Wednesday, July 15, 2009

This Is What France Has Become

Yet, the telltale signs have been there for a while

This incredible story comes from GalliaWatch. I thought about posting something on Bastille Day yesterday, seeing as I've been tuned into the French Nouvelle Vague films for the past few weeks.  

But, this is absolutely incredible.

Bastille Day, 2009 - Honoring India.

Read the whole thing at GalliaWatch.

Yet, the telltale signs were there, in my short couple-of-months tour of the famous late 1950s French new wave cinema. All the films I watched were to do with adultery or some kind of debauchery. Almost all of them ended in suicide, murder or both.

It was startling to see this pattern. The Italian don't do this in their Neorealism films (which came just before the French Nouvelle Vague). Theirs are stories of human tragedies, errors of mistaken direction, weaknesses of character, grandiosity where none should be. Vittorio De Sica's "The Bicycle Thief" is a heart-wrenching story where the young boy beats hands down the self-centered brat of François Truffaut’s "400 Coups."

The Nouvelle Vague directors really made their characters aggressively pursue decadence and sin. And all for petty desires usually involving sex.

I don't have the time or the knowledge to make these links between this French decadence and the arrival of foreign troops in the Elysée gardens, but I will attempt to do so some time in the future. I would add that there seems to have been a precedence, where German troops were once honored in French official buildings. 

I've also posted a photo of the demure-looking new wife of the French President. Yet, this same woman has been posing in all stages of undress for magazines throughout her life, starting in her very early twenties.