Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved and Died in the 1940s

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After explanations with the waiter, it is a misunderstanding : he wanted to tell you that you were free to choose between brunch and the menu. Director: Marc Allégret. Screenplay: Marc Allégret, Francis Cosne, Roger Vadim. Cinematography: Armand Thirard Françoise [ edit ]

Tales of Paris - Wikipedia Tales of Paris - Wikipedia

This is a sweeping tour of the choices and life-paths of women under the German Occupation of Paris during World 2. Some are the few heroines we recognize from books and film who helped hide Jews or joined a Resistance network. Others are emblematic courtesans, entertainers, and war profiteers who forged self-serving connections with the new masters, including ones who spied and informed on Resistance activities, facilitated the roundup of Jews for internment, or reaped profits from the appropriation of their businesses, homes, and treasures. Between these poles were the vast majority of Parisian women who took a wait-and-see attitude, just trying to get along and find enough income for food and shelter. So many figures and their stories that they tend to blur together, but the collective does provide a fascinating journalistic portrait of a city under duress and themes of resilience and diverging modes of adaptation to the Occupation in its successive phases, well illustrated, indexed, and footnoted. Just don’t expect a penetrating historical analysis of causes and effects For me it was an excellent companion read to Sebastian Faulks’ recent novel “Paris Echo”, whose lead character pursues the history of women in Paris during the German Occupation. Like that book, with its highlighting of a woman who betrays a Resistance leader and his network out of personal jealousy, Seba’s collage helped me take a less judgmental attitude of those who ended up engaging in varying degrees of collaboration. She's also acute on the politics of what happened after the Liberation of Paris: the incomprehension with which returning camp prisoners were met, the retaliations for 'collaboration', especially the female crime of collaboration horizontale or sleeping with the enemy. Sebba’s narrative is increasingly driven by her search for an explanation as to why some of these women chose to risk their lives and resist when they, like so many fellow Parisennes, could have saved their skins. What made a young lawyer, Denise du Fournier, give up her refuge in Portugal and return to Paris early in the war to join the Comet escape line, helping to hide shot-down allied airmen? What made Noor Inayat Khan, an Indian-born Parisian and a pacifist, volunteer to work behind Nazi lines for the British Special Operations Executive?

Anne Sebba writes in her extensive history of the lives of Parisian women during WWII that it’s our task to understand, not to judge. And the women whose lives are covered range across such a broad spectrum, from those with selfless motives and actions to those who didn’t act as honorably as might be expected. Director: Michel Boisrond. Screenplay: Michel Boisrond, Francis Cosne, Annette Wademant. Cinematography: Henri Alekan. Ella [ edit ]

Les Parisiennes by Anne Sebba | Waterstones

Les Parisiennes are a beautiful and very elegant collection of rag dolls, easily recognisable by their stylish outfits, smiley faces and velour hair. We stayed just around the corner from here in Hotel Muguet, and found this place on the 2nd night. We just shared a bottle of wine on the first evening which was delicious, and took advantage of happy hour the next for a glass of... champagne! And perhaps the answer is as simple as that – which is why, in the end, Sebba doesn’t offer an explanation as to why some women chose one course, others another, rightly letting their actions, compelling life stories – and the physiognomy of the wonderful selection of photographs – speak for themselves.The lives of the victims are portrayed vividly, and highlights the aftermath for them. An experience that no one could ever put aside.