Fireworks at Dusk: Paris in the Thirties
In 1930 Paris dazzled as its painters, writers, composers and designers invented modernity. But in 1935, the Great Depression had caught up with the French, Fascists and Communists fought in the streets, and war loomed as Hitler and Mussolini grew more menacing. Bernier ( Words of Fire, Deeds of Blood ) here presents a searching yet marvelously gossipy cultural history of Paris in the '30s--its last brilliant moment as a world capital. Drawing on newspapers, memoirs and eyewitness accounts, he juggles the parallel lives of Picasso, Stravinsky, Cocteau, Gide, Josephine Baker, Elsa Schiaparelli, Max Ernst, Janet Flanner and many others. Bernier offers withering profiles of a succession of incompetent, unscrupulous politicians who contributed to France's failure of will. He shows how the rage for the modern that marked the beginning of the decade gave way to alienation, anguish, befuddlement and a headlong retreat into the past. Photos.Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.