Courtesan

La Parisienne is frequently associated with prostitution, whether in the narrow sense of the streetwalker or courtesan or the general sense of the object and subject of consumption. Tracing her development in nineteenth-century art and literature, this chapter examines the way the Parisienne as courtesan is re-presented in cinema in Charles Chaplin’s A Woman of Paris (1923), Alain Cavalier’s La Chamade (1968), and Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge! (2001). Cinematic courtesans have their prefigurations in both real life courtesans of the Second Empire, as well as in representations in French art, literature, and visual culture (Manet, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Balzac, Zola, Dumas fils). Motifs associated with the Parisienne courtesan include the familiar tropes associated with Paris as a demimonde: desire, pleasure, and consumption. Alongside these tropes are the visual and narrative motifs on which the iconography of the Parisienne courtesan is based: fashion or style (often conceived to denote luxury and leisure), transformation (usually from provincial to high class), ambiguity (insofar as her class origins, motivations, and emotional allegiances are generally obscure), and the ménage à trois (films featuring Parisienne courtesans often involve the choice between an earnest but poor lover and a rich benefactor).

Femme fatale

The association of woman with Paris and death was a popular trope in nineteenth-century French culture and finds expression in cinematic representations of the Parisienne as femme fatale. This chapter considers la Parisienne as femme fatale in Jules Dassin’s Du rififi chez les hommes (1955), Marcel Carné’s Le jour se lève(1939) and Le quai des brumes(1938), and Jean-Luc Godard’s A bout de souffle (1960). These films can be considered examples of French film noir and their female protagonists read as femme fatales. However, the femme fatale of French film noir is different from the femme fatale of American film noir; she comes from a different cultural tradition and is informed by a different cultural figure. This chapter argues that the development of the femme fatale as a cinematicarchetype passed through a cultural tradition not usually associated with the noir genre: nineteenth-century French culture and the tradition of the filles d’Eve embodied in the type la Parisienne. The French version of this archetype grew out of the popular nineteenth-century trope of the association of woman with the city and death. Indeed, there is an aesthetic and narrative overdetermination of the femme fatale by the figure of la Parisienne, particularly through iconographical motifs associated with the type, like fashion, ambiguity, sexuality and danger

Cosmopolite

Since the nineteenth century the Parisienne has been the figure of universal femininity: her national particularity was always already international or global at its conception. As part of the Parisienne mythology, cosmopolitanism has the sense of anyone and anywhere. The potential for any woman anywhere to become la Parisienne is not, however, absolute: a stay in Paris is generally considered necessary to complete the transformation, but even this is not sufficient guarantee. This chapter examines the treatment of the cosmopolitan Parisienne in films set outside Paris: Julien Duvivier’sPépé le Moko (1937), Jacques Demy’s Model Shop (1969) and Billy Wilder’s Sabrina (1954). As cosmopolitan Parisiennes, the female protagonists of these films share mobility (both geographically and socially) and a metonymic function – that is, they each in some way stand in for Paris.

Conclusion: ‘Look, let’s start all over again. What’s she like?’

The conclusion offers the following provisional definition of la Parisienne: a type of which atypicality is the dominant feature; a type whose identity is continuously displaced or deferred, simultaneously reaching back to her earliest manifestations in the nineteenth century and forward to future manifestations which will both affirm and rework the iconography of the type. The further turn of the screw for the difficulty of defining la Parisienne as a type is that this difficulty is not in spite of her iconography but is in fact built into it. This apparent contradiction is accounted for within iconography itself as a methodology, the two aspects of which are stability and mutability. Since a type is only a type because of recognisable motifs, certain motifs must be established which have both universal, and particular or historical validity. One of the ways iconography may respond to its dual imperatives of stability and mutability is by constructing a cycle of films featuring a certain type, and the conclusion reveals that this book goes some way toward constructing what might be called a cycle of Parisienne films.

Star

In cinema, theParisienne type is often overdetermined by the star incarnating the role, pointing to more extra-cinematic considerations in the construction of la Parisienne in cinema. Certain actors possess a Parisienne iconographical profile which develops out of intra-, inter-, and extra-cinematic considerations. In any Parisienne film, there are three possible ways la Parisienne can appear on screen: first, played by an actor who is not a star; second, played by an actor who is a star but who does not possess a Parisienne iconographical profile; and lastly, played by an actor who is a star and who also possesses a Parisienne iconographical profile. The self-fashioning aspect of Parisienne stars was in part facilitated by the absence of a rigorous star system in France during the 1950s and 1960s, which allowed French female stars in particular to take a more active role in the development of their personae. Certain stars in particular have contributed to the evolution of the type, including Brigitte Bardot’s coquettish ingénue, Jeanne Moreau’s cerebral and sensual mature woman, Anna Karina’s gamine and Charlotte Gainsbourg’s bourgeois bohemian.

Introduction: ‘What’s she like?’

The introduction provides an overview of the origins of the Parisienne type in nineteenth-century French art and culture. It traces these origins to specific works of art and literature, including the novels of Balzac, Flaubert, Zola and Dumas fils; the paintings of Renoir, James Tissot, Toulouse-Lautrec; and the numerous physiognomies written on the type. The origin of the term la Parisienne is examined and two key features of her mythology are identified: visibility and mobility. A provisional definition of la Parisienne as ‘a figure of French modernity’ and ‘more than just a female inhabitant of Paris’ is then offered. Both the technological (railways, printing press, fashion plates, photography) and cultural (art, literature, advertising, print media) developments in nineteenth-century France which provided the basis for the emergence of la Parisienne as a dominant cultural figure are then discussed. Also introduced here is the main theoretical approach of the book: iconography.The iconography of la Parisienne can be categorised according to the following concepts: visibility and mobility (both social and spatial); style and fashionability, including self-fashioning; artist and muse; cosmopolitanism; prostitution; danger; consumption (the consumer and the consumed); and transformation.

Icon of fashion

Fashion is ubiquitous in the depiction of la Parisienne and demonstrates perhaps better than any other motif the variations within the type. These variations are reflected in the eclectic array of film genres in which a fashionable Parisienne appears. The association of la Parisienne with fashion can be traced back to the nineteenth century, when the image of the chic Parisienne was first exported, both throughout France and abroad, as an ambassador for French luxury goods and style. The relationship between la Parisienne and fashion is perpetuated in cinema primarily through the way the type is costumed, but also includes extra-cinematic considerations such as the actress/couturier relationship and the way a certain look, designed or self-styled, was achieved and marketed. Costume forms an integral part of the mise en scène in Parisienne films and has three primary functions: it denotes the elegance of the Parisienne, aids in periodising a film, and provides meaning beyond denotation by referencing a pre-existing iconography. The films examined in this chapter are: Jules Dassin’s Reunion in France, Stanley Donen’s Funny Face(1956), Vincente Minnelli’s Gigi, (1958), Roman Polanski’s Frantic (1988), François Ozon’s 8 femmes (2001) and Jean-Luc Godard’s A bout de souffle(1960).

Muse

The Parisienne is often described as muse, not only to painters, poets and writers, but also fashion designers, musicians and filmmakers. This chapter argues that films treating the Parisienne type as muse reveal that the type exists between representation and reality, inhabiting an interstitial space between art and life. Parisienne muses share recognisable iconographical motifs. They are: fashionable; elusive, insofar as they are not able to be possessed by any man or adequately rendered by any artist; highly constructed aesthetic objects, the result of multiple depictions in painting and literature; and self-fashioning, mainly through attention to costume and gesture. While she inspires male artists, the Parisienne muse cannot be reduced to the modern or Romantic conception of the muse as passive object of male desire or artistic construction. Rather, she conforms more to the classical ideal of the muse as active in relation to the artist as passive receptor of inspiration. This chapter looks at these motifs as they are taken up in three films: Jean Renoir’s Elena et les hommes (1956), Raúl Ruiz’s Klimt (2006), and Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris (2010).