Tuesday 13 March 2007
Bakeries ..../.... An Ode to a Macaroon
By David Pitt, Tuesday 13 March 2007 - 20:27 :: Best
By my rough count there are over 1,300 bakeries in Paris and almost all of them have lines in them, sometimes pretty long lines, like out- the-door lines. They queue incessantly here for everything. Called boulangeries or patisseries there are, by actual count, 82 of them in my neighborhood. To the average Parisian this is important stuff. To me personally, I am not wild about their bread – too crusty for me – but in these same bakeries are delectable desserts to die for. The éclairs and tortes, the frangipane and meringues, the pain au chocolat and petit fours – oh my, this stuff is plum worth standing in line for. If you want to know what heaven tastes like go into a Paul (a chain, but still one of the best bakeries in Paris) and order a chocolate macaroon. I’m serious, do it, it may be worth the price of an airline ticket all by itself.
Original appearance June 16, 2005, © 2005 / CIP 65B, OO 25, RD 13, YP 30/12-13
I put this street in not because it is a particularly extraordinary Parisian street. Actually all streets in Paris are extraordinary, but it is the name that interested me here. And that is the point. All streets in Paris have a name and many of those names are worth researching. To be honest some are not, they are just the name of some dead general of dubious distinction, or some functionary of uncertain merit. This name though could and perhaps should have made the list of 100. Next to Voltaire she was probably the greatest French letter writer in history, and a literary hostess of note. Thanks to her letters (often to her daughter Françoise Marguerite) we have a much clearer view of life in 17th century France. Quite astute too, amongst other things, she said: “There is nobody who is not dangerous for someone.” Her name was Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise de Sévigné. She lived at the Musée Carnavalet before it became the museum of Parisian history on Rue Sévigné, before the street was named for her.
Think Benny Hill in French. Rabelasian. A caricaturist of high order. Much of his comedy was very French, virtually untranslatable, and rather scatological. For all those reasons, plus an untimely death in a motorcycle accident, he was extremely popular for a short time in the early eighties, and long remembered. Think James Dean with less looks but more wit. And he could act too, as he proved in Tchao Pantin which roughly translates as So Long, Stooge. He won a César (French Oscar) for Best Actor for that in 1984. His stage name Coluche was adopted when he was 26 in Montrouge where he grew up and started working in the Cabarets. He founded ‘Restos du Coeur’ in 1985, an organization serving meals to the poor. There are a number of memorable quotes from him but my favorite is: “It is not because so many of them are wrong that they are right.”
Everyone who was anyone in 20th century France was a friend of Jean Cocteau. To pick a letter in the alphabet at random - let's say P - Picasso, Proust and Piaf were strong friends of his. Indeed the latter was so close that within an hour or two of hearing of her death, and while preparing a memorial to her, he gave up the ghost and died on the very same day. He insisted he was primarily a poet, but he was also an artist, writer, film director, playwright and composer of ballets. The novel ‘Les Enfants Terribles’ (The Holy Terrors, 1929) is considered his masterpiece. Many say his best films were ‘Blood of a Poet’ (1930) and ‘Beauty & the Beast’ (1945), and of course he was elected to the French Academy in 1955. Perhaps he was the leading Surrealist, despite Breton’s uncomplimentary remarks. In addition he was openly gay, a Commander of the Legion of Honor, afflicted by opium, and death was his favorite theme. The beauty of blood and the poetry of the beast drove this son of a father who died of suicide when he was only nine.
Intellectual, cosmopolitan, left wing, dark – actually all mainstream French Parisian traits – and she was a superb actress. She shot to international fame in Casque d’Or(The Golden Helmet, 1951) which won a major British award, but it was Room at the Top(1959) which won her an Oscar that made her a household name in America. She made about 70 films between 1942-1985, the most notable of which, besides the above, were: Diabolique(1955), The Crucible (1957), Ship of Fools (1965). L’Armée des ombres (1969, The Shadow Army), and Le Chat (1971, The Cat). All together Simone Signoret was nominated for or won 20 major awards, including 2 Oscars. Both she and her husband Yves Montand were famously far left and had difficulty getting a visa to the US. Finally they did and in the spring and summer of 1960 lived in a 3 apartment bungalow in Beverly Hills. Across the hall from them lived Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller, and right upstairs Howard Hughes. It would have been interesting being a fly on the wall back then. Anyway, that is where many of the rumors started, and some of them were true.
It’s the Italian part that’s real, he just played the Godfather. Here we have a continental Edward G. Robinson. While he occasionally played the police inspector he usually was the hardened gangster in film noir thrillers. Born in Italy (as Angelo Borrini) in 1919, he moved to France in 1927 and, between 1953-1987, Lino Ventura appeared in 77 films. He started out as a professional wrestler and in 1950 actually was the European Champion in Greco-Roman, but due to an injury he turned to films. Le Deuxième Souffle (Second Breath, 1966) is the classic hard edged crime thriller and Le Clan des Sicilians (1969) , dare I say, cemented his reputation. He frequently worked for the director Jean-Pierre Melville who often dealt with moral ambiguity. While he primarily appeared in French and Italian films, American audiences got a taste of him when he played Vito Genovese in The Valachi Papers (1972).
If you want to really know the history of Paris perhaps you have to learn the French language and actually study the Musée Carnavalet at 23 rue de Sévigne. To feel the history you simply have to walk to, around, and maybe even through this splendid example of architect François Mansart’s handiwork. It houses the official history of Paris and thus has some relevance, but more importantly it is surrounded by the Marais which is the history of Paris. If you like rich go in, if you like real go around. To wander the streets of the Marais is to feel and see and smell and experience the real Paris. Not what they want to project, that’s the monuments and the museum, but what they are and, like most people everywhere, they are good.