THE EDUCATED RESIDENTS ATTRACTED EDITORS AND BOOKSTORES, THEN GALLERIES OF CONTEMPORARY ART AND THEATERS FOR CLASSIC, FOREIGN OR EXPERIMENTAL FILMS
© Galerie Jeanne Bucher
The bookstore became the Jeanne Bucher gallery (in 1923): more here.
A dozen small movie-houses have several projection rooms to show a series of different films each day. They make Paris the world movie capital.
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It was also known for its cafés, where professors, students, writers, artists (...) came to discuss and could stay indefinitely for the price of a cup of coffee.
The practice became even more popular during the Occupation,
because cafés were heated.
From left to right, Jean-Paul Sartre, Boris Vian, a friend and Simone de Beauvoir
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A brief golden age: The Liberation brought austere Existentialism * and the exuberant jitterbug.
* We are alone and must choose our way, an idea that fit the wartime choice between supporting the Resistance and passivity.
July Rendez-vous by Jacques Becker, 1949
The neighborhood's fame brought an influx of tourists. They hastened the end of a fête, which in any case was incompatible with the coming economic transformation.
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That epoch's lasting trace: Paris is Europe's capital of jazz.
- Jazz was thought a music of savages, too gripping to be serious: In English "to jazz" meant to fornicate. By admiring its intellectuality and rigor the prestigious philosophers of Saint-Germain gave it its letters of nobility.
History of France through Comic Strips (Larousse, 1978) (in French)
- Saint-Germain hosts a jazz festival each year. Among its night spots, this "cave" * where the jitterbug has been danced every night since 1946.
* One of the medieval cellars, where music did not disturb neighbors (though the youthful crowds did).
Le Caveau de la Huchette / Claude Abron
- "I always wanted to visit Saint-Germain. I came, and brought my trumpet."
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| Pamela Spurdon |
Church lands and rampart
are the distant reasons
for the neighborhood's distinctiveness.
* * *
Next,
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