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Imagine visiting Boston in the 1980s and looking for the bar from Cheers, or New York City in the 1990s in search of the Seinfeld diner, or again in 2001 for the coffee shop in Friends. Do that and you can well imagine the excitement that fans of France’s longest-running TV series, Plus belle la vie (Life’s so sweet), feel when they come to Marseille in search of the Mistral Bar in the Mistral district.

They won’t find the Mistral, of course, since it’s a fictional bar in a fictional neighborhood, but the Mistral district was largely inspired by the Panier, which is a very real and stroll-worthy district just a ten-minute walk from the Old Port.

Created in 2004 and still going strong, Plus belle la vie is an easy-going prime-time urban soap opera with myriad characters. It’s a glossy, brightly colored soap, not quite comedy, not quite drama, far from “true” but with frequent nods to issues of the day. Extracts from the series can be seen on its official website.

Since the show is shot then shown with little delay its writers are able to incorporate current events into the storyline. This allows characters to discuss the issues of the day while living out their fictional lives, loves, friendships and melodramas. Demonstrations held during parliamentary debate on same-sex marriage, the aftershock of the terrorist attack against the weekly Charlie Hebdo and the kosher supermarket, and the French moratorium on the exploitation of shale gas have all been discussed by characters while the subjects were still headlining the news. Questions of racism, homosexuality, violence, rape, and drug and alcohol addictions all find a place in the not-to-be-taken-too-seriously soap-opera-style intrigue. The show is broadcast at 8:25pm, overlapping with the prime evening network news hour.

Most of the scenes of Plus belle la vie are shot behind the closed doors of the La Belle de Mai studios, in the 3rd district of Marseille, rather than in the Panier. Nevertheless, fans visiting Marseille and looking for the Mistral Bar, one of the central settings in the series, will often end up reveling in a drink at the Bar des 13 Coins, 45 rue Sainte-Françoise on the Panier’s Place des Treize Cantons, which the show’s production designer says inspired the fictional Mistral Bar in the TV series. The Bar des 13 Coins is a small family café-restaurant with outdoor tables on a shady terrace with three big trees and colorful artwork on the facade. Like a café-bar on a village square in Provence, this is the venue to meet friends to share the trials and joys of everyday life in the sunny side of France.

In a sense, Plus belle la vie could take place anywhere in France, except for the occasional view of the Mediterranean or of Notre Dame de la Garde Church or talk about the OM, Marseille’s soccer team. Furthermore, the actors don’t even speak in the colorful singing accent of southern France, let alone with the slang of Marseille. Some say that if the real local accent were spoken it would be necessary to have subtitles in French. But even removed from local reality “Plus belle la vie” has been a hit in Marseille as well as throughout France.

Viewers have love-hate relationships with the assortment of characters, while the central character remains the neighborhood itself. Which brings us to the real Panier, a district of narrow, sloping streets, colorful facades and shutters, laundry hanging out the window, and a history of written history dating back to the ancient Greeks.

From ancient Greeks to poor immigrants to cut-throat films to gentrification

Settled in 630 BC by the ancient Greeks, the Panier (long before it took on its current name) was the area first settled in Marseille. More recently, due to its location near the seaport, the Panier has continued to welcome successive waves of immigration: Neapolitans, Corsicans, South Americans, North Africans, Vietnamese and Comorians from the islands near Madagascar.

This neighborhood draws its name from the Logis du Panier, an inn that existed in the area in the 17th century and probably had a basket (panier) suspended outside. The Panier became a poor, working class neighborhood, what the French call a quartier populaire, when in the 17th century, wealthy merchants left it to settle in the new neighborhoods in the east which were created under the impetus of Colbert during the reign of Louis XIV. By the mid-19th century the Panier had acquired its reputation as a rough, dangerous, crime-ridden area, a reputation that it held onto until several decades ago.

The “Mediterranean noir” writer, Jean-Claude Izzo (1945-2000), who grew up in the Panier, paints an old Bronx-like picture of the area in “Total Chaos” or “Total Kéhops” in French. Izzo’s crime fiction follows the protagonist Fabio Montale, a disillusioned local cop making his rounds on the hard, seedy  streets of this neighborhood, a den for gangs and drug dealers, full of sailors, prostitutes and whorehouses.

Izzo also vividly describes the demolition by the German occupying force of a section of the Panier in 1943, as they considered its maze of narrow streets to be a haven for resistant fighters, refugees, criminals, prostitutes, Jews and Communists. On January 24, 1943, some 30,000 inhabitants from the neighborhood were evacuated, with about 2,000 sent to concentration camps. Then 1,500 houses in the lower section of the Old Town were dynamited.

Through the eyes of Montale, readers witness the humiliation of Fabio’s father, a docker at the port, and his mother, who toiled away 14 hours a day, packing dates. They were rounded up in the middle of the night on January 24, 1943 because of an expulsion order. Fabio reflects back about that day and the Nazis’ dream of destroying part of this neighborhood as it was considered to be a den of degenerate behavior.

A mini-series based on Izzo’s books, with Alain Delon starring as Fabio Montale, was shown on French TV in 2002.

Even just 20 years ago the Panier was known as a cut-throat area and was largely avoided by those living outside the neighborhood. Its cinematic reputation didn’t help. Borsalino (1970), directed by Jacques Deray and starring Alain Delon and John-Paul Belmondo, is a famous French gangster movie taking place in 1930. La French (in English, The Connection) (2014), directed by Cédric Jimenez and starring Jean Dujardin and Gilles Lellouche, is an action film about a drug gang in the 1970s.

The City of Marseille began renovating the Panier in 1983, and little by little the neighborhood has changed. Increasingly gentrified while retaining some funk and grit, the Panier is now viewed as far safer than decades ago. It has been called Marseille’s Montmartre. Artist studios, craft shops and trendy cafes and bars have replaced brothels of the past.

Several years ago a local association and a local theater teamed up to produce as a community project a counter-version of Plus belle la vie called C’est pas joli, joli (It’s not a pretty picture). Residents of the Panier got their hand at acting, guided by professionals but bringing to the screenplay their own interpretation. Here are the first and second episodes.

Visiting the Panier

Large portions of the Panier are closed to car traffic from late morning onwards, giving the neighborhood a distinctive atmosphere of a village in Provence, in particular around the Bar des 13 Coins.

Bocce ball, which the French call boules, with pétanque being its Provencal version, is right at home here… at the Musée de la Boule, a fun mix of shop, museum and a pétanque court. And where there is pétanque in Provence there’s sure to be pastis, the anise-flavored spirit and cocktail associated with summer days in the South of France. So it’s no surprise to find the Janot Pastis Boutique next to the Boule Museum. Also nearby is Le Clan des Cigales, a restaurant serving Mediterranean cuisine based on French products. A boutique across the street sells santons, small figurines placed in traditional Provence Nativity-village scenes. From there you need only follow your nose to find nearby another product associated with this city: Marseille soap, made with vegetable oils.

The Panier is very hilly, so for less walking the district can be visited by taking the little tourist “train,” which can be gotten at the Quai du Port across from City Hall (Hôtel de Ville). The main sights will be pointed out with recorded commentary in French, English and Italian. Riders can hop off to visit La Vieille Charité, formerly a home for the poor and wayward built between 1671 and 1749, which is one of the city’s most important historical monuments. La Vieille Charité now houses museums with a permanent collection of archeology from around the world, galleries, a cultural center, a café and a small cinema. A temporary exhibit examining the travels of the American writer Jack London in the South Seas is being shown here from Sept. 8, 2017 to Jan. 7, 2018.

A bilingual (English/French) walking tour of Le Panier is available through the tourist office on Saturday from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. It sets out from the Tourist Office located at 11 La Canebière and enters the heart of the Panier district via the Port area, just as the ancient Greeks did. The tour ends at the Place de Lenche, site of the Greek agora and the Roman forum. The area, busy with cafés and restaurants, offers a spectacular view of the old Port and the Notre Dame de la Garde Church.

The tour provides the keys to understanding the development of Marseille through the centuries, including the separation between the wealthier coastal zone to the south and the poorer neighborhoods to the north, and reconstruction work that was necessary following demolition by the German occupying force in 1943.

Near the Panier: The Cathedral and the MuCEM

Just as one doesn’t go to Paris to only visit Montmartre, one doesn’t come to Marseille simply to visit the Panier, hardcore Plus belle la vie fans aside.

Nearby, down by the marine terminal, is the enormous Sainte Marie Majeure Cathedral, often referred to as La Major. Marseille’s recent architectural claims to fame are three stunning museum buildings: the Villa Méditerranée cultural and conference center, the Regards de Provence Museum, and the MuCEM. They were all inaugurated in 2013, the city’s year as the European Capital of Culture. (Marseille has been named European Capital of Sport for 2017, but that’s another story.)

The most popular and renowned of the three is the MuCEM, the Museum of Mediterranean Civilization and Culture. More than a museum, actually, the MuCEM is a multidisciplinary cultural institution housing the Mediterranean Gallery, major temporary exhibitions, and much more.

A panoramic view can be had from the rooftop terrace eating and drinking area, which includes four spaces—café, snack, casual, chic—collectively called Le Môle Passédat. Reservations are recommended for the most polished of these, La Table. The eateries are overseen by Gérard Passédat, chef of the 3-star Michelin restaurant Le Petit Nice located in the Marseille’s 7th arrondissement.

Meanwhile, the port remains the city’s long-time home to bouillabaisse, the centerpiece of Marseille’s sea-inspired cuisine.

Other opportunities for fine dining, shopping and artist exhibitions can be found in the beautifully renovated Docks Village, which opened in 2015, or the Terrasses du Port. These renovations and constructions were part of the ambitious Marseille-Euroméditerranée project, which was initiated in 1995 to renovate a nearly 1200-acre zone in the heart of the city, between the commercial harbor, the Old Port and the TGV station. Involving a 7-billion euro investment, it was at the time the largest urban renewal project in southern Europe.

Crime and Safety in Marseille

Marseille is often compared to my own hometown of Chicago in terms of crime and safety. Drug- and weapons-related gang and organized crime violence are not uncommon in certain quarters. As in Chicago, in Marseille I would avoid certain areas, especially at night. That goes for much of the 3rd arrondissement, one of the poorest neighborhoods in France. The centrally located St. Charles train station may have been beautifully modernized but I would not loiter around the station area. Neither would I walk around La Canebière at night. Keeping an eye on one’s luggage, not placing a purse on the ground by one’s chair in a restaurant, and not flaunting expensive-looking costume jewelry, let along the real thing, are common sense tips that don’t solely apply to Marseille but are worth keeping in mind with respect to this city.

But don’t let those warnings keep you away from discovering France’s second largest city and most multicultural port city, particularly the portions described in this article. For my recent visit, I booked accommodations in the Panier itself and walked around the neighborhood alone at night. I felt safe on the Waterfront with the MuCEM and other new museums, at the port. There’s a police station, the Commissariat de l’Evéché, a stone’s throw from the Major Cathedral at the entrance of the Panier.

(c) 2017

Wendy Dubreuil is a conference interpreter with a passion for French TV shows and films and challenging social issues.

The post In Search of the Sweet Life in Marseille’s Panier District appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

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Aspiring 21st century novelist Gil Pender walks away perplexed but elated after a conversation with Ernest Hemingway at Restaurant Polidor in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris. Hemingway promises to show his novel to Gertrude Stein, and Pender is off to pick up the draft when he remembers that he never established a place to meet Hemingway on his next magical midnight excursion to the 1920s. Turning back to retrace his steps in the darkness of early morning, Le Polidor has vanished and Gil finds a sleepy green glow illuminating dormant machines in a laundromat where moments before Hemingway had been drinking wine and imparting truncated macho aphorisms.

At that moment I was still laughing at the caricature of Hemingway. He was so like the cartoonish image I had envisioned decades earlier within the penumbra of mid-20th century America when many English majors  suffered what Hemingway biographer A.E. Hotchner described as “an affliction common to our generation: Hemingway Awe.” But I laughed more when I recognized the laundromat as the one that is directly across the street from the Polidor on rue Monsieur le Prince. My laundry had tumbled in those machines a number of times. I suspect that, like me, other aging English majors continue to be charmed by the “lost generation” that Woody Allen eulogizes and laughs at in Midnight in Paris. And like me, they may still carry a notebook wherever they go—even to a laundromat.

The last time I did my laundry on rue Monsieur Le Prince it was early morning. My husband was off to a business meeting in Lille and I was alone on a rainy and chilly summer day in Paris. I looked forward to just walking and finding a comfortable spot to read and write. After depositing my laundry in a washing machine, I headed toward the Luxembourg Gardens. I was attired very casually since I couldn’t dress for the day until my laundry was done. I felt comfortably anonymous, and when I stepped under the awning of Le Rostand, I chose to sit outdoors even though all of the other customers were inside.

I took a table next to the door, furthest from the street and the rain. The waiter came and then went to get my café and I opened my notebook. I glanced toward the gardens just opposite and felt a wonderful sense of satisfaction.

I looked up when the waiter returned and saw that another woman was electing to sit outdoors, but in contrast to my well-worn zip-front and Velcro nylon rain jacket and Teva sandals, this woman wore an elegantly tailored fitted raincoat, an indigo silk scarf shimmering around her neck, and flesh-colored pumps. She carried an umbrella and a small buttery handbag.

When the waiter noticed her he almost clicked his heels. She greeted him by name and looked toward my table: I knew instantly that it was hers. When she took the table next to mine the bulge of my backpack in which I had carried the laundry seemed to groan with shame. As she sat, she put her purse on the table; our eyes met and she smiled. She knew I felt ill at ease. I murmured “Bonjour, Madame.”

The waiter took her order and then she rose to go indoors. She was about my age and I knew where she was headed. She was about to take her pocketbook with her when she changed her mind. No matter how nice the café, the toilettes is a limited space at best. She intimated with gesture and a knowing smile that I should keep an eye on it, and with some stumbling French I nodded in accord. How many times had these same silent messages been passed between me and female friends at home? I was amazed by her delicate sense of civility and at her graciousness in acceding to a sisterhood of trust. The rain came down harder as I waited for her return and I felt a compliment that almost moved me to tears.

The watched purse engendered conversation when she returned. She thanked me with a warm, sincere smile. I introduced myself as Elizabeth and she said she was Josette. There was no need to say I was an American. She told me in French that although she knew some English, she did not speak it because her mastery of it was flawed. At that moment I was grateful that this was the last leg of a three-week trip that had taken us through Provence and into the Dordogne; as always, language improves with immersion. I was happy to struggle with French and she was gracious. The waiter watched as we chatted.

Josette asked what brought me to France and I told her about our vacation in the south and the few days in Paris where my husband had business. She asked where I was from in the U.S. and I told her I lived outside of Philadelphia, not too far from New York City. She said she had lived briefly in New York and that was where she had practiced the English she had learned in school but never quite mastered. She said that she felt inadequate during that time and that it ruined any desire to stumble with English again. I encouraged her by citing my own joyful struggles with French, but I understood that this was a matter of principal and pride that was deeply woven into her being. In response to my question as to what took her to New York to live, she told me her husband worked for the government. She did not tell me his position and I refrained from asking, but she said that because of it, they had lived around the world for many years. When she spoke of “his work” I was acutely aware that we were close to the French Senate as well as the University of Paris. I also recalled how the waiter deferred to her.

For the next forty minutes I extracted from myself all the French I knew, and because of both her patience and steadfast avoidance of English, as we spoke of children and schools and travel, I learned a few new words and validated my long-held belief that great conversation is always possible when strangers look to each other with respect.

The richest part of our conversation was about Paris. When I told her how I had come to envision and love France and Paris as a young woman reading de Maupassant and Hugo and Flaubert and Fitzgerald and Hemingway, she nodded with understanding and said that Madame Bovary was a particular favorite of hers. It was one of mine, as well. She asked if I had been to the Pantheon to visit the tombs of Hugo and Zola. She said that to her Paris was very beautiful in a physical sense but that more importantly it was a reminder that mankind is capable of beauté et dignité.

When we first began talking I was dreading the moment when my laundry would be done and I would have to excuse myself from the conversation; I was certain that this was a woman who rarely washed her own clothes. My pride, bedraped by worn travel clothes and a backpack, was inflamed. In my mind I had conjured excuses: “Excusez- moi, mais j’ai un rendezvous” or perhaps “Excusez-moi, je dois quitter de rencontrer a un ami.” As the hands on my watch approached the time, however, I felt that I was at the end of a chance meeting with an elegant, perhaps important woman who had savored our forty-minute conversation on a rainy morning in Paris as much as I had. I knew that she appreciated my enthusiastic, often bumbling French and she complimented my accent a couple of times. More than that, however, we had spoken as women speak everywhere; we unfolded a bit of the panorama of our lives before each other, and in between words there were smiles, nods, and eyes that met in understanding—just as they had met when I realized I was sitting at her usual table and when she asked me to watch her lovely handbag.

When I knew I had to leave I said, “Excusez-moi. Je dois prendre mes vêtements à la laverie de la rue Monsieur Le Prince.”  We smiled, shook hands warmly, uttered each other’s name as we said au revoir, and I walked back to the laundromat in the gentle rain.

While my clothes were tossing in the dryer I took out my notebook and jotted down what I remembered about my early morning café at Le Rostand. I wanted to save the moment because I knew that if, like Woody Allen’s Gil, I retraced my steps, it would be gone.

© 2013, Elizabeth Esris

Other great travel stories and poetry by Elizabeth Esris can be found here.

The post Notes from the Laverie appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Already one of the most famous paintings in the world at the time and the centerpiece of the French art collection for nearly 400 years by then, the theft of the Mona Lisa—known as la Gioconda in Italian and la Joconde in French—was a catalyst to its launch to superstardom as the global icon of art itself.

On August 21, 2011, the 100th anniversary of the theft, Joe Medeiros will screen his 88-minute documentary “The Missing Piece: The Truth About the Man Who Stole the Mona Lisa” to a select audience in Philadelphia, PA. (Subsequent to these early screenings, Madeiros changed the name of the documentary to “Mona Lisa is Missing.”)

I caught up with Joe Medeiros for the exclusive interview below as he was preparing for the event.

In the documentary, which I was able to preview, Medeiros carries out a thorough and fascinating investigation into the theft and into the life of the thief.

In piecing together pieces of Peruggia’s life, the documentary explains Peruggia’s arrival in Paris among a wave of Italian workers, tells how he went from a house painter to briefly have a job cutting and cleaning glass at the Louvre, describes in detail how he removed the Mona Lisa from the museum, shows where and how he kept the painting in Paris for over two years, examines his arrest in December 1913 in Florence, including the ensuing psychiatric report and trial, and tells what happened to Peruggia between his release from jail seven months later and his death in 1925.

Far more than a paper and painting trail, which would be absorbing enough, The Missing Piece is also a story about how his descendants view the crime, particularly his 84-year-old daughter Celestina, who never got to know her father directly since he died of a heart attack when she was only two. The filmmaker’s personal search to learn about Peruggia quickly becomes a quest to bring the truth to Celestina as to why, at age 29, her father stole the Mona Lisa. Since Celestina is too old to travel, Medeiros travels to Paris and to Florence with Peruggia’s grandchildren.

Joe Medeiros, a Hollywood television comedy writer by trade, spent 16 years as head writer for The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.  He started out as joke writer from 1988 to 1992 when Leno was guest hosting for Johnny Carson.  He moved to California in 1992 when Leno took over the show. Medeiros became co-head writer in 1993 and sole head writer in 1995, a position he held until May 2009 when Leno left the show for the first time. Though Medeiros never worked for Carson he did write jokes for Bob Hope from 1988 to 1992.

Now 60, Joe Medeiros has been shooting and editing his own short films since the early 1970s. He has also directed and edited the short documentaries Sailing the Star of India, Doors of Florence and Friends of Independence.

The Missing Piece: The Truth About the Man Who Stole the Mona Lisa is his first feature-length documentary. Currently in post-production, the film is being screened in Philadelphia on the 100th anniversary of the theft in part because Philadelphia is nearly Medeiros’s hometown—he grew up in nearby Bensalem, PA. His wife Justine has been actively involved in the documentary not simply by tolerating her husband’s passion for the subject over the years but, as the film’s executive producer, by making sure that all the details behind the camera are taken care of, that people get paid, interviews are scheduled, and the crew is organized. They have lived in Los Angeles for the past two decades.

Interview with Joe Medeiros

Gary Lee Kraut: Most people are underwhelmed when they see the original of the Mona Lisa for the first time. When did you first see the painting and what was your impression?

Joe Medeiros: The first time I was at the Louvre was in 1974 when Justine and I were on our honeymoon. The Mona Lisa … well, she wasn’t there. France had loaned her to Japan and the Soviet Union. She was making a tour of Tokyo and Moscow. So I was faced with the same empty space on the wall that visitors to the Louvre saw when she was stolen in 1911.

I saw her for the first time in 1977. A year after I got the idea to write a screenplay about the theft. She was behind bulletproof glass surrounded by crowds. I felt bad for her. She seemed to be a prisoner of her own fame.

GLK: That is the original shown at the Louvre, isn’t it? Are there any conspiracy theories that claim it’s a fake?

JM: It is the original as far as I know. I am not a believer in conspiracy theories.

GLK: How did you get interested in the theft of the Mona Lisa?

JM: It all began in 1976 when I read a sentence in a book about Leonardo da Vinci. On a page about the Mona Lisa, it said that ‘On August 21, 1911, an Italian workman named Vincenzo Peruggia stole the painting to take to Italy.’ I was immediately hooked. As a recent film school graduate from Temple University in Philadelphia, I thought this story would make a great feature film. So I did months of research into the details of the theft reading the newspaper accounts of the day and any book I could find about the crime.

GLK: You’re film thoroughly examines the various steps of the theft. Can you give us an overview of how it happened?

JM: The painting disappeared on a Monday when the museum was closed. The theft wasn’t discovered until the next day because the Louvre guards assumed the masterpiece was with the museum photographer. There was a worldwide search that turned up more false leads than actual clues. Even Pablo Picasso was questioned for unknowingly having stolen statues from the Louvre in his possession.

All the time, Peruggia was living with the painting in a room in Paris about two miles from the Louvre. He had worked a short time at the museum for a subcontractor who was helping to cover 1600 masterpieces with glass. Peruggia was one of five workers entrusted with cutting and cleaning the glass.

As Peruggia worked, he became familiar with all the Italian art and wondered why it was in a French museum. One day as he was paging through a book, he read that Napoleon had looted Italy’s art treasures when he conquered that country and brought them back to Paris. Peruggia believed – wrongly – that all the Italian art in the Louvre was there illegally and he was determined to bring one picture back to its home country. The picture he chose was the Mona Lisa. He took her because she was small and easy to carry.

Peruggia kept the Mona Lisa in his tiny room in Paris and then in December 1913, brought her to an art dealer in Florence Italy claiming to be an Italian patriot. He was quickly arrested and the painting was soon sent back to Paris.

GLK: You said that you originally intended to write about the theft in a screenplay for a feature film. How did that intention develop into an investigative documentary?

JM: In my early research, I found many details about the crime and its investigation, but there was little information on Peruggia the man – who he was, what he thought and why he really stole the painting. So I was unable to write my script because I was unwilling to make up things about Peruggia. I wanted the truth. But he was dead and the Mona Lisa can’t talk, so where could I find it?

Thirty-two years passed, but I still wanted to tell Peruggia’s story. Then one day while Googling his name, I came across a magazine article about his 84-year old daughter Celestina who was living in the town where Peruggia had been born. So I went to see her with the thought that I could make a documentary about her father and that she would have the answers I needed.

She was a kind, charming woman – the type of Italian grandmother I always wanted. Unfortunately, she didn’t know much about her father because he died when she was a toddler. But all her life she wanted to know the truth. We both did. So I set out to find it.

This involved getting access to the original police files and court documents in France and Italy. We also found a critical piece of evidence – the report of the psychiatrist who interviewed Peruggia. With the help of a team of translators, I began to piece together Peruggia’s life story.

GLK: What was the most fascinating part of the research and investigations for you personally?

JM: I was fascinated by the psychiatrist’s report on Peruggia. It was commissioned by Peruggia’s lawyers to help with his defense and was performed by Dr. Paolo Amaldi, a leading Florentine psychiatrist of the day. It gave me quite a bit of information on Peruggia’s life history as well as the events that led up to him stealing the Mona Lisa.

Once I had that we went to the Louvre with Peruggia’s grandson Silvio Peruggia and re-traced the route his grandfather took to steal the painting. And in Paris, we found the apartment where Peruggia kept the painting for nearly 2 ½ years.

We then traveled to Florence with Peruggia’s granddaughter Graziella Peruggia. There we visited the hotel room where he was arrested and the prison where he was held. And in the Florence archives, we found the key to the mystery – the letters he wrote to his parents shortly after he stole the Mona Lisa.

In the letters we found what I think was Peruggia’s true motive for stealing the Mona Lisa. But it wasn’t what his daughter Celestina would want to hear. However I had promised to return to her with the truth and that’s what I had to do.

GLK: Did you discover any clues or facts that hadn’t been revealed before?

JM: From the documents I was able to piece together why I think Peruggia selected Monday, August 21 as the day to steal the Mona Lisa. It was a very deliberate choice. I don’t think that’s been mentioned. Also, how Peruggia got the painting out of the museum. Many people say he stuck it inside his workman’s smock. I show that that’s impossible. I also point out a medical ailment that Peruggia had that may have contributed to his two prior arrests. Also, that the psychiatrist’s diagnosis of Peruggia as ‘mentally deficient’ may have been an intentional exaggeration. Finally, we discover what Peruggia’s true motive might have been.

GLK: Where did Peruggia live in Paris and where did he keep the Mona Lisa for the 27 months before he took it to Florence?

JM: Peruggia lived at 5 rue de l’Hôpital Saint-Louis which is around the corner from where you live, Gary. I know that for his farewell dinner before he left for Italy he ate at a café on avenue Richerand. I wonder if it was the Café Richerand on the corner of Rue Bichat.

He said that he first kept the painting on a table in his room, and his daughter corroborates that. Several months after having the painting, he built a wooden crate with a false bottom to hide the painting in. He kept the trunk in a 6×6-foot closet in his room until he went to Italy.

GLK: There are many theories as to why Vincenzo Peruggia stole the painting and who his accomplices or sponsors were. Can you tell us in a nutshell your thoughts on why he stole the Mona Lisa and who was involved?

JM: I don’t want to reveal exactly why he stole it because that’s in the film. But I believe he stole the painting alone, although he did share information with his close friend Vincenzo Lancellotti who lived on the floor below him on rue de l’Hôpital Saint-Louis.

I can say that I believe Peruggia was convinced the Italian art in the Louvre had been stolen and that he wanted revenge against the French who had mistreated him. Returning the Mona Lisa to Italy was to be his ticket out of France to a better life.

GLK: Do you get in heated arguments with people who hold other theories?

JM: No. It’s hard to get into arguments with people over something that happened 100 years ago. But I do get somewhat miffed when people say that the theft was orchestrated by a mastermind—an Argentinean conman—to sell Mona Lisa forgeries. That “theory” came out of a 1932 magazine article by an American writer named Karl Decker. In our film, we discredit Decker and his story. There was no conman. Peruggia was the mastermind of the crime.

GLK: Whatever became of Peruggia?

JM: After serving 7 months of a 13-½ month sentence, he was released from prison. He joined the Italian army during World War I and became an Austrian prisoner of war. He was held for two years. After the war, there was no work in Italy so he was forced to return to France but went there under his given birth name Pietro Peruggia so that the authorities couldn’t trace him. He worked as a painter and died on October 8, 1925 from a heart attack. It was his 44th birthday. He was buried in France in the Parisian suburb of Saint Maur des Fosses.

GLK: After all your research and your encounters with Peruggia’s descendents, how do you feel about the man himself?

JM: I understand him now. He was a man who was tired of a job that was making him physically ill. He was put down by the French for being a foreigner and he missed his family and his home. For him the theft was a way to a better life. He had good intentions, just a bad way of achieving his goals.

GLK: How do you feel about the Mona Lisa now, compared to your first impressions which you told us earlier?

JM: She’ll always have a special place for me because of what I know about the man who stole her and had her for 2 ½ years. What he did is a part of her history. And what I’m doing in this film is a very small part of that history too. I’m proud to be associated in this very minor way with this great masterpiece. After all, if Peruggia had stolen any other painting, there would be no need to tell this story.

GLK: What are the plans for the documentary after the test screening in New York on August 17 and the screenings in Philadelphia on August 21 and 22?

JM: Once I have audience feedback from those two screenings, we will lock picture and have the final mixing and color correction done. Then we will start entering festivals and looking for an international distributor.

GLK: Are there any plans to show the documentary in Paris?

JM: I would love to show it in Paris as well as in Italy. We are working on possible screenings there in the near future.

“The Missing Piece: The Truth About the Man Who Stole the Mona Lisa” by Joe Medeiros. To see a trailer of the film and for further information the film’s official website.

(c) 2011, Gary Lee Kraut.

Comments may be left at the bottom of the page.

Postscript in French by Danièle Thomas-Easton who attended the Aug. 21 screening in Philadelphia. Danièle Thomas-Easton is the Director of France-Philadelphie, which provides consulting for French-American business and cultural projects.

Depuis la récente tentative de destruction d’un Matisse à la National Gallery of Art (par une récidiviste, qui plus est), la question est d’actualité: comment protéger les musées contre le vol, les dégradations ou tout acte de vandalisme? Malheureusement, le problème ne date pas d’aujourd’hui!

Si, en 1998, le vol d’un tableau de Jean-Baptiste Corot, Le chemin de Sèvres, survenu en plein jour dans la Cour Carrée du Louvre, avait provoqué une onde de choc dans le monde des arts (et des directeurs de surveillance des grands musées), que dire de la disparition, le 21 août 1911, de La Joconde? Une peinture sur un panneau de bois de 77 sur 53 centimètres, plus difficile à escamoter que la toile de Corot (24 x 37 cm.)!

Beaucoup d’encre a déjà coulé sur ce crime (presque) parfait. Il faudra en effet plus de deux années pour retrouver le tableau et arrêter le coupable en décembre 1913 à Florence. A l’aube de la première guerre mondiale, ce mystère captivera le monde entier et contribuera certainement à médiatiser l’énigmatique sourire de Mona Lisa. Plus tard, des cinéastes en exploiteront le thème (la comédie de Michel Deville, On a volé la Joconde, par exemple). On s’est peu penché cependant sur la personnalité du voleur, un vitrier italien qui avait travaillé au Louvre, Vincenzo «Leonardo » Peruggia, et sur ses motivations. C’est la lacune, the missing piece, que le réalisateur Joe Medeiros comble dans ce documentaire.

Présenté aux Etats-Unis dès septembre 2011 à l’occasion de plusieurs festivals de films, The Missing Piece apportera enfin à cette énigme de début de siècle une pièce à conviction inédite. Voilà donc le fruit d’un long travail de détective mené pendant trois ans par Joe Medeiros et son épouse Justine, qui leur aura permis, au fil de recherches entre la France et l’Italie, de retracer les pas de Vincenzo et de rencontrer sa fille, Celestina, et ses petits-enfants. C’est à Celestina qui n’a pas connu son père que Joe Medeiros avait promis de découvrir la vérité, toute la vérité sur l’affaire. Chose promise, chose due.

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A flâneur is a man about town, often alone, out to experience the city not so much as a gathering place for a dense population but rather as an anonymous and varied space where he encounters buildings, streets, shop windows, parks, gardens and cafés. Every visitor who has spent more than a few days in Paris understands how well the French capital lends itself to “flanning.”

“Flanning” is a dreamy state, bemused though not ironic, perhaps melancholic though  never depressed, often witnessing but not reflecting too deeply or at great length—there is always another scene or another street to draw his attention away from a singular thought. On his slow, idling stroll through the city, the flâneur abandons himself to the sights and sounds and scenes and views and oddities of the moment.

Paris Photos – Paris Walks, a handsome 176-page, hardback, black-and-white photographic essay, is the fruit of O’Toole’s “flanning” in Paris between 1996 and 2007. O’Toole lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota. The book was printed in Minneapolis.

As a flâneur, O’Toole rarely stops to talk with people (we encounter few in his photographs), though occasionally he observes them. Mostly he avoids crowds, except to occasionally view them from a distance.

Does he wish that he could enter into or be a part of a social scene? I don’t know. But in the absence of a willingness or ability to take part in the social life of the city, it appears from these photos that O’Toole would rather have the streets of Paris himself.

In O’Toole’s Paris it is mid-spring (tulips are coming up, and the linden leaves are budding the garden of Palais Royal) or summer (the roses are out in the Bagatelle Garden and the trees provide full shade in the Boulogne Woods) or September (the leaves of the horse chestnut trees have begun falling in Place Dauphine). In any case it is light jacket weather. There is often dampness in the air.

The long shadows in many images indicate that the photographer is especially fond of Paris within an hour or two or sunrise or sunset.

Tourists are avoids: the courtyard of the Louvre is empty, the top of Montmartre is quiet. Yet as a flâneur Peter O’Toole is clearly a visitor, so even if he doesn’t necessarily seek out the clichés of Paris, he does have a romanticized view of the city.

His gaze in the book’s 150 tri-tone black-and-white photographs, some grainy depending on the film speed, seems to seek out Paris of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. One could easily mistake these images as coming from earlier decades. Whether shot from the hip or with a tripod or with camera to the eye, his Leica is a tool for nostalgia.

Most of the photographs, O’Toole says, are presented full-frame and uncropped, but he has nevertheless shielded his lens from any indications of a contemporary evolving city. Woody Allen shares that view in presenting the city’s easy-going and “natural” beauty in his film “Paris at Midnight”; Allen’s streets and shops and cafés, like O’Toole’s, are always inviting, rarely crowded. The city employees, waiters and tradesmen work earnestly, unobtrusively, without complain.

There is tendency in such a collection of photographs or such a movie to gloss over the realities of city life, but whereas Allen’s characters are fatally stuck in their search to simultaneously express private wealth and personal fulfillment, O’Toole, to his credit, seems to enjoy the romanticized city without visible angst.

The 150 photographs of O’Toole’s book are ostensibly presented in the form of a series of promenades, with each of the 14 sections preceded by a map outlining the photographer’s route and a brief introductory text in both French and English. However, Paris Walks shouldn’t be seen as a call to take specific routes but rather as an invitation to flâner on your own.

Paris Photos ~ Paris Walks by Peter J. O’Toole is 176 pages hardbound, with 150 tri-tone black and white Paris photographs arranged in 14 chapters each representing a separate area of the city. Published in 2009, with a first printing of 1700 copies, it is available in the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and on Amazon.com. Retail price: $44.95.

© 2011, Gary Lee Kraut

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* * *

Passionate, lively and enthusiastic, Gilles Paquet-Brenner leads us into a flood of reflections about his latest film Sarah’s Key, starring Kristin Scott Thomas, his love for the cinema, and his own new role as a father. He is hopeful that his message in this film will touch the American public in a universal way that goes beyond the historical events of the round-up of the Jews of Paris in 1942, which is shown in the film’s opening scenes.

How to classify Sarah’s Key? For the director and co-author of the screenplay, Sarah’s Key is not just another Holocaust film written by someone directly affected by the event, even if Paquet-Brenner is aware of the disappearance of part of his own family, including his grandfather, a Jewish musician of German origins, who took refuge in a free zone and was deported after being denounced by the French.

While feeling a deep and resounding respect for the victims, Paquet-Brenner bemoans the fact that the Holocaust is often “put under a glass dome.” His approach, intended as positive, is to recognize through this film, beyond the dark period of the Vichy Government, “the wounds inflicted on minorities, whichever they may be.”

He explains, “Sarah’s Key is undeniably linked to a page of our history, the history of a Jewish family in Paris in 1942. Yes, but this event has parallels in our time. In today’s world, separatism is winning ground and I hope the film can show the dangers and the absurdity of the results when they are pushed to the extreme.”

What does he think of the obligation to remember? He resists the desire to teach the viewer a lesson or impose a feeling of guilt, which he sees as the best way to achieve the opposite effect.

“It’s a film, it’s a thriller; it’s neither a historical documentary nor a teaching tool.” The fast-paced plot, the back and forth between 1942 and the present, between Paris, the French countryside and the U.S., the quest for truth, and the painful resolution of the mystery keeps viewers holding their breath and leads them to ask the question, which Julia, the journalist played by Kristin Scott Thomas, asks her colleagues: “What would you have done in their place?”

To this Paquet-Brenner adds: “In France, many viewers asked themselves what their parents’ role was during the war, what position they took, whether they had been collaborators, resistance members, passive witnesses or victims…”

“There are few remaining survivors from this period. Other than several films such as Mr. Klein, these episodes have never been mentioned except between the lines. One can talk about them more calmly today. My film brings a very modern point of view on history; it’s a reflection on the past, restoring it to better confront it, assimilating it to let us construct our future.”

Gilles Paquet-Brenner, in writing a faithful screenplay of the novel, also wanted to deal with historical facts and their repercussions on future generations. But he wants to conclude with a message of hope. Though the film contains numerous scenes about the past, perhaps due to the power of the images, major portions of the film focus on the present and the future—the future of little Sarah. In the French version, he chose for the final frame the little girl, behind the picture window of a restaurant, looking, wide-eyed, with the park spread out at her feet.

A sign of destiny? He chose to call his first child, born on the last day of the shooting for Sarah’s Key, Sunniva: ‘the gift of the sun’ in Norwegian.

Daniele Thomas Easton is the Director of France-Philadelphie, which provides consulting for French-American business and cultural projects. She is the former Honorary French Consul to Philadelphia (PA) and Wilmington (DE). She lives in Philadelphia. In 2007 she received France’s Legion of Honor.

Un entretien avec le jeune cinéaste français Gilles Paquet-Brenner: “Il faut apprendre et connaitre le passé pour pouvoir progresser.”

Passionné, vif, enthousiaste, il vous entraîne dans un flot de réflexions sur son dernier film, Sarah’s Key, qu’il est venu présenter en avant-première dans plusieurs grandes villes américaines (sortie officielle le 29 juillet) -, sur son amour du cinéma, qui lui a permis de cotoyer Marion Cotillard, Patrick Bruel, Laura Smet, avant de diriger Kristin Scott Thomas dans l’adaptation du roman de Tatiana de Rosnay, ou encore sur sa vie personnelle de tout nouveau père. Il est surtout animé par l’espoir que son message touchera le public américain de façon universelle, au-delà de l’événement historique de la rafle du Vel d’Hiv, présenté dès les premières images du film.

Comment “classifier” Sarah’s Key? Pour ce réalisateur qui a aussi participé à l’écriture du scénario, ce n’est pas un énième film consacré à la Shoah par quelqu’un de concerné directement, même si Gilles Paquet-Brenner évoque à demi-mot la disparition d’une partie de sa famille, notamment de son grand-père, musicien juif d’origine allemande, réfugié en zone libre, déporté après avoir été dénoncé par des Français. Tout en éprouvant un très profond et vibrant respect pour les victimes, il déplore que cet holocauste soit parfois “placé sous cloche”. Sa démarche, qu’il souhaite être positive, est de faire reconnaître par le biais du film et au-delà des sombres moments du Gouvernement de Vichy, “les blessures infligées aux minorités, quelles qu’elles soient.”

“Sarah’s Key est indéniablement relié à une page de notre histoire, l’histoire concerne une famille juive, à Paris en 1942. Oui, mais cet événement est en résonance avec la période à laquelle nous vivons. Dans notre monde actuel, le communautarisme gagne du terrain et je souhaite que le film puisse montrer les dangers et l’absurdité des dérives lorsqu’elles sont poussées à l’extrême.”

Que pense-t-il du devoir de mémoire? Il se défend de vouloir donner une leçon au spectateur et d’imposer un sentiment de culpabilité, “le meilleur moyen d’obtenir l’effet contraire.” “C’est un film, c’est un thriller, ce n’est ni un documentaire historique ni un outil pédagogique. Il faut non pas montrer du doigt mais intéresser.”

Il est vrai qu’on serait presque tenté de parler d’enquête policière si le thème n’en était pas aussi tragique. Le rythme rapide de l’intrigue, le va-et-vient entre 1942 et le présent, entre Paris, la campagne française et les Etats-Unis, la quête de la vérité, et la douloureuse résolution du mystère gardent le public en haleine et l’amènent à se poser la question, comme le fait avec ses collègues Julia, la journaliste interprétée par Kristin Scott Thomas: “Qu’auriez-vous fait à leur place?” À ceci Gilles Paquet-Brenner ajoute : “En France, bon nombre dans la salle se sont demandé quel rôle leurs parents avaient pris pendant la guerre, quelle position ils avaient adoptée ou subie, collabos, résistants, témoins passifs ou victimes…”

“Il reste peu de survivants de cette époque. À part dans quelques films comme Monsieur Klein, ces épisodes n’ont été évoqués qu’en filigrane. On peut en parler plus calmement aujourd’hui. Mon film apporte un point de vue très contemporain sur l’histoire; c’est une réflexion sur le passé, le restituant pour mieux l’affronter, l’assimilant pour permettre de construire notre futur.”

Gilles Paquet-Brenner, dans sa transcription cinématographique très fidèle du roman, aura lui aussi traité de faits historiques et de leurs répercussions sur des générations futures. Mais il veut terminer sur un message d’espoir. Si les séquences consacrées au passé semblent nombreuses, peut-être en raison de la puissance des images, une place prépondérante est donnée au présent et au futur, au futur de la petite Sarah. Dans la version française, il a d’ailleurs choisi en ultime image de cadrer la petite fille, derrière la grande baie vitrée du restaurant, regardant, les yeux écarquillés, le parc qui s’étale à ses pieds.

Signe du destin? Il a choisi d’appeler son premier enfant, qui a vu le jour le dernier jour du tournage de Sarah’s Key, Sunniva : le don du soleil en norvégien.

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Maurice, himself now in celluloid heaven, would be pleased to know that the praise he sung over 50 years ago is still so intimately attached to Leslie Caron that Thank Heaven is the title of her memoir, to be published on Nov. 30.

Thank Heaven (Viking) is a recollection of her life both professionally—among her many roles she has been nominated for two Academy Awards for Lili (1953) and The L-Shaped Room (1962), she once again appealed to our Francophilia in Chocolat (2000), and she made her mark on television in an episode of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (2006), for which she won an Emmy Award—and personally—her love affairs, her three husbands, her divorces, motherhood, her alcoholism and depression, and finally her recovery. Living primarily in Paris, she continues to work as an actress as well as an innkeeper, since she owns Auberge La Lucarne aux Chouettes in Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, Burgundy.

Leslie Caron will be in the United States for the following schedule of events coinciding with the release of Thank Heaven:

December 1, New York City. Barnes & Noble, 1972 Broadway, 7:30pm.

December 2, Philadelphia. Central Library, noon. Leslie Caron will be interviewed by Philadelphia Inquirer film critic Carrie Rickey. Attendance is free. That evening she will be the guest of honor of a gala dinner and film tribute organized by the Alliance Francaise de Philadelphie. Click here for further information.

December 4, Pasadena. All Saints Church, 7pm.
December 5, Los Angeles. Borders Books & Music, 7pm.
December 8, Hollywood. Receiving star on “Hollywood Walk of Fame,” 11:30am.
December 8, Beverly Hills. Tagore Gallery, 5:30pm.

France Revisited thanks Daniele Thomas Easton, former Honorary Consul of France in Philadelphia and Wilmington, for tipping us off about this news.

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To make this film Mr. Cantet set up a real class of disparate adolescents in a high school in Paris’s 20th arrondissement. They improvised together for one year in a workshop-like environment with no set dialogue, creating an atmosphere that allowed the students’ own language and impulses to flourish. The first shot: girls and boys tapping their feet, eating pencils, putting their heads in their lap, hitting their neighbors.

Many journalists applauded the originality of the docu-fiction approach. As film critic and film teacher working in French higher education for the past ten years, my own interest in the film was more particular: in how this portrayal of a classroom exposed specifically French ideas of what it means to educate youth and in what ways those ideas clash with my life growing up in the United States.

To my American-educated eye the teacher in the film, lauded as a “Dead Poets Society” champion to these kids, appears to be disturbingly conservative in his ironic, authoritarian approach. Despite his wit and spark his French rigor shines through. In an early scene, a student objects to the fact that no multi-cultural names are used in sentences on the chalkboard: why is everyone always “Bill” or “John” rather than “Rashid”? The teacher quips: “Do you know how difficult it would be to represent all of your cultures?”

Indeed, The Class, despite its intentions to show dynamic pedagogy at work, reveals the opposite: how learning for the French still consists of accumulating facts: basic mathematical and linguistic skills; points of geography and history; the properties of a triangle. A poem is discussed in terms of its meter. At the end of the school year, the teacher asks each student to say what she or he has learned that year. Each comes up with a fact, so badly learned (i.e. “if the square of two sides of a triangle equals the hypotenuse, this means it is a square”) that the film seems to be mocking its pupils. The facts are divorced from any wider perspective, each as individual as a lone petit-four on a tray.

As a sociological document, the film underscores how the French educational system—even today—is based on the idea that one does not educate students (i.e. lead them, as in the etymological root of the word) but form them as in a mold.

I get these “formed” students in my own university classes: silent as sheep, scared, hesitant to offer original ideas, but extraordinarily well-versed in facts, awkwardly polite, and exasperatingly docile citizens of the classroom. It is telling that the climax of Cantet’s film is a disciplinary problem. A boy is kicked out of school and forced to go back to Mali because of an outburst in the classroom.

The film also makes conspicuous a more alarming and yet subtle feature of the French system: there is no pretense in social mobility for those who are not born of the native white French upper class. A black student hesitantly notes that his mother, a non-French speaking African, would like him to go to the prestigious Henri IV high school. The teacher grins.

The scene is intended as a joke.

When I interviewed the director of the film to find out what he thought of elitism in the French educational system he told me candidly, “A professor cannot speak the same way to a mother who does not speak French as he does to a student heading for the grandes écoles [the most prestigious universities on France]. The mission of a professor is, on the one hand, to help students gain knowledge like math and geography and history, and on the other, to help them become adults. Education has the aim of domestication, to help create intelligent, balanced social beings and citizens. The professor has to tame these teenagers.”

It seems a retrograde idea of education to have “domestication” of students as its principle—or to assume that a teacher must speak differently to an African mother than to a French mother. And yet what seems retrograde to me, as an outsider, may be radical for the French. Francois Bégaudeau. The actor who plays the teacher in the film and the real teacher who wrote the book upon which “the workshops” were based, opined that French schooling is far less conservative now than it once was. For him, the French educational system today is much better than it used to be when he was a boy in the 1980s and felt terribly bored. At least in today’s classroom, he says, the teacher can spar and interact with the students, create lively situations, provoke them. When he taught (he has retired since becoming a writer), he did everything he could to make sure students were not bored.

“For me, when I saw students’ eyes shine, I knew I was doing my work.” He personally opted not to teach classics such as Molière as these were references that had nothing to do with his students’ reality. “It’s scandalous that kids today are bored,” he added animatedly. “That 25% of French students polled would prefer to not go to school.”

As for my perspective that his own attitude was authoritarian: “No, the students love the sparring. Most of my interactions with students are these fun conflicts: it’s a game to see who will get the last word.”

Getting the last word is not a game high on my (again American-trained) pedagogical agenda. That underscores the cultural divide.

It’s the same cultural divide that heard echoed in reactions to the film “The Class” by other journalists at the Cannes screening. “What a great film,” a French Belgian journalist said on the way out. “It shows how hard it is to be a teacher today, to discipline these kids.”

And as though he’d just come from a different film, an Anglo-Canadian journalist said to me at the press coffee bar: “A great film. Shows how oppressive the French school system still is. Everyone has to fit in, or they’re out. Look what they did to that boy from Mali!”

The Class does indeed show two important aspects of the French school system: that forming children in the mold is its baseline approach and that critique is not coming from within.

Karin Badt is an American film critic, fiction writer, and film and theater professor. She has a regular blog at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/karin-badt.

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