THE BELLE ÉPOQUE

The subject of this book should draw in American readers interested in modern life, Paris, French society, and modern print and film culture.

Paris in the first half of the 20th century was an exhilarating wonderland packed with delightful elements of culture and society: the Metro, Debussy, Stravinsky, Picasso, Matisse, Proust, the Moulin Rouge, courtesans, haute couture. All of it brought “a feeling of lightness and joie de vivre, implying a universe of shared pleasures,” so writes Kalifa (1957-2020), former director of the Center for Nineteenth-Century History at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon–Sorbonne, in this appealing, scholarly cultural history of the Belle Époque. That the era’s very name summons images of Maurice Chevalier, Edith Piaf, and Leslie Caron is part of the author’s story. So is his portrayal of how the era’s imagery “flowered” and fueled a kind of “Parisian triumphalism” well into the 1960s. Those images, he argues, are indelible parts of how we view the French capital even today and play a role in France’s well-known current emphasis on heritage and “patrimony,” in which this book now assumes its own place. So appealing were images of the Belle Époque that the Nazis succumbed to them during their 1940s occupation of France while the French, condemned later for doing so, used them to please their occupiers. That’s the academic current underlying the narrative—its depiction of the reality that culture’s use and recollection can be as significant as culture itself. American readers, especially those who came of age after World War II, will quickly call up Toulouse-Lautrec posters on their walls and memories of first touring Paris. Kalifa gives those memories historical footings and explains their origins, providing a useful, informative portrait for scholars and Francophiles alike.

An evocative, critical work of cultural history that brings the near past alive.