Paris after the Liberation 1944-1949

the youth of France. Maurice Thorez had denounced existentialist writing as ‘the expression of a rotting bourgeoisie’, and any outsider who thought that the young pseudo-existentialist rebels of Saint-Germain-des-Prés were Communist would have made a true Stalinist laugh bitterly. The rigidly puritan Communists felt that young people should be watching
Battleship Potemkin,
not enjoying corrupt American imports. Reports in Moscow reveal genuine dismay and anger that Parisian youth should be enthralled by so many aspects of American life. Two Soviet journalists who claimed to have visited the Tabou wrote afterwards in the
Literary Gazette
: ‘These poverty-stricken young people live in squalor and ask you to pay for their drinks. It is a youth revelling in the most vulgar sexuality.’
    The Tabou’s meteoric rise was matched by the speed of its fall. Complaints to the authorities about the noise and disturbance grew. The club was obliged to close at midnight and soon it was attracting more tourists than
Germano-pratins
. The great period of the Tabou had lasted less than a year, but its effect spread. Imitation Tabou clubs sprang up in different parts of France, from Toulouse in the south-west to Charleville in the Ardennes.
    Other clubs soon appeared in Paris to take the Tabou’s place. Marc Doelnitz was commissioned to decorate and launch the Vieux-Colombier in the cellar of the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier. And in June 1948, the Club Saint-Germain opened. Boris Vian joined Marc Doelnitz in making the Club Saint-Germain the newest attraction. All the great jazzmenpassing through Paris – including Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker and Miles Davis – came as Vian’s guests.
    By the summer of 1948, the tourist invasion of Saint-Germain was well and truly under way. The curious came to the Café Flore and asked to see the table of Monsieur Sartre (who had long since fled to the bar of the Pont-Royal). Janet Flanner described the place as ‘a drugstore for pretty up-state girls in unbecoming blue denim pants and their Middle Western dates, most of whom are growing hasty Beaux-Arts beards’.
    That autumn, left bank and right bank met in a new venture, the ballet
La Rencontre,
which began playing to packed houses at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. This told the story of Oedipus and the Sphinx: choreography by Lichine, music by Henri Sauguet and programme notes by Sartre. The ballet was set in a huge shadowy circus, and had one of the last sets completed by Bérard before his death early the next year. The Sphinx, on a high platform under a trapeze, was played by the seventeen-year-old Leslie Caron, wearing a black body-stocking; the performance launched her career.
    Another modern adaptation of Greek tragedy was attempted in a film by Alexandre Astruc, called
Ulysse, ou les mauvaises rencontres
. It was filmed in the Vieux-Colombier theatre, in the cold, foggy months of 1948, and the list of participants is a tribute to a time when successful people were prepared to take part in an adventure simply because it appealed to them as curious or amusing. Jean Cocteau played Homer, Simone Signoret was Penelope to Marc Doelnitz’s Ulysses, and Juliette Gréco was Circe. Jean Genet was to have been the Cyclops, but he pulled out and Astruc was obliged to take the role himself. There were no rehearsals and ‘Astruc was the only one who understood what was going on’.
    Gréco had not yet sung professionally and still thought of herself as an actress. Yet Anne-Marie Cazalis was convinced that she should sing and said so to Sartre as they were walking back after dinner one night. Sartre laughed and said: ‘If she wants to sing, then she should sing.’
    Gréco was walking in front of them. Irritated by this exchange, she said over her shoulder that she had no intention of becoming a singer. Sartre asked why not, to which Gréco replied: ‘I don’t know how to sing, and also I don’t like the songs that one hears on the radio.’
    ‘Well, if you don’t like them, what sort do you like?’
    She mentioned the names of Agnès Capri and Yves Montand. Sartre had the last word. ‘Come round to me at nine tomorrow morning.’
    The next morning when Gréco arrived at the rue Bonaparte, Sartre had looked out a pile of poetry books for her. Among the poems she chose were ‘
C’est bien connu
’ by Queneau and ‘
L’éternel féminin
’ by Jules Laforgue. Sartre also gave her a song he had written for
Huis clos
. He