AlokeKumar/france

LOUIS MALLE

(1932-1995)

In 1968 Louis Malle came to Calcutta and was introduced to my father by the film maker Satyajit Ray. I remember Malle then sporting a beard. I was made his guide as he wanted to roam the streets of Calcutta .You know ...just be with him and take him around. He traveled to India without any real specific goal in mind, `just to experience the country and get something of it down on film'. We were standing on the curb of a street as a communist procession moved by. All of a sudden Malle rushed, seized a red flag and started walking. I was bewildered. I stood there for a time not responding. As a young lad I did not know what to do. Suddenly I realized that he may get lost and I was meant to be his guide. I joined the procession, this being my first......That is Louis Malle for you. Ultimately he collected enough footage on Calcutta to make it into a documentary. The documentary was latter banned in India.

Louis Malle comes from a rare breed of French film director who achieved a reputation as a great director not just in his native France but internationally, and was not afraid to embrace a wide range of subjects, some notoriously controversial. Malle is sometimes incorrectly associated with the nouvelle vague - his work does not fit in or correspond to the auteurist theories that apply to the work of Truffaut, Chabrol, Rohmer, and others, and he had nothing whatsoever to do with Cahiers du cinema. Nonetheless, his film Zazie dans le métro ("Zazie in the Metro," 1960, an adaptation of the Raymond Queneau novel) did inspire Truffaut to write an enthusiastic letter to Malle.

Malle was born in 1932 in Thumeries, near to Lille in northern France, into a comfortable bourgeois family which had made a fortune in sugar production dating back to the Napoleonic wars. In 1940, at the age of 12, he attended a Catholic boarding school near Paris (with his three brothers), a school which was sheltering Jewish pupils. The tragic events of this time are documented in Malle's poignant 1987 film, Au Revoir les Enfants.

AAfter the war, Malle began a degree course in political science at the Institut d'études politiques in Paris but, against his parents' wishes, switched to a course on film studies at the Institut des Hautes ètudes Cinématographiques. Almost immediately after that, he was recruited as a camera operator for the famous underwater explorer, Jacques-Yves Cousteau. He worked as co-director on Costeau's celebrated documentary film, Le Monde du silence in 1956.

FRANçOIS TRUFFAUT

(1932-1984)

The French film director and critic François Truffaut, together with Jean Luc Godard and Alain Resnais, created the "New Wave" in in the late 1950s.

The product of an unhappy, loveless home, Truffaut began using films to escape the exigencies of reality at age seven, virtually living in various Parisian movie houses. He left school to go to work at 14, and, one year later, founded a film club, which brought him to the attention of influential cinema critic Andre Bazin. Over the next few years, Bazin both financed and protected Truffaut, helping the young cineaste weather such crises as his arrest for nonpayment of debts and his 1951 public humiliation following his desertion from the Army. In 1953, Bazin hired Truffaut as a critic/essayist for Cahiers du Cinema.

In 1954, Truffaut decided to direct a short film, Une Visite. In 1957 he married Madeleine Morgenstern, the daughter of a major film distributor and set up his own production company, Les Films du Carosse ,named in honor of the Jean Renoir film Le Carrosse d'Or. In 1959 he made his first feature, the intensely autobiographical The 400 Blows. Cast as Truffaut alter-ego Antoine Doinel was young Jean-Pierre Leaud, who went on to play Doinel at various later stages of his life in Truffaut's future projects.

In 1961, Truffaut directed his master piece, and what the finest film: Jules et Jim. Hauntingly beautiful tale of a lingering romantic triangle. Though in the vanguard of the French New Wave ,Truffaut was as popular with casual fans as serious film students. He also differed from his New Wave colleagues by avoiding overt political statements: Even his most "politicized" film, 1980's The Last Metro, was more in the romantic tradition of Renoir than the political Godard.

In developing a style of his own, Truffaut was heavily influenced by his idols especially Renoir. Truffaut also admired such Hollywood directors as Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, and Orson Welles. Echoes of Hitchcock was imitated outright in 1967's The Bride Wore Black. His inability to communicate in English has been cited as the major reason for the comparative failure of Fahrenheit 451 (1966).

As he matured professionally, Truffaut's began favoring the "invisible camera" à la John Ford. After finishing his Oscar-winning Day for Night (1973) -- a film about the making of movies -- Truffaut announced his retirement from directing, but, within a year, was back. In addition to his directorial activities, Truffaut also produced the works of others, and occasionally dabbled in acting, first in his own films (The Wild Child, Day for Night, etc.) and later in the leading role of French scientist Claude Lecombe in Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).

At the time of his death from cancer at the age of 52, Truffaut was busy preparing a variation of The 400 Blows: The Little Thief.


This tribute to Truffaut is for my dear friend Aline from France, living in USA, who likes the work of this great film-maker. For more on her visit: expressioniste.stumbleupon.com [expressioniste.stumbleupon.com]

GABRIELLE "COCO" CHANEL

(1883-1971)


Coco Chanel gave the world the little black dress, Chanel No. 5 perfume, and the revolutionary notion that style could be both classic and casual.

In 1919 French designer Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel released women from the tight corsets of the era and introduced them to comfortable jersey clothing. In 1954, after fifteen years of retirement and just six months before her seventy-first birthday, she made a comeback and freed women once again from highly structured, constricting designs - this time the clothing of the "New Look." Critics were lukewarm, but women, particularly American women, loved her casual, softly shaped clothes and snapped them up. These designs ushered in a new relaxation in fashion that continues today.

Little is known of Chanel's early years except that she was orphaned as a young child. She started in fashion in 1910, making hats in Paris. Chanel opened her first dress shop in Paris in 1914 and closed it in 1939 at the onset of World War II. But in the period between the world wars she revolutionized women's fashion with her straight, simple, uncorseted, and, above all, comfortable "Chanel Look." She also popularized short hair for women in the 1920s and introduced shorter skirts. She created her famous Chanel No. 5 perfume in 1922.

In 1954 Chanel said her competitive spirit was aroused because Parisian high fashion had been taken over by men. Her expression, "There are too many men in this business and they don't know how to make clothes for women. All this fantastic pinching and puffing. How can a woman wear a dress that's cut so she can't lift up her arm to pick up a telephone?" She had a knack for knowing what women wanted, and women responded enthusiastically. In the 1950s her famous Chanel suit - a collarless, braid-trimmed cardigan jacket and slim, graceful skirt - was an enormous hit. She also popularized pea jackets and bell-bottom trousers plus magnificent jewelry worn with sportswear.

A woman of ambition and determination, Gabrielle Chanel, nicknamed "Coco," rose from humble beginnings and an unhappy childhood to become one of the 20th century's most prominent couturiers, prevailing for nearly half a century. In contrast to the opulent elegance of the belle époque, Chanel's designs were based on simplicity and elegance.

In 1969 Coco Chanel's life was the basis for Coco, a Broadway musical starring Katharine Hepburn. Chanel died in 1971, working to the end on a new collection.

This spot is for Deepankar from Delhi. India,who likes Designers. For more on him visit : deepankar-b.stumbleupon.com [deepankar-b.stumbleupon.com]

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

(1769 - 1821)

One of the greatest military leaders in history, and emperor of France he conquered much of Europe.

Napoleon Bonaparte was born on 15 August 1769 in Corsica into a gentry family. Educated at military school, he was rapidly promoted and in 1796, was made commander of the French army in Italy, where he forced Austria and its allies to make peace. In 1798, Napoleon conquered Ottoman-ruled Egypt in an attempt to strike at British trade routes with India. He was stranded when his fleet was destroyed by the British at the Battle of the Nile.

France now faced a new coalition - Austria and Russia had allied with Britain. Napoleon returned to Paris where the government was in crisis. In a coup d'etat in November 1799, Napoleon became first consul. In 1802, he was made consul for life and two years later, emperor. He oversaw the centralisation of government, the creation of the Bank of France, the reinstatement of Roman Catholicism as the state religion and law reform with the Code Napoleon.

In 1800, he defeated the Austrians at Marengo. He then negotiated a general European peace which established French power on the continent. In 1803 Britain resumed war with France, later joined by Russia and Austria. Britain inflicted a naval defeat on the French at Trafalgar (1805) so Napoleon abandoned plans to invade England and turned on the Austro-Russian forces, defeating them at Austerlitz later the same year. He gained much new territory, including annexation of Prussian lands which ostensibly gave him control of Europe. The Holy Roman Empire was dissolved, Holland and Westphalia created, and over the next 5 years, Napoleon's relatives and loyalists were installed as leaders (in Holland, Westphalia, Italy, Naples, Spain and Sweden).

In 1810, he had his childless marriage to Josephine de Beauharnais annulled and married the daughter of the Austrian emperor in the hope of having an heir. A son, Napoleon, was born a year later.

The Peninsular War began in 1808. Costly French defeats over the next five years drained French military resources. Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812 resulted in a disastrous retreat. The tide started to turn in favour of the allies and in March 1814, Paris fell.

Napoleon went into exile on the Mediterranean island of Elba. In March 1815 he escaped and marched on the French capital. The Battle of Waterloo ended his brief reign.

The British imprisoned him on the remote Atlantic island of St. Helena where he died on 5 May 1821.

This spot is for Raisa from New Delhi, India, who likes Napoleon. For more on her visit : raisa4u.stumbleupon.com [raisa4u.stumbleupon.com]

STéPHANE MALLARMé

(1842-1898)

The French poet was the master of the symbolist writers in France. His poetic theories and difficult, allusive poems separated him from the general public but won him intense admiration within the circle of his initiates.

Stéphane Mallarmé was born in Paris on March 18, 1842. After a mediocre beginning at school, young Stéphane excelled in languages (French, Latin, Greek, and English) and obtained his baccalaureate degree in 1860. In 1862 he published his first poem (Placet) in Le Papillon. His liaison with Maria Gerhard led to their marriage in1863, and to the birth of a daughter, Françoise Geneviève Stéphanie in 1864, and a son, Anatole in1871. In 1863. Mallarmé obtained his certificate for teaching English and at the end of the year went with his wife to Tournon to teach in the lycée. His teaching career was to last for 30 years and to take him to Besançon (1866), Avignon (1867), and finally Paris (1871). An agonizing spiritual crisis in 1866 led to Mallarmé's complete loss of religious faith and to his austere, half-mystical preoccupation with eternity and le Néant (Nothingness, or Annihilation).

In 1875 Mallarmé published Le Corbeau (his translation of Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven) with illustrations by Édouard Manet; and the following year appeared L'Aprèsmidi d'un faune, églogu...., one of his most memorable poems. L'Après-midi d'un faune exemplifies many characteristics of Mallarmé's exquisitely evocative poetry and many of his cherished ideas.

In L'Après-midi d'un faune there emerges from Mallarmé's subtle suggestion and evocation the drama of a young faun trying to decide between dream and reality in his confused recollection of an erotic adventure with two nymphs, who finally escaped from his embrace.

The work of the great French Symbolist poet Stephane Mallarmé has often been considered the best example of "pure poetry." Mallarmé dealt in metaphorical obliquities and attempted to practice alchemy with words - to create a kind of poetry where the word as symbol would have a new mobility and would achieve new intensities and refinements of meaning."Certainly no poet has set words with greater art in their surroundings, or given them by their setting, a more sudden and unexpected evocative power" and that "for him it was essential to bring out all the cross-correspondences and interpenetrations of the verbal images."

Mallarmé died at Valvins on Sept. 9, 1898, and was buried two days later in the cemetery of Samoreau (Seine-et-Marne).

This spot is for Sunshine from Sydney, Australia , who likes reading, painting but above all poetries. For more on her visit : xsunshine.stumbleupon.com [xsunshine.stumbleupon.com]

CHRISTIAN DIOR

( 1905 -1957)

Christian Dior was an influential French fashion designer.

He was born in Granville, Manche, Normandy, France. He was the younger son of Maurice Dior, a manufacturer of fertilizer and chemicals, and his wife, the former Madeleine Martin. Dior had an elder brother, Raymond, whose daughter was the Nazi sympathizer Françoise Dior. His sister was a member of the French resistance.

Acceding to his parents' wishes, Dior attended the Ecole des Sciences Politiques from 1920 to 1925. The family, whose fortune was derived from the manufacture of fertilizer, had hopes he would become a diplomat, but Dior only wished to be involved in the arts. After leaving school he received money from his father so that in 1928 he could open a small art gallery, where he sold art by the likes of Pablo Picasso and Max Jacob. After a family financial disaster that resulted in his father losing his business, Dior was forced to shut down the gallery. In the 1930s Dior made a living by doing sketches for haute couture houses. In 1938 he worked with Robert Piguet and later joined the fashion house of Lucien Lelong, where he and Pierre Balmain were the primary designers. In 1945 he went into business for himself, backed by Marcel Boussac, the cotton-fabric magnate. Dior's fashion house opened in December 1946, and the following February, he presented his first fashion show.

Dior's designs were more voluptuous than the boxy, fabric-conserving shapes of the recent World War II styles, influenced by the rations on fabric. He was a master at creating shapes and silhouettes; Dior is quoted as saying "I have designed flower women." His look employed fabrics lined predominantly with percale, boned, bustier-style bodices, hip padding, wasp-waisted corsets and petticoats that made his dresses flare out from the waist, giving his models a very curvaceous form. The New Look revolutionized women's dress and reestablished Paris as the center of the fashion world after World War II.


Although Christian Dior died in 1957, he is perhaps one of the most famous fashion designers of both the 20th and 21st centuries. In the years after the debut of his first collection in 1947 he became a legendary figure and the world press developed an extraordinary love affair with him, increasing their enthusiasm with each new collection. Dior never disappointed them, constantly creating clothes that were newsworthy as well as beautiful.

This spot is for my friend, Hayley from Melbourne, Australia,who loves Fashion. For more on her visit : hayleyjade.stumbleupon.com [hayleyjade.stumbleupon.com]