Beware of nostalgia is one of those beliefs that no one really knows where it came from. Probably from the past, as well as that other belief that says everything was better in the past. The fear that happiness is long behind us has changed little to this day. Especially not in view of the beginning of winter and a world situation that offers more than enough reasons for escapism.
If you want to escape for ninety minutes and still not have a guilty conscience, we recommend the film “Belleville. Belle et rebelle” by Daniela Abke. A documentary that portrays the Paris district and its residents in elegant black and white. Above all, the past of the old working-class district, where the Communards went on the barricades in 1871 and Édith Piaf was born in 1915.
It all starts with opening a bistrot in the morning. Shutters are opened, light pours in, a name appears on the window panes: “Le Vieux Belleville”. It is the central place where the three main themes of the film come together: the old quarter that no longer exists, French chanson and the legacy of socialism. An American painter paints a wall with an old street scene. In the evenings, old chansons are sung together with all the guests in the crowded place, accompanied by barrel organs and accordions. A man with a funny mustache lectures on the history of the 19th-century revolutions while plates of duck confit are served.
Even an assistant to François Truffaut is still there and tells about “Jules et Jim”
Another important place is the cemetery, full of memories of the Paris Commune. A long-serving Basque separatist fighter walks among the graves with a cemetery guide. Together they recapitulate old characters and stories. The fighters of yore lived partly from the sale of their songs, before the advent of the radio that meant: They sold song sheets. Thus emerges the outlines of a truly popular (and bygone) song culture rooted in the history of the labor movement.
The director also visits the archives of the famous photographer Robert Doisneau (1912 – 1994), who captured the many facets of people’s everyday lives. The walls of Belleville-based writer and documentary filmmaker Robert Bober are also littered with old footage. Here, the district’s collective memory is complemented by French film history, as Bober began his career in the late 1950s as an assistant to François Truffaut. For his “Jules et Jim”, which is set during the First World War, he looked for locations – and of course found them in Belleville, which even then was closer to the past than to the present.
The new cityscape of Belleville doesn’t bother him, says Bober, because he can still see through it into the past. It’s the same with Abke’s black-and-white photographs: they don’t hide the present, but turn it into a transparent veil through which one can look into the past. At the same time, the present itself is immediately made into a museum. When the old Basque converses with a woman at the window, we first see a mural depicting a similar, typical street scene. What is filmed in the now immediately becomes a memory – or has always been one.
The film is never kitschy, but it’s not without its problems either. The black, Arab and Asian population in the former and current immigrant district only appears marginally. And the fact that a world is conjured up here in which the good poor and the bad rich fight a class struggle also conceals a naive need for clarity in the midst of an overly complex reality. What Abke and her characters are well aware of.
Yet. There is always someone ready to sing a chanson, and there is always someone to join in. Like one night in the “Vieux Belleville” when the whole place sings Serge Gainsbourg’s “La Javanaise”. Isn’t there something more important and beautiful than listening to people sing together? Yes, sure – but not for the duration of this film.
Belleville. Belle et rebelle, France/Germany 2022. Director, script: Daniela Abke. Camera: Isabelle Casez. Editing: Abke, Sebastian Winkels. Real Fiction film distribution, 98 minutes. Theatrical release: October 13, 2022.