Paris, Je t'aime

I Love Paris, no I have not just returned from a trip to the continent (I wish) rather I recently rediscovered the ultimate car movie Rendezvous and the photo book Les Amies de Place Blanche (hat tip to Cyrsti's Transgendered Condo). Both take place in the heart of the city.

I have actually been to the city but it was as a child and again as a teenager. 

The movie by Claude Lelouch is a bumpers eye view of an early morning race through Paris' not quite awake streets. No digital trickery the camera records the whole trip in one take blown red lights and about a million moving violations. 

A Mercedes sedan was used as the camera car and the sounds are from a Ferrari driven on the same route. A Ferrari couldn't have taken the pounding of the cobble stone streets without shaking the camera. Jeez they should have used a Lincoln.

I was lucky enough to see this masterpiece in the cinema on the big screen when still an impressionable youth. Shot in 1976 the film is only ten minutes long ending the steps of the Montmartre. 

If you haven't seen it please see the link below for the most exciting ten minutes you can have in front of a computer.

As any regular reader will know I am fascinated with the transsexual scene in Paris in the late fifties, early sixties, April Ashley, Coccinelle, Bambi and  Amanda Lear. All I believe had their surgery with the pioneering Dr. Georges Burou in Casablanca and all went on to fame of varying degrees.

I am guilty of romanticizing the time and their lives, not all were so lucky or talented to be on stage. Those girls who pursued the seemingly impossible dream of  surgery had little choice but to prostitute themselves. There was no unemployment or social services to rely upon. Unlike the celebrated performers at La Carousal, these women were subject to harassment under Charles de Gaulle's Catholic republic. 

The candid photos by Swedish photographer, Christer Strömholm are at once sad, beautiful and full of hope. In 1959 he moved to the Parisian neighborhood of Pigalle. Christer lived amongst the transsexuals of Place Blanche and was a trusted confident. The mostly night time shots were originally published as Les Amies de Place Blanche, (girlfriends of Place Blanche) in 1983. A new edition has been released with additional photos and reminisances by some of the subjects.

Strömholm wrote in his original foreword, a book "about insecurity… about humiliation… about the quest for self-identity and the right to live". 

Hugs,

April