Tim Marlow TV - Vincent: The Untold Story of Our Uncle TV - Vincent van Gogh - Waldemar Januszczak TV - The First World War TV - The World at War TV - Chronicles of the Third Reich TV - Jack Kerouac - Hitler’s Henchmen TV - Barbara W Tuchman - Oscar Hammerstein - Ernest Hemingway - Oscar Wilde - Allen Ginsberg - Carlos Ruiz Zafon - Michael Simkins - Thomas Jefferson - Midnight in Paris 2011 - James Thurber - Anne Rice - Charles Dickens - Cole Porter - Katherine Mansfield - Roman Polanski - James Fox TV - Casablanca 1942 - Fred Allen - This World TV - George Orwell - Terry Hayes - Grin Without a Cat aka The Base of the Air is Red 1977 - Scam City TV - Truthstream Media - Paris: The Golden Twenties TV - The Adventures of Modern Art TV - The Romantics & Us with Simon Schama TV - Banksy & the Rise of Outlaw Art TV - The Sopranos TV - Seconds from Disaster TV -
When Van Gogh arrived here in Paris in 1886 it was already the artistic capital of the world. But it also introduced a new idea, a new concept to art history, that of the avant-garde ... Leading the way were the Impressionists. Great Artists with Tim Marlow: Van Gogh, 2003
After turbulent years wrestling between art and religion, Vincent heads for Paris and the bohemian lifestyle of the Impressionist artist. Vincent – The Untold Story of Our Uncle II, caption, Sky Arts 2011
There is but one Paris and however hard living may be here, and if it became worse and harder even – the French air clears up the brain and does good – a world of good. Vincent van Gogh
Renoir had developed a fiendishly difficult ambition – he wanted to capture the mood of modern Paris, the bonhomie, the relaxation, the larks. Waldemar Januszczak, The Impressionists: Painting and Revolution I: Gang of Four, BBC 2011
Throughout the First World War Paris lived under the threat of invasion. The First World War: Revolution, BBC 2003
1944: Paris was liberated. That same day to the East, Romania changed sides. The World at War: Pincers, BBC 2011
A triumphant Hitler takes a tour around occupied Paris at dawn. Chronicle of the Third Reich, H2 2013
Paris is a woman but London is an independent man puffing his pipe in a pub. Jack Kerouac, Lonesome Traveler
Hitler had thought of destroying Paris. Now he wanted to leave the vanquished city as it was. Hitler’s Henchmen: Speer the Architect, 1997
For one August in its history Paris was French – and silent. Barbara W Tuchman, August 1914
The last time I saw Paris
Her heart was warm and gay,
I head the laughter of her heart in ev’ry street café. Oscar Hammerstein, 1943 song
Then there was the bad weather. It would come in one day when the fall was over. We would have to shut the windows in the night against the rain and the cold wind would strip the leaves from the trees in Place Contrescarpe. The leaves lay sodden in the rain and the wind drove the rain against the big green autobus at the terminal and the Cafe des Amateurs was crowded and the windows misted over the heat and the smoke inside. It was a sad, evilly run café where the drunkards of the quarter crowded together and I kept away from it because of the smell of dirty bodies and the soul smell of drunkenness. Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast p1
The Café des Amateurs was the cesspool of the Rue Mouffetard, that wonderful narrow crowded market street which led into the Place Contrescarpe. The squat toilets of the old apartment houses, one by the side of the stairs on each floor with the two cleated cement shoe-shaped elevations on each side of the aperture so a locataire would not slip, emptied into cesspools which were emptied by pumping into horse-drawn tank wagons at night. In the summer time, with all windows open, we would hear the pumping and the odor was very strong. ibid. p1
All the sadness of the city came suddenly with the first cold rains of winter, and there were no more tops of the high white houses as you walked but only the wet blackness of the street and the closed doors of the small shops, the herb sellers, the stationery and the newspaper shops, the midwife – second class – and the hotel where Verlaine had died, where I had a room on the top floor where I worked. ibid. p2
The shops were still shuttered. The goatherd came up the street blowing his pipes and a woman who lived on the floor above us came out onto the sidewalk with a big pot. The goatherd chose one of the heavy-bagged, black milk-goats and milked her into the pot while his dog pushed the others onto the sidewalk. The goats looked around, turning their necks like sightseers. The goatherd took the money from the woman and thanked her and went on up the street piping and the dog herded the goats on ahead, their horns bobbing. ibid. p28
If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast. ibid.
But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there, not even poverty, nor sudden money, nor the moonlight, nor right and wrong nor the breathing of someone who lay beside you in the moonlight. ibid.
When good Americans die, they go to Paris. Oscar Wilde
You can’t escape the past in Paris, and yet what’s so wonderful about it is that the past and present intermingle so intangibly that it doesn’t seem to burden. Allen Ginsberg
Paris is the only city in the world where starving to death is still considered an art. Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Paris is a place in which we can forget ourselves, reinvent, expunge the dead weight of our past. Michael Simkins
A walk about Paris will provide lessons in history, beauty, and in the point of Life. Thomas Jefferson
6You know, I sometimes think, how is anyone ever gonna come up with a book, or a painting, or a symphony, or a sculpture that can compete with a great city. You can’t. Because you look around and every street, every boulevard, is its own special art form and when you think that in the cold, violent, meaningless universe that Paris exists, these lights. I mean come on, there’s nothing happening on Jupiter or Neptune, but from way out in space you can see these lights, the cafés, people drinking and singing. For all we know, Paris is the hottest spot in the universe. Midnight in Paris 2011 starring Owen Wilson & Rachel McAdams & Kurt Fuller & Mimi Kennedy & Michael Sheen & Nina Arianda & Carla Bruni & Yves Heck & Alison Pill & Tom Hiddleston & Kathy Bates et al, director Woody Allen, Gil
That Paris exists and anyone could choose to live anywhere else in the world will always be a mystery to me. ibid. Adriana
The whole of Paris is a vast university of Art, Literature and Music ... It is worth anyone’s while to dally here for years. Paris is a seminar, a post-graduate course in everything. James Thurber
Paris was a universe whole and entire unto herself, hollowed and fashioned by history; so she seemed in this age of Napoleon III with her towering buildings, her massive cathedrals, her grand boulevards and ancient winding medieval streets – as vast and indestructible as nature itself. Anne Rice
What an immense impression Paris made upon me. It is the most extraordinary place in the world! Charles Dickens
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death; — the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine! ibid.
I love Paris when it sizzles. Cole Porter
I am going to enjoy life in Paris I know. It is so human and there is something noble in the city ... It is a real city, old and fine and life plays in it for everybody to see. Katherine Mansfield
It’s the heart of [Hector] Guimard’s masterplan for convivial urban living ... Paris was his oyster. Stephen Smith, Sex and Sensibility: The Allure of Art Nouveau I, BBC 2012
Guimard was asked to design the Metro entrances. ibid.
Guimard brought Nature and Art into the very heart of the modern city. ibid.
In Paris, one is always reminded of being a foreigner. If you park your car wrong, it is not the fact that it’s on the sidewalk that matters, but the fact that you speak with an accent. Roman Polanski