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1. Paris in the 1950s

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The Heroic City
This chapter is in the book The Heroic City
19 Paris in the 1950s1 In 1946 Paris’s inveterate raconteur and flâneur Léon Paul Far-gue was commissioned by the Commissariat général au Tourisme to create a pamphlet on Paris that would beckon tourists back after the abyss of war. Fargue was near the end of a long life dedicated to poetry, literature, and loving portraits of the city of his birth. “Finally,” Fargue sighed with relief, “we can welcome foreigners back into our hearts overflowing with emo-tion.” With that, the pages of the tour guide begin to reacquaint us with the legendary monuments of Paris in official black-and-white images: the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame Cathedral, the Arc de Triomphe. Couples stroll along the Seine. The curious browse through old prints and magazines at the quayside bookstalls. Barges meander up and down the river, passing fishermen on the quays as they languidly wait for a nibble. Alongside these iconographic visions of the city, the brochure also captured the other kind of images for which Paris was famous: the petits métiers de la rue that one could still see in the years immediately after the war. From the pages of Fargue’s travel guide, picturesque street vendors smile into the camera behind carts covered with chestnuts in winter, with ice cream and flowers in summer. Street musicians, open-air artists, and a muscleman demonstrating his strength entertain the crowds. A junk dealer “sells everything and nothing, but freely spouts his opinions to anyone passing by.” The pamphlet ends with the enticing prom-ise that “you have only to consult a map of Paris to fulfill your fantasies.”1Somehow, despite the vagaries of war and the black years of occupation, Paris had not changed. It remained eternally itself. The city’s time-honored street spectacle was projected not only in film, most obviously in Les Enfants du
© 2019 University of Chicago Press

19 Paris in the 1950s1 In 1946 Paris’s inveterate raconteur and flâneur Léon Paul Far-gue was commissioned by the Commissariat général au Tourisme to create a pamphlet on Paris that would beckon tourists back after the abyss of war. Fargue was near the end of a long life dedicated to poetry, literature, and loving portraits of the city of his birth. “Finally,” Fargue sighed with relief, “we can welcome foreigners back into our hearts overflowing with emo-tion.” With that, the pages of the tour guide begin to reacquaint us with the legendary monuments of Paris in official black-and-white images: the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame Cathedral, the Arc de Triomphe. Couples stroll along the Seine. The curious browse through old prints and magazines at the quayside bookstalls. Barges meander up and down the river, passing fishermen on the quays as they languidly wait for a nibble. Alongside these iconographic visions of the city, the brochure also captured the other kind of images for which Paris was famous: the petits métiers de la rue that one could still see in the years immediately after the war. From the pages of Fargue’s travel guide, picturesque street vendors smile into the camera behind carts covered with chestnuts in winter, with ice cream and flowers in summer. Street musicians, open-air artists, and a muscleman demonstrating his strength entertain the crowds. A junk dealer “sells everything and nothing, but freely spouts his opinions to anyone passing by.” The pamphlet ends with the enticing prom-ise that “you have only to consult a map of Paris to fulfill your fantasies.”1Somehow, despite the vagaries of war and the black years of occupation, Paris had not changed. It remained eternally itself. The city’s time-honored street spectacle was projected not only in film, most obviously in Les Enfants du
© 2019 University of Chicago Press

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. Contents vii
  3. Illustrations ix
  4. Preface xi
  5. Introduction 1
  6. 1. Paris in the 1950s 19
  7. 2. The Landscape of Populism 62
  8. 3. Public Space and Confrontation 106
  9. 4. Spatial Imagination and the Avant-Garde 162
  10. 5. Paris as Cinematic Space 204
  11. 6. The Left Bank 241
  12. 7. Planning Paris 289
  13. Conclusion: Constructing the Paris of Tomorrow 341
  14. Notes 349
  15. Bibliography 377
  16. Index 393
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https://doi.org/10.7208/9780226870175-004

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. Contents vii
  3. Illustrations ix
  4. Preface xi
  5. Introduction 1
  6. 1. Paris in the 1950s 19
  7. 2. The Landscape of Populism 62
  8. 3. Public Space and Confrontation 106
  9. 4. Spatial Imagination and the Avant-Garde 162
  10. 5. Paris as Cinematic Space 204
  11. 6. The Left Bank 241
  12. 7. Planning Paris 289
  13. Conclusion: Constructing the Paris of Tomorrow 341
  14. Notes 349
  15. Bibliography 377
  16. Index 393
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