Alex Hughes. Encyclopedia of Contemporary French Culture
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Pierre Bost, as on Le Diable au corps of 1946
or Le Blé en herbe of 1954, earned him the
scorn of the Cahiers du cinéma critics, above
all Truffaut. Yet La Traversée de Paris (1956)
was one of the first determinedly non-heroic
treatments of the Occupation, and his move
across the political spectrum, from Commu-
nist Party member after the war to National
Front MEP in the 1980s, was clearly the re-
sult of cynical opportunism as much as of any
major ideological change.
KEITH READER
See also: cinema; cinéma de qualité; parties
and movements
Auteuil, Daniel
b. 1950, Algiers, Algeria
Actor
His career began in 1977 with comic roles.
He became well-known for his role as Ugolin
in Berri’s 1986 diptych Jean de Florette/
Manon des sources, for which he received a
César and a BAFTA award. Apart from the
nineteenth-century criminal in Girod’s
Lacenaire (1990) and Henry of Navarre in
Chéreau’s La Reine Margot (1994), his roles
in the 1990s were mainly of middle-class males
in emotional trouble, exemplified in 1992 in
Sautet’s A Heart in Winter (Un Coeur en
hiver), where he played opposite Emmanuelle
Béart, his real-life partner during the 1980s
after he had been her screen suitor in Manon
des sources.
PHIL POWRIE
See also: cinema
autobiography
A widespread interest in autobiography (a per-
son’s account of his or her life which usually
emphasizes the origins and development of
personal identity) has been a notable feature
of French culture since World War II and par-
ticularly since the 1970s.
The increasing prominence of autobiogra-
phy in France is a multifaceted cultural phe-
nomenon. At one level it represents belated
recognition for a neglected body of major
texts, including Rousseau’s Confessions and
Stendhal’s Life of Henry Brulard (Vie de
Henry Brulard), which had been relegated to
the periphery of the literary field. New critical
methods spawned by structuralism generated
an interest in the workings of narrative, and
questioned the established parameters of liter-
ary genres. Autobiography, with its combina-
tion of fact and fable, found its place in an
expanded canon, and drew serious critical at-
tention to other forms such as memoirs, es-
says, biographies and diaries. However, this
new-found fascination with the first person
singular placed a premium on the investiga-
tion of subjective reality and its complex de-
terminants, rather than on personal effusions.
As such, the rising tide of interest in the auto-
biographical reflects the wider impact of the
human sciences—psychoanalysis, linguistics,
semiotics, structural anthropology, sociology,
feminist theory—in French culture generally.
It is no coincidence that a crucial figure in
twentieth-century French autobiography,
Michel Leiris, was a poet adept at dissecting
words, a trained ethnographer, and a lifelong
devotee of psychoanalysis. The rise of autobi-
ography reflects new ways of locating the
sources of identity—in gender, ideological rep-
resentations, history, ethnicity, the body, as
well as in the dynamics of personal relations.
It goes hand in hand with the questioning of
old categorizations and divisions of experience
into individual and collective, public and pri-
vate, personal and historical. If it represents
an emphasis on the experiential, the prestige
of autobiography reflects new ways of plac-
ing le vécu (lived experience) at the heart of
human understanding and cultural endeavour.
The rise of autobiography may seem para-
doxical given the structuralist proclamation of
the death of the author and the demise of the
sovereign self, key themes in contemporary
Auteuil, Daniel
39
French culture. But in fact, the general model
of the subject, as opposed to the self, which
emerged in such quarters as linguistic theory
centring on enunciation, Lacanian psychoa-
nalysis with its emphasis on the illusory na-
ture of the ego, or Cixous’s account of
gendered subjectivity and language, paved the
way for an increasingly self-aware and sophis-
ticated mode of autobiographical writing at-
tuned to the dispersion of a multiply consti-
tuted subjectivity. The inherently hybrid char-
acter of autobiography, at the crossroads of
the referential and the fictional, and capable
of finding expression in a wide range of me-
dia, visual (film, photograph, video) as well as
verbal, becomes a distinct advantage. In the
1990s it has given autobiography a central
position in a number of important cultural
currents. These include the focus on the récit
de vie (life history) which has led to new ex-
periments in oral testimony, biography and
travel writing, and the focus on the ordinary
and the everyday, associated with such theo-
reticians as Henri Lefebvre and Michel de
Certeau. In these contexts autobiography,
while by no means supporting die-hard indi-
vidualism, does have a positive role in renego-
tiating the place of the subjective in wider so-
cial and intellectual formations.
Although it had been published just before
the war, Michel Leiris’s Manhood (L’Age
d’homme) only made its real impact when re-
issued in 1946 with an essay which has come
to be seen as a manifesto for a new kind of
literary enterprise. ‘The Autobiographer as
Torero’ (‘De la littérature considered comme
une tauromachie’) underlined the work’s radi-
cal structural and thematic innovations. The
first modern autobiographer to break with
chronology, Leiris had structured his self-in-
vestigation around certain obsessional motifs
organized in associative patterns. Crucially,
Leiris underlined the risk-taking candour of the
confessional autobiographer, willing to ‘tell all’,
and thus to expose himself to vilification, as
the matador exposes himself to the bull’s horns.
The element of risk gave autobiography the
edge over other forms of literary expression
which seemed merely footling in the face of
the horrors of war. In its authenticity, auto-
biographical writing could constitute a form
of that engagement which Jean-Paul Sartre was
calling for on the part of intellectuals.
In fact, Leiris’s autobiographical project, to
be pursued for the rest of his life, notably in
the four-volume cycle (1948–76) The Rules of
the game (La Règle du jeu), partly inspired
Sartre’s own passionate interest in human lives,
which first found full expression in his biogra-
phy of Charles Baudelaire, also published in
1946 and in fact dedicated to Leiris. Sartre’s
next biographical subject was the homosexual
writer Jean Genet. This was partly on the
strength of Genet’s 1948 The Thief’s Journal
(Journal du voleur), a major autobiographical
work which, as in Leiris’s case, combined a
high degree of awareness of the pitfalls and
challenges of autobiography with a radical
approach to narrative and time. Sartre himself
embarked on an autobiography in the early
1950s, but by the time it was published to great
acclaim in 1964 as Words (Les Mots), two
other important autobiographies had been
published by members of his circle, Simone de
Beauvoir’s 1958 Memoirs of a Dutiful Daugh-
ter (Mémoires d’une jeune fille rangée) and
André Gorz’s 1958 The Traitor (Le Traître).
These were to be followed by Violette Leduc’s
La Bâtarde, an important autobiography by a
writer close to Beauvoir. While all these auto-
biographies have common features which can
be associated with existentialism (for exam-
ple, a concern with betrayal and bad faith),
Sartre’s Words is in a class of its own. Witty
and fast-moving, it injects a strong dose of
parody into the autobiographical proceedings,
while in fact, as critical analysis has shown,
disguising a complex structure of argument
behind a loosely chronological surface.
A decade later, three works published in
1975 can be seen as the next milestone in the
evolution of autobiography in France. First, a
brilliant critical work by Philippe Lejeune, Le
Pacte autobiographique (The Autobiographi-
cal Contract), placed autobiography at the top
of the literary critical agenda. Well-versed in
contemporary literary theory, Lejeune com-
bined a concern for rigorous formal criteria
autobiography
40
with an approach favouring close textual read-
ing. In a series of subsequent works Lejeune
refined and broadened his critical approach,
serving as an indispensable interpreter of the
manifold developments which have occurred
in French autobiography in the last twenty-
five years or so.
Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes (Roland
Barthes par Roland Barthes) and Georges
Perec’s W or the Childhood Memory (W ou le
souvenir d’enfance), both from 1975, broke new
ground. Barthes’s text, featuring alphabetically
ordered fragments, and a narrative voice oscil-
lating between first and third person pronouns,
adapted concepts from Lacanian psychoanaly-
sis and used autobiography to explore a new
vision of the human subject. In Perec’s case,
chapters from an autobiographical narrative
sifting through a meagre stock of childhood
memories alternate with chapters from a fic-
tional story written when Perec was an adoles-
cent. Progressively it emerges that both narra-
tives point to a horror neither can name: the
annihilation of the author’s mother in
Auschwitz. Posthumous texts published since
Perec’s early death in 1982 reveal the extent of
his interest in developing new kinds of auto-
biographical project geared to exploring the
borders of individual and collective experience.
The upsurge of interest in autobiography
in the late 1970s had a direct impact on the
nouveau roman group of novelists. Although,
in the heyday of the structuralist assault on
humanism, the new novelists had appeared to
banish subjectivity, the ‘retour du sujet’ (re-
turn of the subject) spearheaded by Barthes’s
later work prompted Alain Robbe-Grillet to
write Le Miroir qui revient (The Return of the
Mirror) and two subsequent volumes where
autobiography and fantasy fuse in a manner
particularly characteristic of what was to be-
come known as autofiction (see below).
Nathalie Sarraute’s outstanding 1983 Child-
hood (Enfance) used the established stylistic
and thematic range developed in her fiction to
probe childhood memories. With The Lover
(L’Amant), published in 1984, Marguerite
Duras used memories of an illicit affair as the
sounding-board for a haunting exercise in
memory and fantasy which clarified the auto-
biographical basis of her fictional work. Simi-
larly, Claude Simon’s 1989 L’Acacia (The
Acacia) consolidated a distinct autobiographi-
cal turn in his work.
The 1980s saw the emergence of several
writers whose work bears the strong impact
of the revival of autobiography. To some de-
gree they can be seen as exponents of
autofiction, a label coined by Serge
Doubrovsky for novels where the narrator-pro-
tagonist bears the author’s real name. Works
of autofiction, including those of Robbe-Grillet
mentioned above, and Doubrovsky’s Un
Amour de soi (Self-Love), often involve the
reader in games with truth and fiction, blur-
ring the border between autobiographical rev-
elation and fictional creation. But for younger
writers like Annie Ernaux, Hervé Guibert and
Patrick Modiano, the ludic dimension of
autofiction serves more authentically autobio-
graphical ends. For Guibert, in To the Friend
Who Did Not Save My Life (A l’ami qui ne
m’a pas sauvé la vie) the fusion of the diary
mode (which also undergoes a revival at this
time), autobiographical narrative and novelis-
tic effects creates a medium in which he can
explore the experience of being HIV positive.
Ernaux has moved from autobiographical nov-
els to works where biography—that of her fa-
ther in Positions (La Place), that of her mother
in Une Femme (A Woman)—provide the
framework for autobiographical self-scrutiny.
In her 1993 Journal du dehors (A Diary of the
Outside), autobiographical writing becomes
the medium for an exploration of ‘le quotidien’
(the everyday), the zone of immediate daily
experience where the balance between freedom
and constraint in the rhythm of individual ex-
istence can be gauged.
This turn towards everydayness, to the tex-
ture of individual lives, present or past, can be
linked to another of the alliances autobiogra-
phy has forged. Historians of private life, so-
ciologists of collective memory, ethnographers
who investigate their own society rather than
exotic ones, have opened up new ways of ex-
ploiting the archive of everyday existence that
individuals and institutions assemble in the
autobiography
41
shape of documents, photographs and arte-
facts bearing the trace of human identity. The
autobiographical works of Marguerite
Yourcenar, consisting of explorations in her
family history, reflect what the historian
Arlette Farge calls ‘le goût de l’archive’ (the
taste of the archive) as do such mixed-media
autobiographical ventures, involving texts and
photographs, as Anne Duperey’s Le Voile noir
(The Black Veil) and Anne-Marie Garat’s Pho-
tos de famille (Family Photos). Another symp-
tomatic sign of the key role of autobiography
in contemporary French culture is the promi-
nence of new forms of biographical essay
where biography becomes a form of indirect
autobiography, as in Pierre Michon’s influen-
tial Vies minuscules (Minuscule Lives) or the
volumes in the series ‘L’Un et l’autre’ (‘The
One and the Other’) edited by the psychoana-
lyst J.-B.Pontalis. The flourishing Association
pour le Patrimoine Autobiographique,
founded in 1992 to encourage the creation and
dissemination of life-archives, and the collec-
tive creation and discussion of autobiographi-
cal works, is further testimony to the fact that
the rise of autobiography reflects a widespread
fascination with life histories and individual
testimony which is a phenomenon affecting a
broad cross-section of French society.
MICHAEL SHERINGHAM
See also: gay writing; Lacan, Jacques; struc-
turalism; women’s/lesbian writing
Further reading
Barthes, R. (1975) Roland Barthes par Roland
Barthes, Paris: Éditions du Seuil. Translated
R.Howard (1977) Roland Barthes by
Roland Barthes, New York: Hill and Wang.
Keefe, T. and Smyth, E. (eds) (1995) Autobi-
ography and the Existential Self: Studies in
Modern French Writing, Liverpool: Liver-
pool University Press (a useful collection of
essays on Sartre, Beauvoir, Camus, Genet,
Leduc and Guibert).
Leiris, M. (1939, 1946) L’Age d’homme,
Paris: Gallimard. Translated R.Howard
(1968) Manhood, London: Cape.
Lejeune, P. (1975) Le Pacte autobiographique,
Paris: Éditions du Seuil (an immensely influ-
ential book which contains a seminal account
of the idea of an autobiographer’s contact with
the reader, and excellent close textual read-
ings of Rousseau, Gide, Leiris and Sartre).
——(1989) On Autobiography, Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press (a selection
of Lejeune’s writings covering the full range
of his writings on autobiography).
Perec, G. (1975), W ou le souvenir d’enfance,
Paris: Denoël. Translated D.Bellos (1988)
W or the Childhood Memory, London:
Collins-Harvill.
Sarraute, N. (1983), Enfance, Paris:
Gallimard. Translated B.Wright (1984)
Childhood, London: John Calder.
Sartre, J.-P. (1964) Les Mots, Paris: Gallimard.
Translated I.Clifton (1964) Words, Lon-
don: Hamish Hamilton.
Sheringham, M. (1993) French Autobiography:
Devices and Desires: Rousseau to Perec,
Oxford: Clarendon Press (a comprehensive
critical analysis of the French autobiographi-
cal canon via such topics as the reader’s role,
the use of incidents, existentialist autobiog-
raphy and the function of memory).
avance sur recettes
Instituted in 1960 by the state in the face of
the film industry’s financial crisis caused by
declining audiences, this form of selective fi-
nancing benefits 20 per cent of the films made
and represents 5 per cent of investment in pro-
duction. It targets films of quality (experimen-
tal, auteur, heritage films) and is attributed to
a producer or film-maker upon the successful
acceptance of his or her script by a govern-
ment-appointed commission. Not a subsidy,
this advance is to be repaid. However, of the
films benefiting from this system since 1960,
less than 10 per cent have paid off the loan in
full, and only 50 per cent in part.
SUSAN HAWARD
avance sur recettes
42
See also: cinema; National Cinematographic
Centre
Avignon and summer arts
festivals
Cultural life in the field of the performing arts
(including theatre and dance) is particularly
vibrant in the summer months, thanks to the
establishment over the last fifty years of a se-
ries of festivals, of which Avignon is certainly
by far the biggest and most famous.
The Avignon festival was founded in 1947
by Jean Vilar with the intention of making thea-
tre available to a public wider than the tradi-
tional Parisian audience. At a time when the
general trend in French politics and culture was
towards decentralization, the festival became
a popular centre with audiences from all over
France, especially the south. Jean Vilar’s pro-
ductions in the Cour d’Honneur of the Palais
des Papes (Papal Palace), and those which fol-
lowed him there, have included some memo-
rable stagings, which have become theatrical
reference points. These include Vilar’s Rich-
ard II in 1947, and his Prince of Hamburg star-
ring Gérard Philipe and Jeanne Moreau in
1951; Bob Wilson’s Einstein on the Beach in
1976; Peter Brook’s Mahabharata in 1985,
Vitez’s The Satin Slipper (Le Soulier de satin)
in 1988, and Chéreau’s Hamlet in 1989. Fa-
mous dancers and choreographers have also
staged productions in the Cour d’Honneur,
which has become the most prominent per-
formance space used at the official Avignon
festival. By 1996, the official festival had grown
to take in twenty-nine venues, with thirty thea-
tre productions—plus lectures, musical thea-
tre, some thirty concerts and five exhibitions—
attracting an audience of between 120,000 and
130,000 over the three weeks of the festival.
Avignon is funded by state, town and ticket
sales: in 1996, the total budget amounted to
45 million francs, of which 24.5 million came
from subsidy (12.5 million from the state and
12 million from the region). A total of 86.6
million is spent during the Avignon festival,
44.2 million of which is spent on events con-
nected with the festival, and 42.4 million
within the town by festival-goers.
The equivalent of the Avignon ‘fringe’ fes-
tival—the ‘Off, as it is known—has been run-
ning alongside the official festival for some
thirty years. In 1982, Alain Léotard founded
the association Avignon Public Off, to co-or-
dinate and provide a structure for the numer-
ous young troupes wanting to take part in the
Avignon season, issuing a programme of all
events happening outside the official festival.
Today, it encompasses productions in ninety-
five performance spaces, with 482 productions
from eighteen countries, taking place from 10
a.m. to 2 a.m. all over town. The ‘Off’ includes
a wide range of arts, ranging from circus per-
formance to cabaret, as well as numerous thea-
tre creations, with a particular emphasis on
contemporary writers. Villeneuve-lès-Avignon,
home to the state-funded writer’s centre La
Chartreuse, also launched its own festival in
1996 to run at the same time as the Avignon
festival, with over thirty events.
As well as being motivated by the desire to
diffuse culture more widely, towns around
France have also realized, as these figures illus-
trate, that for the municipality a festival is likely
to be beneficial both for reputation and for busi-
ness. ‘Festivalomania’ has resulted in a plethora
of festivals appearing and disappearing, cel-
ebrating music, dance, theatre and other art
forms all over France. All are fighting for the
subsidy without which it is very difficult to make
a festival financially viable. Avignon, too, has
to struggle to make its money stretch: although
artistically the aim is to present as wide a range
of productions as possible, the number of events
has in fact decreased from the levels of 1995
(forty-three spectacles) to around 30–35 each
year. Festival director Bertrand Faivre d’Arcier
recently criticized those municipalities which,
he says, are inspired to run a festival for touristic
rather than for artistic reasons. Whether this is
true or not, it is certainly undeniable that
‘festivalomania’ exists in France, with over 600
performing arts festivals recognized by the Min-
istry of Culture. Although Avignon is by far the
biggest cultural festival, others are also worthy
Avignon and summer arts festivals
43
of note. Pau, for example, was founded by
Roger Hanin in 1966 to help promote the work
of young troupes, also the philosophy of the
Alès festival of ‘Jeune Théâtre’, which special-
izes in new talent, in the past providing a fo-
rum for now famous names such as Jérôme
Deschamps or the Royal de Luxe theatre com-
pany. The annual Cannes film festival is cel-
ebrated for its Palme d’Or awards. Aixen-Pro-
vence hosts a renowned festival of lyric music,
particularly Mozart, which attracts an interna-
tional audience. The city of Paris also hosts a
summer arts festival, the Quartiers d’Été, funded
by the city and state and directed by Patrice Mar-
tinet. Other notable theatre festivals during May
and June are Théâtre en Mai, held in Dijon since
1991; Les Turbulences at La Maillon in Stras-
bourg; the St Herblain festival near Nantes, the
Lille-based circus Festival du Prato and the
Printemps des Comédiens in Montpellier. Paris
is also home to the autumn arts festival, the
Festival d’Automne, which traditionally attracts
big-name productions from practitioners such
as Peter Brook, Bob Wilson and other famous
directors, as well as a range of dance, musical
and cinematic events. Major film festivals take
place in Cannes, La Rochelle, Deauville (devoted
to American cinema) and Créteil, near Paris
(devoted to the work of women film-makers).
ANNIE SPARKS
See also: Azama, Michel; cinema; theatre;
women directors
Further reading
Bradby, D. (1991) Modern French Drama
1940–1990, Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press (see the chapter on Vilar).
Faivre d’Arcier, B. (1993) ‘De la fonction
culturelle du festival’, in Festivals, creation,
tourisme et image, Paris: Les Cahiers Espace.
——(1996) ‘Ici on fait du theatre d’art’, Le
Figaro 9, 7.
Festivals et Expositions (1996) Paris: Ministry
of Culture (a government publication, with
listings of theatre and other arts festivals).
Festive France: Festivals, Sound and Light,
Shows, Events, Paris: Maison de la France
(an annually published listing).
Azama, Michel
b. 1947, Catalonia
Playwright
A master in modern arts and former profes-
sional actor, Azama has written numerous
plays, including Vie et mort de Pier Paolo
Pasolini (Life and Death of Pier Paolo
Pasolini), Croisades (Crusades) and Aztèques
(Aztecs). From 1989 to 1992 he was resident
writer at the Centre Dramatique National in
Dijon. Since 1993, he has been literary adviser
to the Centre National des Écritures
Contemporaines at La Chartreuse,
Villeneuveles-Avignon. He edits its theatre
journal for authors, Les Cahiers du Prospéro.
ANNIE SPARKS
See also: theatre
Aznavour, Charles
b. 1924, Paris
Singer-songwriter,
real name Varenagh Aznavourian
Immediately after the war, Aznavour wrote only
the words of songs in collaboration with Pierre
Roche, but later wrote both words and music
of songs performed by Édith Piaf, Eddie
Constantine and Juliette Gréco. Eventually suc-
ceeding as a solo artist from the mid-1950s, he
enjoyed much success in the United States and
the United Kingdom. Hit songs include For
Mamma (La Mamma), which was written with
R.Gall, and Comme ils disent (As They Say).
IAN PICKUP
See also: song/chanson
Aznavour, Charles
44
Badinter, Élisabeth
b. 1944, France
Historian
After pursuing studies in sociology and psy-
chology, Badinter turned to history, which
she has taught in a number of Paris’s tertiary
educational institutions. In the 1980s and
1990s, she has published works dealing with
gender and sexual/political issues. These in-
clude The Myth of Motherhood: An Histori-
cal View of the Maternal Instinct (L’Amour
en plus: histoire de l’amour maternel XVIIe–
XXe siècle), Man/Woman: The One is the
Other (L’Un est l’autre), Qu’est-ce qu’une
femme? (What is a Woman?), and XY: On
Masculine Identity (XY, de l’identité mascu-
line). She has also written biographical his-
torical works.
ALEX HUGHES
See also: feminist thought
Badinter, Robert
b. 1928, Paris
Lawyer and politician
A prominent humanitarian lawyer, Badinter
became Justice Minister in the first govern-
ment of the Mitterrand presidency (1981). He
was the architect of the abolition of the death
penalty, widely regarded as the most signifi-
cant measure of the Mitterrand years—a re-
form with which his name has been indelibly
associated. He is married to Élisabeth
Badinter.
KEITH READER
See also: parties and movements
Baker, Josephine
b. 1906 Saint Louis, USA;
d. 1975
An expatriate African-American singer and
dancer, Baker rose to great fame in the 1920s
as the star of the Revue Nègre, a music-hall
show, and the Folies Bergères. Her signature
song was J’ai deux amours (Paris et mon
pays). She starred in a silent film, La Sirène
des tropiques (1927), and two popular
French sound films, Zouzou (1934) and
Princesse Tam-Tam (1935). Often shown in
photographs wearing nothing but a string of
banana skins around her waist, she is thought
by many to evoke the exoticism (and eroti-
cism) of the Jazz Age in Paris between the
world wars.
ELIZABETH EZRA
See also: dance
B
45
Balasko, Josiane
b. 1952, Paris
Actor and director
Originally a member of Le Splendid café thea-
tre troupe, she acted in a number of their plays
which were eventually made into films, for
example Poiré’s Le Père Noël est une ordure
(1982). She was best known in the 1980s for
her role as Depardieu’s lover in Blier’s Trap
belle pour toi (1989), as well as for a number
of her own comic films, for example Les Keufs
in 1987. Her French Twist (Gazon maudit),
in which she plays a lesbian, was the second-
best-selling film of 1995 in France. 1995 presi-
dential election but was eliminated in the first
ballot.
PHIL POWRIE
See also: cinema
Further reading
Vincendeau, G. (1996) ‘Twist and Farce’, Sight
and Sound 6, 4:24–6 (an appraisal).
Balladur, Édouard
b. 1929, Smyrna, Turkey
Politician
Balladur served in the Conseil d’État before
becoming an adviser to Premier Pompidou in
1966. He was President Pompidou’s chief of
staff in 1973–4 and director of a major indus-
trial group from 1977 to 1984. As Finance
Minister in the 1986–8 Chirac government,
he was responsible for a major privatization
and deregulation programme. He was elected
to parliament in 1988 and 1993 and, follow-
ing the victory of the parties of the right in
1993, was appointed prime minister by Presi-
dent Mitterrand. He was able to use this posi-
tion to challenge his fellow Gaullist, Chirac,
in the
LAURENCE BELL
See also: parties and movements
Major works
Balladur, É. (1992) Dictionnaire de la réforme,
Paris: Fayard (the author’s own neo-con-
servative prescriptions).
Further reading
Zemmour, É. (1995) Balladur: immobile à
grands pas, Paris: Grasset.
Balthus
b. 1908, France;
d. 1997, France
Artist, real name Balthasar
Klossowski de Rola
Balthus is a painter working independently in
the figurative tradition within the European
context. Isolated from the main current of con-
temporary art, but influenced by Gustave
Courbet (1819–77) and Piero della Francesca
(1410/20–92), his work is naturalistic and
nonimprovised. Using the figure as symbolic,
his images portray the claustrophobia of male
sexual fantasy. The dominant theme is the pri-
vate obsession of the nude or exposed adoles-
cent girl sprawled or bent over, inviting sexual
violence, as in La Chambre (1954). His paint
surfaces have become increasingly worked, his
images highly structured, reminiscent of the
densely decorated and impastoed surfaces of
the Byzantine fresco.
VALERIE SWALES
See also: painting
Balthus
46
banks
The banking system in France has been slow
to develop. Main high-street banks (Crédit
Lyonnais, Société Générale and BNP) were
nationalized in 1945, and most of the remain-
ing ones, including investment banks, were
nationalized in 1981. A slow deregulation
process started in the 1960s, whose impact
was only significantly felt in the 1980s, espe-
cially after the ‘Big Bang’ liberalization in
1985. A movement towards privatization
started in 1986. The recent growth and liber-
alization of the banking system has encoun-
tered considerable difficulties, especially in
regulatory terms, with large banks such as
Crédit Lyonnais suffering from speculative
investment strategies.
FRANÇOIS NECTOUX
See also: economy; nationalization and priva-
tization
Barbara
b. 1930, Paris;
d. 1997, Paris
Singer-songwriter,
real name Monique Serf
Having served a long apprenticeship in Paris-
ian cabarets and in Belgium, Barbara per-
formed, in the late 1950s and early 1960s,
songs written by others (including Brassens
and Brel) before making her reputation with
her own songs. The archetypal femme fatale
on stage, Barbara captivated her audiences
with such songs as Nantes, Mes hommes (My
Men) and Pierre. An influential performer,
she is noted for an individual style on the pi-
ano.
IAN PICKUP
See also: song/chanson
Barclay, Eddie
b. 1921, Paris
Composer, bandleader and
record-company owner,
real name Édouard Ruault
Originally a jazz pianist, Eddie Barclay formed
his own record company in order to record
his own band. By the sixties, the Barclay label
had attracted such important names as Charles
Aznavour, Léo Ferré, Jacques Brel, Claude
Nougaro and Jean Ferrat. Barclay himself was
one of the most powerful figures in French
show business from the 1950s until 1979,
when his company was taken over by Poly-
gram.
IAN PICKUP
See also: song/chanson
Bardèche, Maurice
b. 1907, Dun-sur-Auron
Writer
Bardèche is an avowedly Fascist writer, im-
bued by his brother-in-law Robert Brasillach’s
execution at the Liberation with a lifelong pas-
sion to redeem and spread his ideals. He
staunchly defended collaboration in the Lettre
à François Mauriac of 1947, and founded the
publishing house Les Sept Couleurs and the
journal Défense de l’Occident, from 1952 to
1982 the epicentre of the intellectual extreme
Right in France. Since the rise of Le Pen and
the increasing influence of rightist ideologies
worldwide, his prominence has waned, but he
remains important as the last surviving major
link between the far Right of today and the
Occupation.
KEITH READER
See also: Hussards
banks
47
Bardot, Brigitte
b. 1934, Paris
Actor
More than any of the other French female
stars—indeed any female star in the world ex-
cept Marilyn Monroe—she is associated with
a sexuality at once threatening and fascinat-
ing through its very naivety and candour. The
Bardot star persona, from the ‘sex kitten’ of
the 1950s to the animal-besotted St Tropez
recluse of today, has long outlived her acting
career, which came to an end in 1973.
Vadim’s And God Created Woman (Et Dieu
créa la femme) of 1956 is by far her best-
known screen role, though her dramatic capa-
bilities were better revealed by Clouzot in La
Vérité of 1960 and Godard in Le Mépris three
years later.
KEITH READER
See also: cinema; stars
Barrault, Jean-Louis
b. 1910, Le Vésinet;
d. 1994, Paris
Director
Barrault was one of the most influential post-
war theatre directors, whose directorial work
explored the idea of ‘total’ theatre, experi-
menting with scene, music, dancing, comedy
and acrobatics, with emphasis on the actor’s
role and physical expression. He is often re-
ferred to, in this sense, as a disciple of Artaud,
although his special interest in the actor also
stems from theatre traditions pioneered by
Copeau and the prewar Cartel directors, espe-
cially Dullin, Barrault’s teacher in the 1930s.
Barrault’s concept of theatre thus combined
spiritual and physical desire for ‘total’ expres-
sion like that of Artaud, but was firmly rooted
in humanist, down-to-earth practices.
A gifted mime artist working in Dullin’s
workshops at the age of 20, where he was en-
couraged by Decroux, Barrault began to im-
press audiences, among them Artaud, who
praised his skilled gesture and movement in
mimodrames. Between 1935 and 1939, his
experimentation also included the formation
of the collective Le Grenier des Augustins with
Jean Dasté, which included Vilar and Artaud
among its regulars.
At the same time, he also began to work in
the cinema, again winning acclaim for his
mime abilities (as in Carné and Prévert’s Les
Enfants du Paradis of 1945). He also became
a Comédie-Française sociétaire in 1940,
where, as well as acting, he directed the cel-
ebrated 1943 production of Claudel’s The
Satin Slipper (Le Soulier de Satin). He was to
develop a fruitful director-author relationship
with Claudel as a result, lasting into the 1950s
and 1960s.
In 1946 he founded the Compagnie
Renaud-Barrault with his actor wife
Madeleine Renaud, based for ten years at
the independent Marigny theatre. In 1959,
Barrault took on directorship of the Odéon
theatre. During this period he directed nota-
ble productions of classics and new works
from authors such as Ionesco, as well as
productions of non-dramatic material, in-
cluding The Trial (Le Procès) and The Cas-
tle (Le Château), based on Kafka, exploring
his version of notions of ‘total’ theatre. He
also invited young directors such as Roger
Blin to direct controversial works by au-
thors such as Beckett and Genet. Between
1966 and 1968, he also took on the direc-
torship of the Théâtre des Nations, a home
for experimental international theatre from
Grotowski, Brook and the Living Theatre
among others.
After May 1968, Barrault was dismissed
from the Odéon for discussing issues with stu-
dents occupying the theatre rather than op-
posing them on behalf of the authorities. His
company moved to an old wrestling hall near
Clichy, the Élysée Montmartre, where they
staged Rabelais, a production based on the
latter’s works in a liberating new theatre
Barrault, Jean-Louis