BORDEAUX, France, February 10, 2012 — Has poor old Paris lost its way? Not so long ago it was a model of modern urbanism that boasted trend-setting fashion design, elegant architecture, a sleek and silent subway system and probably the most elegant city hall in the world. It was the peak of chic and the movie industry made the most of it.
Hollywood doesn’t seem to have noticed, but today Paris is reduced to a Village Potemkin of facades that conceal a world of homelessness, illegal immigrants, and neurotic natives exhausted by noise, air pollution, snarled traffic, and a lot of cigarette smoke. What brought these contrasting images into focus for me was a particularly misleading film of nostalgia and false romance, Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, directed by Allen and written in the comfort of his plush apartment in Manhattan. He obviously has never seen the reality of Paris.
Allen drew on previous dream-machine movies to provide the setting for his film. The Eiffel Tower, the Sacré Coeur, Notre Dame, the Seine and the Champs Elysées seem to lull American moviegoers into a stupor. It worked for Chocolat, for Sabrina, for French Kiss and for Forget Paris, and it works for Midnight in Paris.
The Allen film is in a class by itself, however, relying heavily on the outdated romance-in-Paris theme as the museum-like scenery floats behind the inane dialogue. Even the cinematography has been jumped up to heighten the colors beyond reality. The shifting of time from the present to the past and back makes it a kind of Back to the Future meets Moulin Rouge exercise.
Paris, the movie
True, the city itself is a living film set. And moviegoers sitting in the dark are receptive to the old romantic themes long associated with the French. Everyone loves a dream. But I lived in Paris for seven years and saw none of the sugary lifestyles pictured in these films. I didn’t even have a mistress.
Since moving to Bordeaux in the more pleasant south, I have watched the City of Light grow steadily dimmer. Petty crime there is probably the fastest-growing business in town, fueled by swarms of impoverished East Europeans – the new members of the European Union -- coming in search of a better life. They rarely find it.
The decline of Paris has happened gradually over the past ten years as overcrowding, ten percent unemployment, and immigration from African and Arab countries have nearly strangled the French capital. Islamic families with multiple wives and a dozen children, profiting from the “cultural diversity” concept, bamboozle the social services. “Paris has lost its energy,” says an exasperated English friend of mine now working as an executive in a multinational company in Paris. “London is taking over.” He feels he has been conned into moving to Paris by the public relations hype the city still enjoys. He sees Paris heading toward “unlivable” status. I agree with him.
The atmosphere of despair is even more palpable this winter as the French presidential election campaign brings out the worst in an already combative population. Many voters are telling pollsters they favor “Anyone but …” with the sentence ending in one of three ways: the far right firebrand Marine Le Pen, the spineless Socialist François Hollande or the tottering monarch Nicolas Sarkozy.
More pressing is the concern over the hundreds of people who have been sleeping rough during the current cold wave engulfing Europe. The gay Socialist mayor, Bertrand Delanoë, has called it a “humanitarian crisis” as the disenfranchised go hungry, sleep in their cars, and end up hospitalized with hyperthermia.
You thought World War Two was over? Not in France where it still rages in the political rhetoric. Sarkozy’s economic collaboration with German Chancellor Angela Merkel is being publicly mocked as a postscript to the war. Stéphane Guillon, a television comedian, produced a map last week dividing France in half, like Germany did in 1940, with the notation, “We are still allowed to speak French in the south.” It brought nervous laughter from the audience.
Many Parisians seem to be looking for greener pastures across the English Channel (or La Manche – The Sleeve, as it is known in France). The Eurostar train has provided an escape hatch to trendier London, now in a period of renaissance linked to the upcoming summer Olympics.
Paris, the reality
Thousands of French even hopped over to London for post-Christmas sales this year, beating the French sales that came ten days later. Young Parisians routinely stay in Britain to find work in the more prosperous economic environment.
Among themselves, French society remains splintered by class, by diploma, by race, and by religion. Never very interested in each other, the French now keep to themselves more than ever and view strangers with suspicion. A foreign stranger gets a double dose.
As the late writer Pierre Daninos put it, “The Frenchman is suspicious. Could I go so far as to say he is born suspicious, grows up suspicious, marries suspicious, goes to work suspicious, and dies suspicious? I think I could.”
My English friend is offended on a more general level as well—the practiced disheveled look – “unshaven, uncombed and unwashed” of so many of the young French. The city’s subway system, le Metro, is now a favorite crime scene, and pickpockets have invented creative techniques to relieve you of your cash. Visitors to Paris would do well to hang on to their valuables with both hands.
The latest wrinkle, the “Romanian Rush," goes like this: five teenaged girls line up behind a targeted passenger and suddenly shove forward at him or her at the next stop. In the giggling confusion, a handbag or wallet is snatched, and the thieves jump off like innocent schoolgirls. The scam has become such a curse that special undercover police agents now ride the Metro trying to spot these gangs.
It is difficult to see how this will all end for Paris residents. The immigrants will keep coming and the economic austerity can only get worse. But the PR campaign, backed by the dreamy fictions of the movie business, will keep this strange bifurcation alive and well.
Michael Johnson is an American journalist and writer based in Bordeaux, France. He also writes for the International Herald Tribune and American Spectator.
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