dancing tango under the occupation

Paris, 1943;

(thus spoke youtube).

Black & white photographs of artists, France, and tango, and you have me hooked.  I notice that in France during the tango craze the trend is for women to sing & record tangos (in French of course), while absolutely none of the singers from Buenos Aires any time before the 70s are women... These could just be the recordings I have, but all the old Gardel, di Sarli, Pugliese, d'Arienzo, Canaro, Troilo songs that have words are all sung by men.

It seems only natural given the nature of the tango and tango lyrics ("oh i loved a woman, she forgot me, now all i do is drink wine and so i will probably die tomorrow" &etc)  ...So I wonder, who twisted tango in France into a woman's chanson?

(happy) valentine's day

Again I could not resist myself with this beautiful movie, Un Homme et Une Femme.  The song played is "plus fort que nous" by Francis Lai.

For Valentine's day this year, Claude Lelouch, the director of Un Homme et Une Femme, returned to Deauville where he filmed Anouk Aimée and Jean-Louis Trintignant fall in love in 1966.  This time he filmed thousands of couples on the Deauville beach as they ran to each other to embrace et embrasser!  The result is a crazy and charming little hommage à l'amour.  You can find the article by clicking here - to see the film, click on the red "video" icon below the photograph and select the video called "s'embrasser devant la caméra de Lelouch."

j.a.

un homme et une femme

Early Valentine's day gift, I couldn't help myself:

From "Un Homme et Une Femme" (1966), Pierre Barouh sings the Samba Sarava.

classic egyptian cinema

Chéri je t'aime, chéri je t'adore...

Do you enjoy this as much as I do?? Many of my Egyptian friends have always argued that the films that were made in Cairo in the 40s, 50s, and 60s are equal to, if not better than most of the films coming out of Hollywood at the time. How true this is, well - that's a matter of a very biased opinion (of course).

This is from a film called "Il Hob Kida" ("Such is Love"), 1961. The song, "Bahebak ya Moustafa" ("I Love You, Moustafa") speaks for itself in both French and Arabic:

Oh the franco-egyptian glamour!!  The first time I saw "Chit-Chat on the Nile" (the 60s film portraying the "decadence of the Nasr period" and based on a book by Naguib Mahfouz) with a friend, I was literally shocked to see Egyptians smoking hash, having illicit rendez-vous on a houseboat, driving around drunk, and all on screen!  The Cairo cinema today is laughable if not propagandistic for an oppressive government. So these little clips of celebrations, giving us a hint of the glamour of a different world, are like silly gems at the bottom of a very polluted Nile.

Chéri je t'aime, chéri je t'adore...

j.a.