Un Point c'est tout

🎼 About a century ago, composer Maurice Ravel wrote his "Boléro", the most performed piece of music to this day. Yet, despite that success, Ravel remains a mysterious artist. He was secretive and introvert, letting his music speak for himself. Fortunately, his music has a lot to say! Let's bring it into our conversations this week on https://www.frenchconversationgroup.com Related e...

🧀 What is there to say about cheese, other than the fact that it is delicious and that it makes you smile on pictures? Well, a lot obviously. Where does it come from? What is a good cheese? To that question, the medieval book "Le Ménagier de Paris" answers: "Neither Argos, nor Helena, nor Maria Magdalena, but Lazarus and Martin, with the heaviness of a pontiff". Let's figu...

👑 Cruel, legendary, violent, powerful, intelligent. So many adjectives that could be attributed to this mythical figure. Clovis was real for sure, but we actually don't know much about him due to a great lack of written sources from the late 5th century AD. Anything can be said about him, especially if it helps to found the history of the French monarchy on heroic foundations. One thing is ce...

🚀 Fifty years of working, growing and improving. Europe's Ariane space launch program is about to send its all-new Ariane 6 vehicles, the next evolution of its flagship starship, into space. In constant evolution, this new rocket is destined to open the doors to a new technological future, or simply stay up to date with the multiple ever-growing space programs around the world. Let's talk...

👨‍🎨 High among the great masters of French painting, there is Eugène Delacroix. Born in Paris in 1798, he is one of the leaders of Romanticism. But that's not all, following a life-changing trip to Morocco at the age of 34, Delacroix also became one of the important figures of Orientalism, that 19th-century artistic movement fascinated by (what Europeans saw as) Eastern cultures. Join this w...

🧐 France is probably the country in the world that hosts the most philosophers per square meter. And for the best. There are so many questions with no right or wrong answer that need to be asked. One of them is whether advice should be given to people or whether they should be free to make their own mistakes. With the help of Aristotle, Akhlaghi and Athos from The Three Musketeers, we're goin...

🏰 Every year on July 14, France celebrates its national day, known in English as "Bastille Day". But what exactly is the so-called "Bastille"? Or should we say "was" because it no longer exists. It was a prison and a fortress in the heart of Paris, which the revolutionaries besieged, seized and destroyed from July 14, 1789, marking the beginning of the French Revolut...

🎥 Alongside the Lumière brothers and other big names in early French cinema such as Léon Gaumont, there is Alice Guy. With more than 700 short films, she was a major figure in the early ages of the seventh art. With films like "La Fée aux choux", she defined an era, both in France and in the United States. Yet, she (and her work) mysteriously disappeared from the records about a century...

⚔️ Following the release of the new film "The Three Musketeers: d'Artagnan", and the anniversary of the death of the real d'Artagnan on June 25, 1673, here is an episode on the world-famous novel by Alexandre Dumas. But before we start, why did Dumas call it "Les trois Mousquetaires"? Aren't they four? Well, it seems that Dumas thought this confusion would benefit t...

⛪️ The Cardinal Duke of Richelieu, chief minister of Louis XIII, aka the Red Eminence, was made infamous by Alexandre Dumas' 1844 novel "The Three Musketeers". Plotting against the Queen of France, he is portrayed as a Machiavellian character, ready to go to any length to achieve his personal goals. Even though his toughness seems to be historically accurate, the Cardinal wasn't...

🌏 Imagine being an Englishman during the Industrial Revolution, and wealthy enough to decide on a sudden impulse to circumnavigate the globe in 80 days, just to make a point to your friends at the gentleman club. As obnoxious as the initial plot may seem, it gave Jules Verne a formidable pretext to make our imagination travel to France, Italy, Egypt, India, China, Japan and the United States, all...

🗑 Among the many celebrations of the month of May, there is one particularly joyful: the celebration of trash. "La poubelle" in French. Before being the name of a notorious restaurant in Los Angeles, the word "poubelle" was a simple feminine noun, itself derived from the name of Eugène Poubelle. And this ping-pong between name and noun is in fact a figure of speech: an antonoma...

🎨 Recognized as one of the most influential French artists, Marc Chagall wasn’t actually French at first. Born and raised in a Jewish family of Belarus, his heritage, in the first half of the 20th century, had a massive impact on his life, his personality, and most importantly, on his body of art. As the question of maintaining or replacing his giant painting on the ceiling of the Opéra Garnier i...

🎺 May 5, 1862, the French troops arrive in Puebla, Mexico, determined to defeat the Mexican army. Better trained and more numerous, they should soon control the region, and then the rest of the country. But, there is a but. The Mexican soldiers know the terrain well, and for nothing in the world would they abandon their land. In about three hours, heroically, they push back the enemies. An affron...

👑 If this Bourbon king hadn't received the number 15, he may have been forgotten in the meanders of time. Luckily for him, he reigned just between the Sun King (14) and the beheaded one (16). Nevertheless, Louis the 15th wasn't as uninteresting as it seems. He was no public relations master, sure, but quite an effective king who deserves more credit for his promotion of the arts and scien...

🥄 If you haven’t seen this feel-good movie*, you must. Amelie will cheer you up, the same way she cheers up everyone around her. And if you've already watched it, it's a great opportunity to re-watch it before moving on to the newly released 6-minute video, a self re-appropriation the director Jean-Pierre Jeunet just released on his YouTube channel**. Listen to this week's episode, jo...

👣 If you're traveling in the French countryside, chances are you'll come across one of the many prehistoric caves. There are so many, especially in the Dordogne and in the south-east of the country. As beautiful as their millennial paintings are, there is very little we can know about the inhabitants of these caves. Prehistory = no written records. Yet archaeo- and anthropologists have ma...

🎨 To commemorate Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), numerous museums in France, Spain, the United States and Italy opened exhibitions, focusing on different aspect of his life. Quite a rich life. Living mainly in Spain and France, Picasso revolutionized the arts in many ways. The most notorious revolution is undeniably cubism, where lines, perspectives, shapes, POV,… everything has been reinvented. Let&#...

🖋 The Musée du Quai Branly in Paris has just unveiled its new exhibition: "Léopold Sédar Senghor and the arts" (until Nov 19, 2023). This major figure in literature and politics lived both in Senegal and in France throughout the entire 20th century. He spent time with other giants such as Aimé Césaire, Georges Pompidou, Pablo Picasso and many others, constantly advocating for the coming...

🤡 The art of mime is as old and international as the theater itself. But one artist has created a specific character now inseparable from the city of Paris: the one with white makeup, lipstick and beret that you may (probably not) see performing in front of the Eiffel Tower. This visionary mime, Marcel Marceau was born exactly a century ago, on March 22, 1923, and died in 2007. Let's have a m...

☀️ This name, Brigitte Bardot, is much more than a person. Like Marylin Monroe or Marlon Brando, it's become a myth, the BB myth. Icon of a generation of young people in search of freedom: in cinema, along the French New Wave (i.e.: Godard's "Le Mépris"), in music, with artists/partners such as Serge Gainsbourg, in fashion, etc… Using her brand, she later became the leading figure in animal welfar...

💥 50 B.C., a small village in Brittany is the last to resist the Roman invasion. Astérix and Obélix, with the help of the villagers (and a little magic potion) continue to prevent the great Julius Caesar from finally declaring all of Gaul conquered. It is with this loosely historical and very comical premise that René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo managed, them, to conquer the hearts of generations...

😴 There couldn't be a better moment in time to talk about Paul Lafargue's manifesto "The Right to Be Lazy" (1880). With the protests taking place in France against the pension reform, as well as the rapid emergence of artificial intelligence replacing more and more jobs, should the debate be about the right to work or the right to to be lazy? 📕 US: "Le Droit à la paresse" on Amazon in French for...

🎥 Characterized as a "mainstream" New Wave director, Chabrol was certainly one of the most prolific of his time. He was fascinated by Alfred Hitchcock, and through a career of over 50 years, became the master of soft psychological thrillers, with mystery, crime and and good pinch of gastronomical feasts. 🎬 Sign up for Amazon Prime Video: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/video/primesignup/ref=acph_piv?...

🥖 Why is the French baguette so good? Excellent question. The secret lies in the simplicity of the recipe and the intricacy of a craft that has taken forever to perfect. The artisanal know-how and culture of baguette bread was recently listed as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO. Put on your beret, get some camembert and let's talk about this unbeatable addition to the perfect br...