facing difficult options. Protesters can’t be seen to flout restrictions or draw large crowds, so there have been no impromptu plays or theatrical tableaux. The messaging has also been carefully adjusted: Instead of demanding the immediate reopening of cultural venues, the movement is calling for more government support and the withdrawal of changes to unemployment benefits.Yet public actions are needed to rally support. As a result, the occupiers have walked a fine, often awkward line amid art, safety and their political demands.The main point of contact between the protesters and the public has been “agoras,” a form of outdoor assembly halfway between a political rally and an open-mic session. The Odéon has staged daily agoras since early March, and some have drawn hundreds of bystanders; elsewhere, they are weekly or biweekly. Anyone wearing a mask is welcome.What happens at an agora depends on the luck of the draw. Prepared political statements read from smartphones are a recurring feature, with protesters from other economic sectors joining in to detail their own demands. The floor is generally open to anyone who wishes to put two cents in. Poems, songs and the odd flash mob or group improvisation bring a little motion to the proceedings.An art-therapy session at La Colline. Protesters and visitors were directed to draw on a large white canvas on the floor in front of the theater. Elliott Verdier for The New York TimesOn Sunday at La Colline, one of the first Paris theaters to be occupied, a three-hour agora started with an art-therapy session. Protesters and visitors were directed to draw on a large white canvas on the ground in front of the theater. Later, during the open-mic portion, three students recited a poem they had written, starting with the question “What do we live for?” Another participant read a text that employed swans as a metaphor for the current situation, asking the powers that be to “let us fly.”After attending half a dozen agoras, I can say with some confidence that the rewards are slim from an audience perspective. The format is barely even agitprop, as occupiers are trying hard not to do anything overtly theatrical — a necessary compromise, perhaps, yet one that makes for arguably limited visibility.If agoras start to look like actual performances, they are at risk of falling foul of the rules, which preclude all cultural events. Only demonstrations are allowed, and organizers must apply for permission. Some local authorities have been more amenable than others. Last Saturday, the Odéon’s daily agora was forbidden by the Paris prefecture, which declared it a “concealed cultural event.” Agoras were able to resume the next day, but without live music. (In the end, musicians were granted permission to return beginning last Monday.)Then there is the fear of public disapproval. On March 21, an unauthorized street carnival that drew thousands in Marseille prompted widespread condemnation, with some participants now facing legal action. Carla Audebaud, one of the drama students occupying the Théâtre National de Strasbourg, in eastern France, said in a phone interview that practicing their craft wasn’t the goal. “We’re trying not to make it look like a show,” she said.Drama students occupied the Théâtre National de Strasbourg, in eastern France week. The writing on their backs means “This country forgets, neglects.”Loïse BeauseigneurWhile most theater directors initially welcomed the occupations, the cohabitation has also grown tense during the third lockdown. In a statement over Easter, a coalition of protesters denounced their “self-proclaimed supporters,” saying, “We’re not fooled by some of your maneuvers aiming to make occupiers leave.”At La Colline, students pushed back against plans by the theater to reduce the number of authorized occupiers to six from 30 and limit access to showers and cooking facilities. The playhouse’s director, Wajdi Mouawad, discreetly attended their weekly agora Sunday and denied in an interview that the goal was to quash the occupation. “We’ve had positive tests among the theater’s team, and we decided to stop all rehearsals. We’re going to reduce the technical staff, and we’ve asked them to reduce their numbers, too,” he said, referring to the students.Mouawad added that he was sympathetic to the protesters. “They don’t have to obey us,” he said.Some protesters now wonder whether the focus on occupying physical venues was misguided. There have been attempts at guerrilla theater instead, with unannounced performances in symbolic public spaces. Last Saturday, dozens of topless students, with political slogans painted in black across their chests, popped up in front of the Ministry of Culture in Paris, chanting: “It’s not onstage that we’re going to die.”As with many agoras, the action was streamed live over Instagram, one avenue for protest that is certain not to create viral clusters. Still, the sprawling nature of the occupations around the country has made them difficult to follow even online. On Instagram, there are nearly as many accounts as there are venues, with the biggest drawing only a few thousand subscribers.Drama students at the T2G theater in Gennevilliers, a suburb of Paris, last month. The movement there has focused on building local relationships.Chloé DestuynderIn that sense, the occupations are both everywhere and nowhere. They have energized a profession even as they have drawn tepid responses from the public and the government. Talks are underway between the Ministry of Culture and theater students, but no demands have been met.The effects are likely to be felt over the long term instead, as the movement has been an opportunity to learn and self-organize. At the Quai theater, in the western city of Angers, young actors have devised their own curriculum by inviting professionals to come and share their knowledge.Others have focused on building relationships at the local level. In Gennevilliers, a suburb of Paris, the students occupying the T2G playhouse have taken to visiting the market weekly to meet inhabitants who have never been to the theater. Some of them now visit the agoras.The group has also asked locals to share their thoughts on camera as a way to collect material that may be used in future creations. “A lot is happening that we’re not seeing right now because we’re right in the middle of it,” Léna Bokobza-Brunet, one of the students, said. “When we’re no longer in this situation, maybe we’ll realize what ties it all together.” In all likelihood, the best pandemic-era political theater is yet to come. More

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      in Movies

      Bertrand Tavernier, 79, French Director With Wide Appeal, Dies

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      He was a regular on the world’s film festival circuit with movies like “Death Watch,” a science-fiction thriller, and “’Round Midnight,” about a jazz musician.Bertrand Tavernier, a French director best known in the United States for “’Round Midnight,” the 1986 film that earned Dexter Gordon an Oscar nomination for his performance as a New York jazz musician trying to get his life and career on track in Paris, died on Thursday in Sainte-Maxime, in southeastern France. He was 79.The Institut Lumiere, a film organization in Lyon of which he was president, posted news of his death on Facebook. The cause was not given.Mr. Tavernier made some 30 features and documentaries and was a regular on the film festival circuit, winning the best director award at Cannes in 1984 for “A Sunday in the Country,” what Roger Ebert called “a graceful and delicate story about the hidden currents in a family” headed by an aging painter living outside Paris.Mr. Tavernier had worked primarily as a film critic and publicist until 1974, when he directed his first feature, “The Clockmaker of St. Paul,” the story of a man whose son is accused of murder. The movie, more character study than crime drama, quickly established him in France and drew praise overseas.“‘The Clockmaker’ is an extraordinary film,” Mr. Ebert wrote, “the more so because it attempts to show us the very complicated workings of the human personality, and to do it with grace, some humor and a great deal of style.”The French actor Philippe Noiret played the father in that movie. The two would work together often, and teamed up again in 1976 in another tale about a murderer, “The Judge and the Assassin,” with Mr. Noiret playing the judge. The cast also included Isabelle Huppert, who would appear in other Tavernier films.Philippe Noiret in Mr. Tavernier’s first feature, “The Clockmaker of St. Paul” (1974). Mr. Tavernier and Mr. Noiret would work together often.Kino VideoMr. Tavernier was soon working with international casts. “Death Watch,” a 1980 science fiction thriller, starred Harvey Keitel as a television reporter who has an eye replaced with a camera so that he could surreptitiously film the last days of a woman — played by Romy Schneider — who seems to have a terminal disease.“’Round Midnight” featured a cast full of musicians — not only Mr. Gordon, a noted saxophonist, but also Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter and others, including Herbie Hancock, who won an Oscar for his original score.“The screenplay, by Mr. Tavernier and David Rayfiel, is both rich and relaxed, with a style that perfectly matches the musicians’,” Janet Maslin wrote in The New York Times. “Some of the talk may well be improvised, but nothing sounds improvised, but nothing sounds forced, and the film remains effortlessly idiosyncratic all the way through.”Dexter Gordon as an expatriate American saxophonist and François Cluzet as a Parisian friend and admirer in Mr. Tavernier’s “’Round Midnight” (1986).Warner Bros. PicturesBertrand Tavernier was born on April 25, 1941, in Lyon to René and Ginette Tavernier. His father was a noted writer and poet. In a 1990 interview with The Times, Mr. Tavernier described an isolated boyhood.“My childhood was marked by loneliness because my parents didn’t get along well,” he said. “And it’s coming out in every movie. I’ve practically never had a couple in my films.”He mentioned the impact of his hometown.“It’s a very secretive city,” he explained. “My father used to say that in Lyon you learn that you must never lie but always dissemble, and it’s part of my films. The characters are often oblique in their relationships. Then there will be brief moments when they reveal themselves.”He was interested in film from a young age, and his early jobs in the film business included press agent for Georges de Beauregard, a noted producer of the French New Wave. He also wrote about film for Les Cahiers du Cinéma and other publications, and he continued to write throughout his career — essays, books and more. As a film historian, he was known for championing movies, directors and screenwriters who had been treated unkindly by others.In the foreword to Stephen Hay’s 2001 biography, “Bertrand Tavernier: The Film-maker of Lyon,” Thelma Schoonmaker, the noted film editor and widow of the director Michael Powell, credited Mr. Tavernier with resurrecting the reputation of Mr. Powell’s “Peeping Tom,” which was condemned when it was released in 1960 but is now highly regarded by many cinephiles.“Bertrand’s desire to right the wrongs of cinema history has a direct connection to the themes of justice that pervade his own films,” she wrote.Thierry Frémaux, the director of the Cannes festival and of the Institut Lumière, said Mr. Tavernier had been tireless in his advocacy.“Bertrand Tavernier has built the body of work that we know, but he built something else: being at the service of the history of cinema, of all cinemas,” Mr. Frémaux said by email. “He wrote books, he edited other people’s books, he did an extraordinary amount of film interviews, tributes to everyone he admired, film presentations.”“I’m not sure there are any other examples in art history of a creator so dedicated to the work of others,” he added.Jacques Gamblin, center, in Mr. Tavernier’s “Safe Conduct” (2002), about French filmmakers who worked during the German occupation in World War II.Empire PicturesMr. Tavernier’s own films sometimes set personal stories amid sweeping moments of history. “Life and Nothing But” (1989), set in 1920, had as a backdrop the search for hundreds of thousands of French soldiers still missing in action from World War I. “Safe Conduct” (2002) was about French filmmakers who worked during the German occupation in World War II.But Mr. Tavernier wasn’t interested in historical spectacle for its own sake.“Often people come to me and say you should do a film about the French Resistance, but I say this is not a subject, this is vague,” he told Variety in 2019. “Tell me about a character who was one of the first members of the Resistance and who did things that people later in 1945 say must be judged as crimes. Then I have a character and an emotion that I can deal with.”His survivors include his wife, Sarah, and two children, Nils and Tiffany Tavernier.Mr. Tavernier slipped humor into his movies, even a serious one like “Life and Nothing But,” which had a scene — with some basis in reality, he said — in which a distraught army captain has to quickly find an “unknown soldier” to be placed below the Arc de Triomphe.“The rush to find the Unknown Soldier is completely true, though we had to guess how it took place,” Mr. Tavernier said. “Just imagine: How do you find a body which is impossible to identify and still be sure he is French?”Aurelien Breeden contributed reporting from Paris. More

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      in Theater

      Should the American Theater Take French Lessons?

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      Arts workers are protesting closings and occupying playhouses all over France. On Broadway, that drama has yet to open.The only march you’re likely to see on Broadway this year is the kind with trombones in “The Music Man.”And if you ever hear people say the Majestic Theater has been forcibly occupied, you can be pretty sure they’re referring to “The Phantom of the Opera.”Which is why the news last week that thousands of protesters were marching in France to demand the reopening of theaters there seemed so difficult to comprehend here. Our theaters draw thousands outside only if they are lining up to see the Rockettes inside.Nor were the French merely marching. Dozens of protesters also forced their way into playhouses across the country — including three, in Paris and Strasbourg, designated as national theaters — to demand that cultural institutions, shut down since October, be treated like other businesses, some of which have been allowed to reopen.Also on their agenda: an extension of tax breaks for freelance arts workers, or “travailleurs d’art.”That the phrase “arts workers” (let alone “national theaters”) barely registers in American English is part of a bigger problem here — and suggests a bigger opportunity.The pandemic has been a disaster for the theater, of course, potentially more damaging to performing arts industries than to any other. And yet, in the long run, if there is a long run, how we repair our stages could also lead to long-needed changes that would elevate the people who work on, under and behind them.Not that those workers are likely to endorse the immediate reopening the French are seeking; by a strange quirk of political culture, the push for a return to normalcy at all costs that is a calling card of our right wing seems to be a progressive position there. The protesters — mostly students and actors and other theater workers — frame art-making as a matter of both liberty and labor. They see themselves as frontline workers; one of the signs they carried read: “Opening essential.”Cultural workers protesting the government closure of arts institutions, which are deemed nonessential, during the pandemic.Ian Langsdon/EPA, via ShutterstockHere, the unions representing actors and other theater workers make the opposite argument: They worry that a too-swift reopening for the sake of the economy would expose their members to unacceptable risk. Singing, trumpeting and spitting while speechifying are occupational hazards most other professions don’t face.Which is why, even in states like Texas and Montana that have ended mask mandates and declared themselves open for business without restriction, theaters aren’t on board. The Alley Theater, in Houston, is offering only virtual performances of its new production of “Medea” this month; the season at Montana Repertory Theater, in Missoula, remains a remote one regardless of state rules.But if the specific motivation for the French protests seems unpopular here, the underlying assumptions about art are ones Americans should heed. Begin with how we look at our theater, and how it looks at itself.Even when producing work that becomes a part of the national conversation — “Hamilton,” “Slave Play,” the Public Theater’s Trump-alike “Julius Caesar” in 2017 — our musicals and dramas are too often seen as inconsequential entertainment. The frequent abuse of the phrase “political theater” to describe cheap and manipulative appeals to sentiment tells you in what regard our theater is reflexively held.But if that attitude toward content is uninformed and condescending, the attitude toward the people who create it is worse.There is no tradition in the United States, as there is in France, of treating artists as skilled laborers, deserving of the same respect and protections provided to those who work in other fields. It doesn’t help that American unions are so weak compared to those in France, where nearly all workers are covered by collective bargaining contracts. The comparable figure here has hovered around 12 percent for years.Behind the statistics is an abiding strain of prejudice, dating back to the Puritan settlement, that sees cultural work, especially stage acting, as a species of child’s play or worse. In “An Essay on the Stage,” Timothy Dwight IV, a Yale president in the early 19th century, wrote that those who indulge in playgoing risk “the loss of the most valuable treasure, the immortal soul.”Or as a German character in “Sunday in the Park With George” puts it: “Work is what you do for others, Liebchen. Art is what you do for yourself.”Both attitudes are very nearly backward, but that doesn’t mean they’re not widely maintained even today. Indeed, they are enshrined in the stinginess of American governmental support for the arts, which remains a pittance. Cultural spending per capita in France is about 10 times that in the United States.Which is one reason there are six national theaters in France, not just the three occupied last week. More than 50 other cultural spaces around the country, including the Opera House in Lyon, which students entered on Monday, have now been occupied as well, the protesters say. To occupy a building (while permitting rehearsals within it to continue) may be a misdemeanor, but it is also a sign of love and ownership.It’s hard to imagine such an occupation in the United States; for one thing, there is no national theater. And who would play the role of the actress at the French film industry’s César awards ceremony this weekend who protested her government’s lack of support by stripping off a strange costume — was it a bloody donkey? — to reveal the words “No culture, no future” scrawled across her naked torso?But ours is a country that treasures its cultural heritage without wanting to support the labor that maintains it.Perhaps that’s changing, if less dramatically than in France. Though the pandemic has left many theater artists without work — and, often, without the health insurance that comes with it — the relief bill President Biden signed last week will make it cheaper for them to obtain coverage elsewhere. The bill also includes $470 million in emergency support for arts and cultural institutions.Organizations like Be an #ArtsHero are working to expand that relief even further. And hundreds of theater makers have used their talents to raise millions for organizations, like the Actors Fund, that are helping their colleagues survive the pandemic.But arts workers shouldn’t be remembered just in emergencies and just as charity. Nor should they be remembered solely for their economic impact. It is often argued that Broadway alone contributes $14.7 billion to New York City’s economy, as if that were the point when it is really just the bonus.What the French protests challenge us to consider is that the arts are neither an indulgence nor a distraction; they are fundamental not just to the economy but also to the moral health of a country. They are worth marching for.Surely our theater artists, those highly skilled laborers, can figure out, if anyone can, how to demonstrate that idea — if necessary, in front of the Majestic Theater, with trombones and Rockettes in tow. More

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      Protesters Occupy French Theaters, Demanding Reopening

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      The pandemic is still raging, but arts workers in France want to know when cultural life can restart.PARIS — Dozens of protesters stood outside the La Colline theater here on Wednesday, waving signs. “Better ‘The Rite of Spring’ than a massacre until spring,” read one; “We want to dream again,” said another.The protesters were there to support others inside the building who have occupied the playhouse since Tuesday, demanding the reopening of theaters across France.Cultural institutions here have been closed since October, when rising coronavirus cases led the government to heavily restrict social life. France has lifted some restrictions since, including on some stores, but there is still a 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew in cities, restaurants can only offer takeout, and museums, music venues and movie theaters remain closed.Protesters, most of them actors, theater workers and students, now occupy at least seven theaters across the country — including the Odéon Theater in Paris and the National Theater of Strasbourg — in the hope of forcing the government to restart cultural life.“We want to bring life back to these venues, not blockade them,” said Sébastien Kheroufi, a drama student and one of the occupiers at La Colline.Actors and students outside the National Theater of Strasbourg on Wednesday.Jean-Francois Badias/Associated PressAt the La Colline theater in Paris on Tuesday.Thomas Coex/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFrustration at the continued shutdown of cultural life in France has been building for weeks. Last Thursday, trade unions representing arts workers organized more than 30 protests around the country to demand a reopening date, as well as an extension to special unemployment benefits for actors and musicians.During one of those marches in Paris, around 50 people entered the shuttered Odéon, one of the city’s most prestigious theaters, which was also occupied in the student protests of 1968. The demonstrators have since refused to leave, although they have allowed rehearsals taking place there for Christophe Honoré’s new play “The Sky of Nantes,” initially scheduled for a March premiere but now postponed until next season, to continue.On Saturday, Roselyne Bachelot, France’s culture minister, made a surprise visit to the Odéon to meet with the demonstrators. “I understand the concerns,” she wrote on Twitter after the meeting. “My objective is to continue to protect artistic employment,” she added.But this week, her tone changed. “Occupying performance venues is not the answer,” Bachelot told lawmakers on Wednesday, calling the occupations “pointless” and “dangerous.”Yet a number of theater directors have welcomed the occupations, including La Colline’s director, Wajdi Mouawad, who said in an emailed statement: “La Colline supports, in dialogue and trust, the actions of the students.”France is still recording high, if stable, levels of coronavirus infection. On Wednesday, the French government announced that a further 30,000 people had tested positive for the virus in the last day, while there had been 264 deaths after a positive test.Joachim Salinger, an actor who is part of the occupation at the Odéon, said in a telephone interview on Wednesday night that there were around 45 protesters in the building, and that everyone was wearing masks and maintaining distance from one another.At La Colline, the occupiers all took coronavirus tests before they entered the building, Kheroufi, the student protester, said.“Occupying a theater is a lot of work,” said Mélisande Dorvault, 23, another protester at La Colline. “We try to listen to everyone, to take different opinions into account and vote on decisions,” she added.The demonstrators at La Colline appeared to have support from nearby business owners also hit hard by the pandemic. Achour Mandi, a barman at the nearby Café des Banques, said he felt a kinship with the protesters. “We’re in the same mess,” Mandi said, pointing to the restrictions on restaurants.Protesters occupying the Odéon Theater in Paris last week.Francois Mori/Associated PressWhen the government announced new coronavirus measures in the fall, it banned public performances but said theaters would reopen Dec. 15. That plan was scrapped when a target of bringing new case numbers under 5,000 a day was missed.“Since December, we’ve had absolutely no visibility about what is going to happen,” Salinger said.Other arts institutions, such as museums, have also called on the government for a reopening timetable. In February, the heads of dozens of the country’s major museums pleaded with the government to allow them to open their doors. “For an hour, for a day, for a week or a month, let us,” they wrote in an open letter published in Le Monde, the daily newspaper.Soon afterward, the mayor of the city of Perpignan, in the south of the country, ordered his city’s four museums to reopen in defiance of national rules, saying his city had “suffered enough, and its inhabitants need this patch of blue sky.” The government took the city to court and the museums shut again.The anger among workers in the arts sector is compounded by the French government’s recent decision to go ahead with an unpopular reform of unemployment benefits, set to take effect in July. The withdrawal of this change is one of the theater protesters’ demands.On Thursday, union representatives held a video call with Bachelot and Jean Castex, France’s prime minister, where they announced 20 million euros in new support for cultural workers and young graduates. But in a phone interview afterward, Salinger said the measures were insufficient. “We will stay,” he added.At La Colline on Wednesday, Kheroufi said he thought the protesters would be there for the long haul. “We’ll stay for as long as it takes,” he said. “If I leave, what do I do? Go home? Where can we go?” More

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      Louis Valray Made Only 2 Movies. But Both Are Incredible.

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyLouis Valray Made Only 2 Movies. But Both Are Incredible.After “La Belle de Nuit” and “Escale,” the French director went on to become an engineer and died in obscurity. A virtual release gives these moody, sensual films new life.Jacques Dumesnil and Véra Korène in “La Belle de Nuit” (1934).Credit…Lobster FilmsMarch 10, 2021Updated 4:19 p.m. ETSomething old is sometimes new as with the rediscovery of French director Louis Valray (1896-1972), whose hitherto unknown films enrich the era of Jean Vigo, Jean Renoir, Sacha Guitry and Marcel Carné.Two of Valray’s features, “La Belle de Nuit” (1934) and “Escale” (1935), restored and subtitled by Lobster Films, are currently streaming for members via the Museum of Modern Art’s Virtual Cinema.Included last year in MoMA’s annual series, “To Save and Project,” the movies are surprisingly fresh period pieces — infusing the moody atmosphere of French “poetic realism” with a breath of plein-air cinema and a jaunty music-hall energy. Valray’s distinctive style is marked by off-center compositions and elliptical storytelling as well as a near-documentary obsession with the seamy side of Mediterranean ports like his hometown, Toulon. Both movies lavish attention on waterfront dives, roistering sailors and back-alley hôtels de passe.“La Belle de Nuit” (“The Beauty of the Night”) adapts a late work by the boulevard playwright Pierre Wolff and features Véra Korène, a star of the Comédie Française, in a juicy double role. Cleverly theatrical, the movie is a backstage tale of erotic revenge in which a cuckolded dramatist stage-manages his rival’s comeuppance. Life is a performance, heard as much as seen. “To encounter ‘La Belle de Nuit’ is to see a film stunningly ahead of its time,” Ben Kenigsberg wrote in The New York Times last year, comparing Valray’s use of sound to that of Orson Welles.Samson Fainsilber in “Escale.”Credit…Lobster FilmsLesser but more eccentric with its blunt shifts in tone and showy transitions, “Escale” (translated as “stopover”) details the unhappy love affair between an upright ship’s officer and a moll (Colette Darfeuil) associated with a waterfront tough (Samson Fainsilber). Among other things, the film includes a romantic idyll on a jungle isle whose animating spirit is the hero’s servant, played to the hilt by the Senegalese dancer Féral Benga.Many of Valray’s innovations are a function of his frugality. Clearly low-budget, “Escale” makes economical use of music and sound effects to power a scene and then cuts back, trading in close-ups, for the emotional climax. When the movie was released in the U.S. in 1942 as “Thirteen Days of Love,” The New York Times reviewer found it grotesquely, rather than boldly, anachronistic: “Perhaps there was some procrustean age when this languidly sentimental trash may have seemed important.” Perhaps that age is now.Unmentioned in the review is the movie’s most obviously retro element. Good-looking, athletic and professionally underdressed, Benga was the male equivalent of Josephine Baker with whom he sometimes partnered at the Folies-Bergère. Jean Cocteau cast him as an angel in “The Blood of a Poet”; Pavel Tchelitchew painted his portrait. Whether or not Benga is camping on his clichéd role, he turns the movie to his own exhibitionist purpose — even referring to his trademark “saber dance.”After the war, Benga opened a Left Bank club that featured Senegalese music, dance and poetry and, according to Boris Vian’s Manual of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, attracted a youthful, significantly African clientele. For his part, Valray made one more short film, became a radio announcer, then a chemical engineer and died in obscurity.La Belle de NuitEscaleMuseum of Modern Art Virtual Cinema, through March 18.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Hear the Sound of a Seashell Horn Found in an Ancient French Cave

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTrilobitesHear the Sound of a Seashell Horn Found in an Ancient French CaveMusic from the large conch probably hadn’t been heard by human ears for 17,000 years.The shell of Charonia lampas recovered from the Marsoulas cave in the Pyrenees of France.Credit…C. Fritz, Muséum d’Histoire naturelle de ToulouseFeb. 10, 2021Updated 5:10 p.m. ETIn 1931, researchers working in southern France unearthed a large seashell at the entrance to a cave. Unremarkable at first glance, it languished for decades in the collections of a nearby natural history museum.Now, a team has reanalyzed the roughly foot-long conch shell using modern imaging technology. They concluded that the shell had been deliberately chipped and punctured to turn it into a musical instrument. It’s an extremely rare example of a “seashell horn” from the Paleolithic period, the team concluded. And it still works — a musician recently coaxed three notes from the 17,000-year-old shell.Listen to a Recording of the Seashell HornWhen the conch was played by a musician, it produced notes that were similar to C, C-sharp, and D.“I needed a lot of air to maintain the sound,” said Jean-Michel Court, who performed the demonstration and is also a musicologist at the University of Toulouse.The Marsoulas Cave, in the foothills of the French Pyrenees, has long fascinated researchers with its colorful paintings depicting bison, horses and humans. It’s where the enormous tan-colored conch shell was first discovered, an incongruous object that must have been transported from the Atlantic Ocean, over 150 miles away.Despite its heft, the shell, from the sea snail Charonia lampas, gradually slipped into oblivion. Presumed to be nothing more than a drinking vessel, the conch sat for over 80 years in the Natural History Museum of Toulouse.Another view of the shell.Credit…C. Fritz and G. ToselloA conch from New Zealand and its mouthpiece made of a decorated bone tube.Credit…Musée du Quai Branly, Jacques ChiracOnly in 2016 did researchers begin to analyze the shell anew. Artifacts like this conch help paint a picture of how cave dwellers lived, said Carole Fritz, an archaeologist at the University of Toulouse who has been studying the cave and its paintings for over 20 years. “It’s difficult to study cave art without cultural context.”Dr. Fritz and her colleagues started by assembling a three-dimensional digital model of the conch. They immediately noticed that some parts of its shell looked peculiar. For starters, a portion of its outer lip had been chipped away. That left behind a smooth edge, quite unlike Charonia lampas, said Gilles Tosello, a prehistorian and visual artist also at the University of Toulouse. “Normally, they’re very irregular.”The apex of the conch was also broken off, the team found. That’s the most robust part of the shell, and it’s unlikely that such a fracture would have occurred naturally. Indeed, further analysis showed that the shell had been struck repeatedly — and precisely — near its apex. The researchers also noted a brown residue, perhaps remnants of clay or beeswax, around the broken apex.The mystery deepened when the team used CT scans and a tiny medical camera to examine the inside of the conch. They found a hole, roughly half an inch in diameter, that ran inward from the broken apex and pierced the shell’s interior structure.An ancient painting in Marsoulas cave. Credit…C. Fritz and G. ToselloAll of these modifications were intentional, the researchers believe. The smoothed outer lip would have made the conch easier to hold, and the broken apex and adjacent hole would have allowed a mouthpiece — possibly the hollow bone of a bird — to be inserted into the shell. The result was a musical instrument, the team concluded in their study, which was published Wednesday in Science Advances.This shell might have been played during ceremonies or used to summon gatherings, said Julien Tardieu, another Toulouse researcher who studies sound perception. Cave settings tend to amplify sound, said Dr. Tardieu. “Playing this conch in a cave could be very loud and impressive.”It would also have been a beautiful sight, the researchers suggest, because the conch is decorated with red dots — now faded — that match the markings found on the cave’s walls.This discovery is believable, said Miriam Kolar, an archaeoacoustician at Amherst College in Massachusetts who studies conch horn shells but was not involved in the research. “There’s compelling evidence that the shell was modified by humans to be a sound-producing instrument.”While other “seashell horns” have been found in places like New Zealand and Peru, none are as old as this conch.Dr. Fritz said it was incredible to hear Dr. Court play the conch. Its music hadn’t been heard by human ears for many millenniums, which made the experience particularly moving, she said.“It was a fantastic moment.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More