By Arts & Culture Editor Joan Kirschner
On these cold blustery days, stay in with a great book or movie. An armchair vacation to Paris can sweep you away to another decade or century.
Non-Fiction
When Paris Sizzled: The 1920s Paris of Hemingway, Chanel, Cocteau, Cole Porter, Josephine Baker and Their Friends by Mary McAuliffe.Time travel to the milieu of Chagall, Picasso, Modigliani, Stravinsky and others creating an amazing confluence of art, music, theater, fashion, and literature.
The Battle of Versailles recounts an epic fashion event. In 1973, American designers Bill Blass, Stephen Burrows, Oscar de la Renta, Halston, and Anne Klein, and French couturiers Pierre Cardin, Marc Bohan for Christian Dior, Hubert de Givenchy, Yves Saint Laurent and Emanuel Ungaro presented their work with fanfare and drama at the Palace of Versailles. This fund raiser for the Louis XIV Palace attracted international high society, royalty, artists, and movie stars. Pulitzer Prize winner Robin Givhan brilliantly presents its backstory and dissects its historical and social implications.
Strapless: John Singer Sargent and the Fall of Madame X. Who was the woman in the famous Sargent portrait? Deborah Davis tells her story and Sargent’s in a combined biography.
Fiction
In my 20s I read translations of the works of the French writers Colette (Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, 1873-1954) and Françoise Sagan (1935-2004). Keira Knightley is “Colette” in an autobiographical 2018 film; the 1954 musical “Gigi” starred Leslie Caron. Sagan’s Bonjour Tristesse and A Certain Smile became English language films in 1958.
NEWS FLASH! Coming this summer…a new film version of Bonjour Tristesse starring Chloe Sevigny. Eighteen-year-old Françoise Sagan published the book in 1954, kicking off her career as a best-selling author.
Mrs. ‘Arris Goes to Paris is a charming 1958 novel by Paul Gallico about a London charwoman (cleaning lady) who acquires the funds for a Dior gown. The 2022 film “Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris” is delightful, but the book is better!
Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky: the first two parts of a planned five-novel series about Parisians facing the Nazi invasion. Némirovsky died in Auschwitz before completing the work. Michelle Williams and Kristin Scott-Thomas star in a 2015 adaptation.
A Bakery in Paris by Aimie K. Runyan traces two women of different generations of the same family who establish and operate a neighborhood bakery in Montmartre, alternating between 1870 and 1946.
The Mistress of the Ritz by Melanie Benjamin: a lightly fictionalized account of Blanche Ross, an American actress who arrived at the exclusive Hotel Ritz in Paris in the early 1920s and married Claude Auzello, the assistant manager. There is a very unexpected coda to their story – don’t research it until completing the book; and read the author’s note.
The Glass Château by Stephen P. Kiernan. Set in France following World War II. Asher’s character was inspired by artist Marc Chagall (1887-1985), who worked in many mediums, but whose stained-glass windows are among his most famous works.
The Paris Library by Janet Skelien Charles. An insight into World War II Paris, based on real events. A young Frenchwoman, Odile, becomes a librarian at the American Library in Paris (ALP) in 1939. Forty years later, teenager Lily and her parents live in tiny Froid, Montana. Their widowed neighbor, Mrs. Gustafson, keeps to herself, but everyone knows she was a French war bride. Her first name? Odile.
More Paris Movies
Funny Face – Audrey Hepburn, Fred Astaire, 1957
Breathless – Jean Seberg, Jean-Paul Belmondo, 1959
Paris Blues – Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Sidney Poitier, Diahann Carroll, 1961
Paris When It Sizzles – Audrey Hepburn, William Holden, 1964
The Last Metro – Catherine Deneuve, Gerard Dépardieu, 1981
Jefferson in Paris – Nick Nolte, 1995
Amélie – Audrey Tatou, 2001
Before Sunset – Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke, 2004
La Vie en Rose – Marion Cotillard, 2007
Midnight in Paris – Owen Wilson, 2011
Joan Kirschner is a Boston area writer/blogger who reviews books, museum exhibitions, theater, film, music, and travel experiences. Her commentary previously appeared on SonsiWoman.com, UllaPopken.com, WomenofGloucesterCounty.com, Trazzler.com, and IndieReader.com. She attributes a lifelong love of reading and cultural events to parents who encouraged her interests early on. Joan began as a retail and mail order catalog copywriter when typewriters, carbon paper, X-Acto knives, and hot glue were found in advertising offices everywhere. She advanced through the ranks and changes in technology, eventually taking on corporate communications, social media, and digital advertising and promotion. She managed and mentored younger writers, acquired skills in art direction, and had responsibility for print and digital communications reaching millions of customers. Surrounded by the babble of languages in Manhattan and Brooklyn and sympathizing with the challenges of non-English speakers, she earned a certificate in the Teaching of English as Second Language (TESOL) and began teaching and tutoring adults and college students. Joan now works part-time in grants administration, freelances occasionally, and covers books and the arts on her blog.
What a great walk through!! Thnx so much bringing back forgotten reads and watches!!
You’re very welcome, Susan! So glad you enjoyed it.