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Tapie, Bernard

b. 1945, Paris

Businessman and politician

Tapie was the archetypal ‘Socialist’ millionaire, at least until his fall from grace in 1994. The owner (among other things) of France’s biggest manufacturer of sporting footwear, his support for Mitterrand (who appointed him minister with special responsibility for cities) and demolition of Jean-Marie Le Pen in a televised debate made him one of the Left’s leading standard-bearers in Marseille, one of whose constituencies he represented in parliament and whose football team he owned. Disgraced successively by his involvement in match-rigging and by a spectacular bankruptcy, he began serving a prison sentence in 1997. He embarked upon a screen acting career in Claude Lelouch’s Hommes, femmes: mode d’emploi (1996), for which he agreed to accept a percentage of the takings by way of payment.

KEITH READER

Tardieu, Jean

b. 1903, Ain;

d. 1995, Paris

Playwright and poet

Tardieu is known for his translation of Hölderlin’s poetry in the 1930s, and after the war for short absurdist plays, experimenting with language and form. These include Le Guichet (The Ticket Office), La Serrure (The Lock) and Le Sonate et les trots messieurs (The Sonata and the Three Gentlemen).

ANNIE SPARKS

Tati, Jacques

b. 1908, Le Pecq, Yvelines;

d. 1982, Paris

Director and actor

Tati is one of the great French comedians, with an original comic style close to mime. He made only nine films, and is best remembered for his incarnation of the accident-prone Hulot, first in the anthology of gags Mr Hulot’s Holiday (Les Vacances de M.Hulot) in 1953, followed by a critique of the gadgets in modern life in Mon Oncle (1958), which received a Special Jury prize at Cannes and an Oscar. His greatest film is Playtime (1967), a powerful portrait of Americanized France.

PHIL POWRIE

See also: cinema

Tavernier, Bertrand

b. 1941, Lyon

Director

Tavernier’s films, many of them scripted by the key scriptwriters of the 1950s, Aurenche and Bost, hark back to the French quality tradition. His career took off with L’Horloger de Saint-Paul (1973), starring Noiret, which won the Prix Delluc. Subsequent films were either similar social analyses, e.g. the drug squads in L627 (1991), or historical films, such as his nostalgic Un dimanche à la campagne (1984) set in 1912, which won a César, or 1989’s Life and Nothing Else But (La Vie et rien d’autre), set in World War I, again starring Noiret.

PHIL POWRIE

Téchiné, André

b. 1943, Valence-d’Agen

Director

‘A man of taste and culture rather than the creator of a universe’ (according to the Larousse Dictionnaire du cinéma), Téchiné remains one of contemporary French cinema’s outstanding directors of female actors, and it was for him that Catherine Deneuve gave two of her best performances in Hôtel des Amériques (1981) and Ma saison préférée (1993). He used Jeanne Moreau to good effect in the Brechtian Souvenirs d’en France (1975), and showed a sensitivity to adolescent—especially homosexual— anxieties in the autobiographically based Les Roseaux sauvages (1994).

KEITH READER

See also: cinema; gay cinema

Tel Quel group

This group of writers and critics associated with the review Tel quel was particularly influential in the late 1960s and early 1970s and proposed a radical theory and practice of writing.

The review Tel quel was created in 1960 at Éditions du Seuil as a rival to the Nouvelle Revue française, but soon began, under the dominance of Philippe Sollers, to celebrate the (then) literary avant-garde nouveau roman. By 1966, Tel quel had divested itself of this influence, developed its own experimental literary practice in the novel (Sollers, Jean-Louis Baudry, Jacques Henric) and in poetry (Marcelin Pleynet, Denis Roche), and become a vital context for innovative critical practices such as those of structuralist critics Genette and Barthes (who would remain a close ally of the group until his death). A key moment was the 1965 publication, in the ‘Tel quel’ series, of translations of the Russian Formalists, affirming the autonomy of literary practice. The limitations of structuralism and Formalism were soon bypassed, however, when in 1968 the review radicalized itself, articulating a complex theoretical ‘programme’, which appealed to the burgeoning theoretical apparatuses of Althusser, Lacan, Derrida and Kristeva (who became one the principal forces of the group with Sollers and Pleynet). Linking textual revolution to social revolution, also in 1968 the group engaged in an uneasy alliance with the Communist Party, only to move away from this position, in a spectacular and somewhat hysterical manner, and towards Maoism in 1971 (culminating in a trip to China in 1974 which was to puncture the ideological fantasy of China as revolutionary utopia). After 1971, the group’s rhetoric became increasingly anarchic and terroristic, as if under the delayed pressure of the events of May 1968. A symptom of this was the more Rabelaisian or Joycean style of the group’s fiction, and a critical focus on writers such as Joyce and Céline in the 1970s. With the growing importance of psychoanalysis and of the work of Lacan, the review became more and more critical of political systems, and emphasized the subjective dimension in literature and thought. This implied the abandonment of the group’s political positions and a focus on forms of subjective excess or jouissance, notably in relation to sexuality and religion. This focus on the subject as exception also resulted in the dispersal of the group. In 1983, the review changed name and publisher to L’Infini at Gallimard, and is still published at present, with Sollers in overall control, affirming literature as an exceptional force resistant to cultural or social homogeneity.

PATRICK FFRENCH

television

For most of the postwar period French television was organized as a state monopoly which in practice was closely controlled by the government. From the middle of the 1980s, private sector competition was introduced, new channels were established and the balance of the system tilted towards commercial players. French television increasingly operates as part of a European audiovisual market, which opens up commercial opportunities for some companies but also poses problems for the defence of French content and culture.

French television was officially established in 1935, though regular broadcasts did not take place until after the end of World War II. The medium was slow to make an impact on French society and it was not until the late 1950s that a television set began to be perceived as an essential household item. By the end of the 1960s, television viewing had become a routinized part of leisure activity.

Its hold on the nation’s attention has increased ever since, with the result that, in line with other western European countries, France has fully embraced the audiovisual era. The number of households with at least one television set has attained saturation level (over 95 per cent), while about 65 per cent also possess a video cassette recorder. The provision of national terrestrial networks has increased from 1 in the early 1960s to 6 by the mid-1990s, while cable offers its subscribers at least another 20 channels. The amount of television programming available on terrestrial television alone has jumped from 2,760 hours per year in 1960 to over 50,000 hours in 1993. In return, by the mid-1990s a French adult watched television for an average of more than three hours per day.

During its formative years, French television was organized as a state monopoly. The state broadcasting corporation, the ORTF, grew incrementally to manage three television channels by the early 1970s. After the Giscardian reform of 1974 these channels became separately constituted programme companies— TF1, Antenne 2 and FR3—competing against each other for audiences within the state sector. The monopoly was finally abolished in 1982 by the Socialist government of Pierre Mauroy. This opened up the broadcasting system to private competition. In 1984 a new terrestrial pay-TV channel, Canal Plus, was launched under the control of Havas, which at that time still enjoyed close links with the state. In 1986 two new privately run commercial channels, La Cinq and TV6 (later renamed M6), came into existence. In the same year the conservative government of Jacques Chirac took the controversial step of privatizing the main national channel, TF1, which thus became the first public channel in Europe to be hived off to the private sector. Only a few years after the abolition of the state monopoly, therefore, the balance in programme supply between private and public sector channels had shifted overwhelmingly to the benefit of the former.

During the 1990s, however, public sector provision has been strengthened, while that of the private sector has been reduced. In 1992, La Cinq went into liquidation and ceased transmission. The privatization of TF1 had resulted in too many channels competing for advertising revenue and La Cinq suffered accordingly, failing to secure either a mass public or a sufficiently upmarket audience to attract advertisers. In 1989, Antenne 2 and FR3, since renamed France 2 and France 3, were linked at the top under a single chairperson to improve the running of public sector television. In 1992 the Franco-German cultural channel ARTE was launched with state support on the terrestrial network vacated by La Cinq. Finally, in 1994 a public sector educational and training channel, La Cinquième, was established. It broadcast during the day on the same network used by ARTE in the evening. In addition, private cable and satellite television channels came on stream in the 1980s and 1990s, though their impact on the audience was limited, as many viewers seemed content with the output of the terrestrial channels and disinclined to pay additional subscription costs.

By the mid-1990s, the French television system was highly diverse. Programming was delivered through the new technologies of cable and satellite as well as via traditional terrestrial transmission, while digital television was beginning to make an impact by 1996. There was a mix of public and private channels, with the privatized TF1 securing the highest audience ratings. Different regulatory regimes were in force, ranging from detailed public service obligations in the case of France 2 and France 3, to a much lighter set of provisions for Canal Plus and the cable channels. A variety of funding mechanisms existed (licence revenue, advertising, viewer subscription and sponsorship), with many channels being financed from a mix of sources. Niche channels on cable (film, music, sport, news) complemented the mixed programme output of the terrestrial networks, while subscribers to Canal Plus enjoyed a programme diet based largely on recently released feature films and ‘live’ sport.

For a long part of its history French television was subject to a high degree of political interference. During the Fourth Republic (1946– 58), this had little effect on the public since television had not yet become a mass medium. However, during de Gaulle’s presidency (1958– 69) television news was censored and controlled to further the interests of the Gaullist regime, with considerable success in the early years. Government censorship and direct control were relaxed during the post-de Gaulle presidencies, largely because they were increasingly ineffective as a means of audience persuasion. The expansion of the system also made detailed control of news output impractical.

However, the tradition of a close relationship between the state and television, especially the public sector channels, has never been wholly relinquished. Appointments to top posts in public television are still made in part on the basis of political criteria. Moreover, the rapid turnover in the composition and powers of regulatory authorities in the 1980s was a stark reminder of the continuing partisan politicization of the audiovisual system despite its economic liberalization.

In contrast, there is some evidence of a less deferential attitude on the part of broadcasters towards politicians than was the case in the past. Satirical programmes such as the Bébête-Show and Les Guignols de l’info, which use puppet characters to poke fun at political figures, demonstrate a change in journalistic culture. This in turn reflects a more cynical public attitude towards politicans, fuelled by several corruption scandals in the 1980s and 1990s.

Up until the abolition of the monopoly, the programme output of French television was strictly regulated to conform with obligations laid down by the state and included in the operating conditions (cahiers des charges) of the programme companies. Since 1982, regulation has been a key issue on the media policy agenda, with the powers and composition of the regulatory authority at the heart of the political debate.

One of the innovations of the Socialists’ 1982 statute (loi Fillioud) was the creation of a High Authority for Audiovisual Communication. Headed by the well-known former journalist, Michèle Cotta, the High Authority symbolized the desire of the government to attenuate its links with broadcasting. However, the role of the High Authority was limited and on certain key decisions, such as the allocation of licences to La Cinq and TV6, it was not consulted in advance. When the conservative government came to power in 1986 it introduced new legislation (loi Léotard) which among other things abolished the High Authority and replaced it with a National Commission for Communication and Liberties.

Sullied in the eyes of the Socialists because of its overtly partisan decisions, this commission was scrapped in 1989 following Mitterrand’s second presidential victory and the subsequent election of a Socialist government. Its replacement, the Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel (Higher Audiovisual Council), has survived the conservative parliamentary victory of 1993 and Chirac’s accession to the presidential office in 1995. Composed of nine members— three appointed by the president of the Republic, three by the president of the National Assembly and three by the president of the Senate— the Council ensures that regulations on ownership, financing and programme content are respected by the television companies, particularly those in the public sector.

It is impossible to generalize about the programme output of French television. The growth in the number of channels and the banalization of television viewing have certainly amplified the role of the medium as a vehicle for popular culture. In its early years French television sought to elevate audience tastes with a programme diet which contained many worthy, serious and culturally demanding programmes. During the early years of de Gaulle’s presidency, for example, television was intended to disseminate the best of French high culture to the growing nationwide audience. In the 1990s, much of the output is geared to mass taste, with the viewer regarded as a consumer to be satisfied rather than a pupil to be educated. Game shows, light entertainment programmes, soap operas and films fill the screen.

Yet, while a contrast is evident between the mission of the television system in the 1990s and that of the 1960s, it should not be overdrawn. Game shows and low-quality programming existed in the era of Malraux, while government backing for ARTE shows the commitment of the French state in the 1990s to serious cultural programming. The essential difference between the formative years and the present day is that in a multichannel system there is bound to be more programming catering for popular tastes than in the early elitist years of a singlechannel state monopoly. The increasing confinement of high cultural programming to specialist channels or the fringes of the public sector networks is the consequence of a market- oriented system replacing a paternalistic state-dominated one.

Increasingly, French television is becoming part of a wider European and even global audiovisual market. Technology has played a part in this, with satellite transmission opening up the French system to foreign channels and vice versa. New patterns of media ownership have reinforced this internationalization of the medium. Canal Plus, for example, has successfully exported its pay-TV format to other countries where it has taken a stake in subscription television. Pursuing a corporate strategy based on vertical integration, Canal Plus has built up a powerful domestic base in the technological and production sectors from which to move out and conquer foreign markets. In particular, Canal Plus is at the forefront of the development of digital television in France and this experience will allow it to be a major player at the European level in this new form of broadcasting.

As national boundaries in Europe become more permeable and major national actors are transformed into transnational and global media players, French television faces problems as well as opportunities. The growth of television within France and elsewhere in Europe gives French production and programme companies the chance to expand and promote French output. But because of the size of the domestic (and European francophone) audience, of necessity French television has to rely on imports and the reproduction of foreign programme formats for some of its content. Regulatory quotas on programming may help offset some of the undesirable consequences of a free market in audiovisual goods and services in the eyes of French elites. Yet the objectives of greater consumer choice, high quality output and the defence of French culture are increasingly difficult to reconcile in a system where an optimal relationship between state, television and audience has never been satisfactorily achieved.

RAYMOND KUHN

television/spectacle guides

Television guides are France’s most popular and profitable publications, with a dozen titles selling a total of 15 million copies per week. The leading title, Télé 7 jours, created in 1960, accounts for 3 million copies, with Télé star, Télé Z, Télé poche and Télé loisirs close on its heels. Télérama has a distinctive upmarket reputation: in addition to the full range of radio and television programmes, it covers music, literature and especially cinema, providing critical reviews for a discriminating public. Weekly spectacle guides, primarily L’Officiel des spectacles and Pariscope for the capital, and provincial titles such as Lyon poche, also devote large sections to cinema listings, in addition to providing information on theatre, concerts, exhibitions, museums, cabaret, festivals, restaurants, etc.

PAM MOORES

See also: television

Temps modernes, Les

Journal

Launched in 1944 by Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, this independent left-wing monthly sought to promote in peacetime the spirit of unity among opponents of Nazi forces and those who had collaborated with them during the Occupation. Taking its name from Charlie Chaplin’s 1936 film, Les Temps modernes’s programme of committed literature (littérature engagée) spoke to and for a generation of activist-intellectuals whose experience of world war spawned a desire to act in and on history. Under Sartre’s editorship through the late 1970s, it advocated decolonization in Vietnam and Algeria, a just peace in the Middle East and the emergent feminist movement in France.

STEVEN UNGAR

See also: Algerian war

tennis

French tennis improved its world ranking quite dramatically in the 1980s, with the emergence of players such as Yannick Noah and Henri Leconte. Indoor facilities in France are vastly superior to those of the United Kingdom, and outdoors clay and hard courts are the order of the day. The revamped Roland Garros stadium in Paris stages the French Open championships, where Noah became the first French postwar champion in 1983.

IAN PICKUP

See also: sport

Terzieff, Laurent

b. 1935, Toulouse

Actor and director, real name Laurent Tchermerzine

A director of international avant-garde works, and discoverer of many new plays, Terzieff has also interpreted many powerful roles for directors such as Barrault, Serreau and Brook. His acting style, stage and screen, is noted for its physicality and characterization skills.

ANNIE SPARKS

See also: theatre

TF1

Television channel

The national television company Télévision Française 1 (TF1) came into existence in 1975 as a result of the break-up of the state broadcasting organization, the ORTF. The channel remained part of the public sector until its privatization by the conservative government in 1987. Since then, it has established itself as the leading mass-audience channel in France, with an emphasis on entertainment programming and news. Its principal shareholder is the Bouygues construction group. The company has diversified into programme production and thematic channels, including ownership of the rolling news channel on cable, La Chaîne d’Information (LCI).

RAYMOND KUHN

theatre

Theatre in France has always been renowned as providing a home and encouragement for the avant-garde, and continues to do so today, whether it be for Peter Brook’s experimental theatre at the Bouffes du Nord in Paris or in the new forms of writing evident in contemporary productions. Traditions and the state attitude to theatre in twentieth-century France have been markedly different from those seen in English-speaking countries, with active encouragement of the avant-garde in recent decades, especially in terms of the development of the director’s and actor’s input into theatrical creation.

From the nineteenth century’s Parisian boulevard theatres, with their melodramas and light (usually romantic) comedies, it might seem as if nothing has changed much to this day, if one takes into consideration the capital’s private theatres, which advertise their star-laden entertainment across town. However, in France, they are under increasing threat from wellfunded public theatre, developed in France since World War II. While theatres such as the Comédie-Française date back much further than the postwar period, it is during this time that the nature of publicly funded theatre in France has changed dramatically. Following a markedly different line from the private theatres, its brief today is to make theatre a public service, providing France not only with a staple diet of well-produced classics, but also with a home for experimental and contemporary work. As part of the wave of decentralization which swept France during the 1950s, therefore, a number of Centres Dramatiques Nationaux (or CDNs; National Drama Centres) were set up regionally, to be financed with a combination of state and local money. Jeanne Laurent made funds available to the first of these in 1946, the Centre Dramatique National de l’Est in Colmar, and, a year later, to Jean Dasté’s company the Comédie de St Étienne, which moved to St Étienne, since Grenoble (its home town) refused to help fund it as a regional centre. It toured in its region with a lively selection of fun, ‘popular’ theatre productions intended both to encourage new audiences to theatre and to return to popular performance traditions. It became a model for other new CDNs, such as the Centre Dramatique de l’Ouest and the Grenier de Toulouse, both of which became CDNs in 1949, and the Comédie de Provence.

During this period, when public theatre was mainly preoccupied with politicizing theatre (such as the work of Vilar) by taking it to the people, often to new, working-class audiences, the result was that on the whole directors stuck mainly with well-known classics, in an attempt to attract these audiences and to appeal to their theatrical tastes, with little opportunity for experimentation with new ideas or contemporary texts. It was therefore in the small theatres of Paris’s Left Bank that avant-garde authors such as Beckett, Ionesco and Adamov were given their first performances, which, while viewed at first very much as avant-garde, quickly achieved worldwide renown. By the 1960s, they had been accepted as modern classics, and were performed in Paris at theatres such as the Odéon, under the direction of Barrault, as well as worldwide. Their effect on French theatrical writing was profound in the decades to follow, and they continue to influence many contemporary writers, such as Philippe Minyana, who freely acknowledges his fascination with Beckett’s work.

Meanwhile in the public theatre world, as the number of CDNs grew, so did the power of the directors running them, who were not only in financial charge of running these theatres, but also controlled creative decision-making and practice. This factor is certainly one of the main reasons for the extreme importance the director has developed in the postwar French theatre world.

Following on from the practices of Copeau and the Cartel before the war, through to the influence of Brechtian theatre upon the increased importance of the director, and the ideas of avant-garde theorists such as Artaud, the role of director became an intrinsic one not only in terms of choreographing the work of the author, but also for his or her own artistic input. Today this role is considered in many ways equal to, if not more important than, that of the author: talk of Mnouchkine’s Tartuffe or Chéreau’s Dans la solitude des champs de coton (In the Solitude of the Cotton Fields) is still common practice, referring to the director as creator in much the same way as in the cinema world.

Thus, from the 1950s onwards, the fact that directors of CDNs were usually also responsible for directing artistic projects meant that they had free rein to decide exactly how state money should be spent creatively, and used this position to mount productions on which they were able to impose their personal mark. As a result of state funding, they were also more free to experiment with the boundaries of theatre practice alongside the staple diet of classics they presented, experimenting with staging non-theatrical texts, adapted from novels or other art forms, or simply mounting classics upon which it was easy to impose their own ideas and make their own mark. Some directors such as Planchon, for example, were criticized for using state money to fund productions of their own plays.

The tradition of non-text productions was further enhanced during the 1970s by practices such as collective creation, of which the Théâtre du Soleil was one of the main proponents. The company became renowned for its revolutionary approach to performance, turning away from the text, experimenting with performance traditions worked on collectively by the entire company and focusing on the actor and scene as much as on the spoken word. The result was legendary productions such as 1789 and L’Age d’or (The Golden Age). Combined with collective creation and the increased interest in actor, scene and nonspoken means of communication, the power of director’s theatre resulted in a severe lack of contemporary texts being produced, particularly from the late 1960s to the end of the 1970s. With some exceptions, the 1970s were a desert as far as playwrights were concerned: if they wanted to see their plays produced, often the only way to do so was to mount them personally.

It was only in the 1980s that theatre found itself returning to texts as a basis for production. Many theatre companies had become disillusioned with the impracticalities of collective creation, but, having learned valuable lessons about staging, the role of the actor and nontext-based performance from their experiments, their renewed work on text was in many ways enriched. Good examples of this include Ariane Mnouchkine’s Shakespearean cycle and her collaboration with feminist playwright Hélène Cixous, both projects relying on influences from Eastern theatre tradition.

During the 1970s, despite the predominant lack of interest in text, a new generation of playwrights had nevertheless emerged, loosely banded together under the umbrella term the Théâtre du Quotidien, although each adopted a very individual approach. Influenced in some ways by the playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd, works such as Wenzel’s Loin d’Hagondange (Far from Hagondange) and Michel Deutsch’s Convoi (Convoy) returned the emphasis to language, using it to highlight the alienation of the protagonists, and using fragmented structure to pinpoint the confusion of the world in which they were forced to forge their existence. However, at the same time, inheriting in some part the tradition of performance-led work, the plays of the Quotidien also relied heavily on performance to convey their message, leaving plenty of scope for actors and directors to interpret the language and fragmented structure.

Michel Vinaver is perhaps the most famous playwright of the 1970s, and continues to write today. Like the playwrights of the Quotidien, Vinaver also experimented with structure and particularly viewpoint in works such as Overboard (Par-dessus bord) and Portrait d’une femme (Portrait of a Woman), and his plays have proved influential to many young writers.

During the 1980s, the works of Bernard- Marie Koltès, perhaps the best-known playwright in the contemporary repertoire, became known through their stagings by star director Patrice Chéreau. Koltès, who died in 1989, could be considered (alongside Vinaver) to be the best-known contemporary playwright in the 1990s and his plays enjoy regular performance in France today.

The theatre-going public as a whole, especially in Paris, is not a purely bourgeois and conservative one; there exists today a divide in the theatre world between the boulevard theatres of the private theatre sector, still catering to this bourgeois ‘market’ as they did in the nineteenth century, and the audiences of publicly funded theatre, which, thanks to generous subsidies during the Mitterrand years, has been able to experiment and explore the possibilities of theatre as a medium, attracting an intellectual audience in the process.

Despite spending cuts by the Chirac regime in 1996, the extent of funding in France makes the French theatre scene a markedly different one from that of the United Kingdom. In France, public theatre has, during a period of substantial financial support, found itself the home to huge, spectacular (but frequently loss-making) productions, and with the resources to house experimental and contemporary works. Thus the avant-garde in some ways could be considered now to have moved into the very establishment which it once sought to undermine: the private theatres today are under such financial constraints that it is they who resort to surefire successes, often with stars in their line-up, in a bid to cover their costs at least.

Public theatre, at least for the time being, is well resourced, and continues to stage a varied mixture of productions, both text- and nontext-based. Today in France there are 33 Centres Dramatiques Nationaux, 6 of these devoted to youth theatre. Each consists of a theatre venue with a permanent troupe attached to it, with 44 per cent of costs met by the state, 20 per cent by local government and the rest (36 per cent) engendered by the theatres themselves through either sponsorship or revenue, according to 1994 Ministry of Culture statistics (Direction du theatre et des spectacles 1994). In addition to the CDNs, there are also 9 Centres Dramatiques Régionaux (Regional Drama Centres) with specific local missions, and 61 scènes nationales, formerly maisons de la culture, which have a wide, multidisciplined brief aimed at cultural development and the search for new audiences, and prioritizing contemporary works. These are financed half by the Ministry of Culture and half by local government.

ANNIE SPARKS

Théâtre du Quotidien

This name signifies a genre of theatre produced by a significant number of playwrights in the 1970s in France. Their plays dealt with everyday life on stage, as the word quotidien suggests, relying on everyday language and events to make more general, often violent statements about aspects of society. The movement was inspired by German and Austrian theatre and cinema of the time, and by the numerous German translations appearing in French theatres which told of the lives of everyday people in ordinary situations, usually in fragmented form. The same fragmented form and departure from linear plot was evident in many French plays of the 1970s, which explored the way everyday language can often be imprisoning to the people who use it. Nonlinear structure was also a feature of these texts, suspending emotional engagement, and allowing the permeation of larger, more violent messages told through the relationship between characters and their environment. Notable playwrights of the movement were René Kalisky, Michel Deutsch and Jean-Paul Wenzel. The sociopolitical content of their work, often violently exposed in their tales of heightened everyday reality, appealed to directors of the day, who continued to seek to politicize theatre and reach out to ordinary people through their productions, while also searching for works leaving them room to imprint their own creative voice. Using fragmentary structure, playwrights of the movement experimented with time and space—in plays such as Deutsch’s Convoi (Convoy), and many of Vinaver’s works. Well-rounded characters in the Théâtre du Quotidien were to some extent abandoned, as was linear plot, inasmuch as the characters in these plays are often trapped by the language of the everyday, which leaves them unable to articulate emotions. Their existence, in dramatic terms, is rooted in the message or theme they embody and epitomize, rather than in their essence as naturalistic characters: the plays of the Théâtre du Quotidien were sociopolitically motivated, evoking emotion or sympathy only while exposing wider social issues.

ANNIE SPARKS

Théâtre du Soleil

Founded in 1963 by Ariane Mnouchkine and friends from the Sorbonne, the Théâtre du Soleil has become one of the most influential theatre groups in France, famous for innovations in theatrical tradition, structure, form and working methods. Christened ‘Soleil’ at a time when state-run, decentralized theatre was full of heavy and bureaucratically named companies, the Théâtre du Soleil set out to seek new ways of presenting political and aesthetic messages to a mass audience made up of the working class as well as the bourgeoisie. It was keen to explore uncharted means of theatrical representation, drawing on existing European theatre traditions such as the commedia dell’ arte, old French farce, even Roman and medieval theatre, for inspiration. Physical, exuberant performances dominated its versions of Gautier’s Fracasse and Wesker’s The Kitchen, in which the actors added an expressionist, physical interpretation of their characters to an otherwise naturalistic play, which appealed to packed audiences in occupied factories during revolutionary 1968. The company also produced an acclaimed production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, combining physical and emotional vibrancy. Les Clowns in 1969 was a further attempt to explore the role of the performer—a series of autobiographical pieces based on individual and group improvisations, the first of the company’s celebrated collective creations.

Now including designer Guy-Claude François in the team, the Théâtre du Soleil set up in the Cartoucherie in 1970, a disused cartridge factory in Vincennes, where they experimented further with theatre space and actoraudience relations. The result was the hugely successful 1789, combining historical research with exuberant theatrical spectacle, plural viewpoints of individual events with multistaging and audience involvement. Many were so excited by it that they would remain after the performance to discuss the ideas it raised.

1793, which followed, also combined historical documentation with political comment and multiple viewpoints, while L’Age d’or (The Golden Age), which came next, turned to contemporary reality for inspiration, which meant extra efforts were needed to prevent the piece from becoming social documentary. Using masks and gesture, the company told stories based around real events, showing capitalism at work using essentially theatrical means.

By 1975, the now state-subsidized company still found that its lengthy rehearsal and research periods were leading to financial problems. Jean-Claude Penchenat left to form the Théâtre du Campagnol, while remaining members moved on to play in Mnouchkine’s film venture, Molière. The company returned to theatre with Mephisto, Mnouchkine’s adaptation of Mann’s novel in 1979, exploring the political role of a theatre company, interspersing ‘rehearsal’ scenes with political discussion. Reversible seats allowed the audience to watch Nazi Germany from a dual perspective, to highlight the gulf between personal and official viewpoints and culture.

The company cleared its debts with subsidy from the new Socialist government in 1981, embarking on a Shakespearean cycle inspired by theatrical traditions from India and Japan, followed by the four-play cycle Les Atrides in the early 1990s, experimenting with Greek tragedy. Both cycles sought to find contemporary relevance for the classics while experimenting with performance traditions. During the 1980s and 1990s, Mnouchkine has also worked extensively with feminist author Hélène Cixous, whose epic Sihanouk in 1985, L’Indiade in 1987 and La Ville parjure ou les Érinyes (Treacherous City) in 1994 have proved memorable epic productions, dealing with contemporary social and political issues. The latter, for example, took on the controversial issue of blood contamination and consequent infection with AIDS; Cixous set the play, however, in an undefined time scale, between ancient times and the modern day, employing the Furies (the Érinyes of the play’s title from Greek myth) to seek revenge on behalf of the victims. The trial before society which ensues in the play is fruitless: no one will take responsibility. This two-part epic was performed the following year in alternation with Tartuffe at the 1995 Avignon festival. Mnouchkine’s new production, and her first full-scale production of a Molière play, took on the issue of contemporary war-ridden Algeria, endowing Molière’s classic with a biting relevance to the present day.

ANNIE SPARKS

Theatre of Cruelty

Antonin Artaud’s notion of a ‘theatre of cruelty’ is central to his collection of essays entitled The Theatre and Its Double (Le Théâtre et son double), first published in 1938. Artaud’s overall aim in these essays was to rewrite the conventions of theatre. He sought to subvert the classical conception of drama, which gave priority to the playwright, the text and the dramatic canon, and to develop instead a theatre which pushed the audience towards the painful collective release of their subconscious, through cruelty. Cruelty in the theatre, for Artaud, did not refer simply to the staging of criminal or violent acts, but involved exposing the audience to the contradictory thrills and dangers of existence. As a result, the audience would be forced to confront the dark side of their own cultural inheritance, and ultimately the eroticism and violence which lay repressed within their own subconscious. Artaud drew a close parallel between cruelty on stage and the Plague, both of which were able to subvert and destroy conventional social hierarchies, and thereby allow actor and spectator a privileged insight into their essential complexity.

In an attempt to rewrite stage conventions, Artaud proposed a new theatrical ‘language’ which sought to bypass the spoken word or ‘logocentrism’ of the Aristotelian theatre. Artaud’s theatre was to depend on the synthesis of music, dance, mime and set, which together would form a concrete theatrical language able to penetrate the spectator’s subconscious through the senses. Following his observation of the sharp, angular movements of the Balinese actors in Paris in 1931, movements which provided an economy of direct, unmediated communication between actor and spectator, Artaud developed an interest in the dramatic possibilities of gesture. Despite Artaud’s detailed specifications, however, the Theatre of Cruelty failed to achieve the impact or success which Artaud had hoped for during his lifetime. Indeed, his only full-length play, The Cenci (Les Cenci), written in 1935, was plagued by financial difficulties and derided by a number of critics as a failure, before being withdrawn after only two weeks. Derrida, in Writing and Difference (L’Écriture et la difference) sees in Artaud’s writing an implicit critique of Western metaphysics as a whole. Artaud, says Derrida, attempted to destroy the legacy of God the Father, who was the originator of all language and ‘logocentrism’. This attempted parricide led to the closure of all representation, and the impossibility of all repetition, within Artaud’s theatre.

It was only after the posthumous publication of Artaud’s essays in English in 1958 that Artaud’s reputation eventually grew. There are clear thematic links between Artaud’s theatre and the French New Theatre of the 1950s, associated with writers such as Beckett. Ionesco and Genet, and practitioners like Blin and Barrault. Artaud’s theatre also influenced the development of film. For instance, Claudel wrote in 1930 in his essay Le Drame et la musique (Drama and Music) that the screen, rather like the stage, could unlock the door to the troubled world of the human unconscious, and that cinema and theatre would establish an alliance firmly based within America. Artaud’s theatre, equally, encouraged the development of a new director’s theatre. One exponent of this kind of theatre, Roger Planchon, follows Artaud in suggesting that the modern director is no longer subservient to the playwright. In his preface to the 1986 edition of Molière’s L’Avare, he suggests that the director resembles a museum curator, who by restoring and displaying relics from the past instils in them an essential ambiguity, such that it is no longer clear who is responsible for the ‘relic’ as it is now perceived.

GERARD PAUL SHARPLING

See also: theatre

Theatre of the Absurd

‘Theatre of the Absurd’ is a term used to refer to the work of a collection of individual playwrights writing in the 1950s and 1960s, whose radical approach to drama intrinsically questioned the nature of theatre. Leading proponents of the movement were Beckett, Ionesco, Adamov and Genet, all of whose works were produced in the 1950s in small, Parisian avantgarde theatres. They were by no means part of a self-acknowledged group. The various writers of the Theatre of the Absurd can be said. however, to be linked by their philosophy of pessimism and despair, and their identification of the absurdity of the human condition. Unlike Giraudoux and existentialist playwrights such as Sartre and Camus, who used the accepted framework of theatre practice as a vehicle for their intellectual ideas, dramatists of the Absurd were united by their successful, revolutionary attempts to make both their theatrical methods and their subject matter absurd. Hence the plays of the Theatre of the Absurd do not discuss the futility of the human condition: they show it, using a complex web of stage imagery and poetry. Rejecting standard theatrical devices such as linear plot and straightforward characterization, the plays of the Absurd encapsulate their philosophy in their approach to staging and text as much as in theme. Working on a more primal, psychological level than their existentialist forebears, playwrights such as Beckett and Ionesco undermined conventions, experimenting with structure to such an extent that at first their plays may appear to have no cohesive structure at all. In Waiting for Godot (En attendant Godot), for example, it appears that nothing happens. There is no development of action. The characters are clown-like figures rather than psychologically rounded characters acting according to their own reason— there is no reason in their world.

It is by virtue of their ability to transfer the néant of their philosophy into concrete stage images that the playwrights of the Absurd can be seen to be particularly distinguished. Structure, character and language are used to embody their ideas, rather than to act as a vehicle for them. Unlike the works of the poetic avant-garde also operating in Paris in the 1950s and 1960s, the playwrights of the Absurd regularly used language to offend or shock in a way which often appeared nonsensical (hence reflecting their general Weltanschauung). As well as manifesting black humour, many Absurdist plays aim also to confuse and confront expectations and concepts of form. This aggressive desire to shock was intended to evoke an emotional rather than a reasoned response. Ionesco’s unpublished alternative endings for The Bald Primadonna (La Cantatrice Chauve), for example, required either the author to come on stage and harangue the audience verbally, or extras placed in the audience to get up and cause disruption.

By the 1960s, the plays of authors such as Beckett and Ionesco, which had caused a stir from their beginnings on Paris’s Left Bank, had achieved international recognition. By 1960, Barrault was able to stage Ionesco’s Rhinocéros at the Théâtre de l’Odéon in Paris, and schedule Blin’s revival of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot in 1961. The plays of the Absurd are now considered contemporary classics worldwide and part of the established modern repertoire.

ANNIE SPARKS

theatres, national

Of the five national theatres run on state subsidy in France, four are in Paris: the Comédie- Française, the Théâtre National de l’Odéon— Théâtre de l’Europe, the Théâtre de la Colline and the Théâtre National de Chaillot. The fifth, in Strasbourg, is the Théâtre National de Strasbourg. As well as these five institutions, the state also funds forty-two regional theatre centres, known as Centres Dramatiques Nationaux et Régionaux (National or Regional Drama Centres), which consist of a permanent venue and team, and run themselves along the lines of commercial theatre, each as its own business seeking funding outside the state as well as receiving an average of 44 per cent of income from the state.

The joint mission of all the national theatres is threefold: to present major works from the accepted repertoire in new and interesting ways; to promote contemporary creation (including non-text-based theatre as well as new authors); and to try to appeal to as wide a public as possible, with ticket prices fixed by the state to keep prices down. They often manage to accomplish the latter through productions and national and international exchanges. Each national theatre is headed by a director chosen by the Ministry of Culture. Although sharing a common mission, the repertoire of the various national theatres differs slightly.

Of the five national theatres, the Comédie- Française is the most famous and certainly the oldest institution. It is obliged to show a minimum of four different works per week, and often even two plays a day. It is the only institution to have a permanent troupe of actors (pensionnaires and sociétaires): all the other national theatres maintain a permanent administrative staff, but hire actors according to their needs. Recent directors have been Jean-Pierre Vincent (1983–6), Antoine Vitez (1988–90), Jacques Lassalle (1990–3) and Jean-Pierre Miquel (1993–). The theatre under their leadership has witnessed the growing importance of modern authors such as Genet, Sartre, Camus and Césaire, in addition to the classic repertoire. The Vieux Colombier, the revived theatre of Copeau fame, operating under the direction of the Comédie-Française since 1993, aims to mix more contemporary works with the classics. In October 1996, the Comédie- Française also opened another smaller performance space, the Carrousel du Louvre, in the gallery beneath the Louvre’s pyramid, which concentrates on small-scale classic and modern productions, and incorporates literary discussion nights, a video theatre run in connection with ARTE showing recordings of historic productions, and a video archive.

Functioning as a subsidiary under the umbrella of the Comédie-Française since 1968, the Théâtre de l’Odéon provides the home for a wide-ranging national and international classic and contemporary repertoire. In 1983, the Théâtre de l’Europe company arrived at the Odéon to perform for six months of the year, under the direction of Giorgio Strehler: in 1990, the company took up permanent residence at the Odéon (and it was renamed Le Théâtre National de l’Odéon—Théâtre de l’Europe to reflect this), with the Catalan Lluis Pasqual at the helm. He was replaced by Georges Lavaudant in 1996. The theatre’s brief, to produce itself and to welcome companies from all over the world, has led to some memorable productions over the years from (among others) the Deutsche Schaubühne, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Théâtre du Soleil, the Théâtre National Populaire (TNP) and the Théâtre de Nanterre-Amandiers. Prior to 1990, it also hosted productions by the Comédie-Française’s Jeune Théâtre National (National Youth Theatre). The Petit Odéon, the smaller of its two auditoria, has been home to numerous contemporary works from playwrights including Heiner Müller.

Following in the wake of the Théâtre de L’Est de Paris (East Paris Theatre), and founded in 1988, the Colline is the newest of the national theatres. Its two auditoria, the main theatre and the studio, stage twentiethcentury French and international classics, ranging from Audiberti to Tony Kushner in the 1996–7 season, for example. In 1996, Alain Françon took over from Argentinian director Jorge Lavelli as director.

The Théâtre National de Chaillot was also founded in 1968 in the Chaillot palace in Paris, taking over from Vilar’s (1951–63) and Georges Wilson’s (1963–8) Théâtre National Populaire. The label of Théâtre National Populaire passed on to Planchon’s theatre in Villeurbanne three years later, while the Théâtre National de Chaillot, under the direction of Wilson, began to work towards the requirements of its new national theatrical mission. This was, essentially, to provide a home for the popular theatre repertoire in Paris, with a wide-ranging programme designed to appeal to the widest public possible. In 1973, Jack Lang nominated Vitez and Du Pavilion as co-directors to undertake a radical revamp of the main auditorium, although the following year Michel Guy, the Secretary of State for Culture, vetoed the nomination. Perinetti became director, until 1981, when Jack Lang was able to reinstate Vitez until his move to the Comédie-Française in 1988. Jérôme Savary was elected in his place.

The Théâtre National de Strasbourg divides its energies between performing the established repertoire and research and creation, part of which involves the work of its renowned theatre school, L’École Nationale Supérieure d’Art Dramatique. Its director is Jean-Louis Martinelli, who has been in the position since 1993: well-known predecessors include Vincent (1975–83) and Lassalle (1985–90), both of whom went on to become the director (administrateur général) of the Comédie-Française.

ANNIE SPARKS

theatres, private

The private theatre tradition in France—theatres that operate independently and are not reliant to any significant degree on state funding or governorship—owes its origins to the popular boulevard theatres of the Parisian Right Bank during the nineteenth century, home to a genre of light, romantic comedy which continues to this day to be the staple diet of Parisian ‘boulevard’ theatre-goers. While the private theatres of Paris are certainly responsible for a more varied selection of works than this, it is this kind of play which draws large audiences. For this reason there is also a longstanding tradition of ‘star’ performers in private theatre productions, important in drawing the crowds. Many famous film actors return occasionally to the stage, bringing an audience to the theatre to see them as much as the play. For example, contemporary playwright Éric Emmanuel Schmitt’s philosophical play Variations énigmatiques, staged at the Théâtre Marigny in the autumn of 1996, became the success of the season, due in no small part to the fact that it starred Alain Delon in his great theatrical comeback after twenty years off the stage, and fellow film actor Francis Huster.

According to 1994 figures, private theatres numbered 48 in France, 47 of which were in Paris (the other being the Théâtre du VIIIème in Lyon). Private theatres are self-governing, usually with a theatre practitioner at the helm, even if the building itself is let by a third party (insurance companies are often the landlords of private theatres). Few private theatres are actually owned by the people who run them— the Poche, Variétés and Palais Royal theatres being the best-known exceptions. Most theatres pay rent to the landlord, calculated according to the number of seats in the venue. Seat prices in private theatre are usually higher than in state-run theatres, due to the dual commercial pressures of higher rates of VAT on private theatre seats and the lack of subsidy. However, it would be wrong to suggest that private theatre receives no subsidy at all. That said, there is very little money allocated to them in comparison with the national theatres and Centres Dramatiques Nationaux (CDNs). In 1994, for example, the Direction du Théâtre et des Spectacles, the government department responsible for distributing money to theatres, gave only 47.3 million francs to private theatre (including street theatre and circus companies), while the five national theatres received 316.6 million francs and the CDNs a similar figure (Direction du Théâtre et des Spectacles 1994). Government money also partly funds the Fonds du Soutien (Support Fund) to which many private theatres subscribe. It aims to support private theatres needing to redress the balance between outgoings and receipts on a particular production. To qualify for membership and support from this fund, theatres must have over 200 seats: those with between 200 and 500 seats usually receive the most help. The amount of aid given also varies according to the play: new French creations attract more help than classics or one-person shows. The fund also allocates money for renovation of theatre buildings, as well as to help support a production which has been slow to be successful, but which is succeeding at last, and to mount any of the first three plays written by a new French author. The City of Paris also helps subsidize a number of theatres and productions, and aims to encourage theatre-going with its annual two-for-the-price-of-one ticket deal for many productions in the capital. In recent years, the private theatre sector, which accounts for half the total theatre-going in France, has faced increasing competition from the public sector, which (thanks to government funding) can produce often elaborate creations while still being able to keep ticket prices at reasonable levels. Private theatre, on the other hand, has suffered from inflationary costs and thus has to be especially careful in its choice of play, taking into account production costs and the need for long runs. Many more private theatres are also turning to the Fonds du Soutien for aid. Whereas the 1950s and 1960s saw the small private theatres of the Left Bank innovating with the launch of Beckett, Ionesco and other avant-garde work, in the 1990s private theatres are less able to experiment, needing to rely on classics, a star performer or a show with low costs, such as a one-person show, often even to come close to break-even point. Private theatre is, however, fighting back against the competition from statefunded theatre by attempting to save money on productions and make itself competitive once more. Increasingly, theatres are working on co-productions together, pooling resources, risks and potential profits, with the hope of redeveloping an arena for innovation and experimentation in the future.

ANNIE SPARKS

See also: theatres, national

theme parks

There are around sixty theme parks in France, many of which were built in the 1980s and early 1990s, as their popularity soared. The most successful parks include the Schtroumpf (Smurf)-themed park near the German border, and Futuroscope, a science park opened in 1987 near Poitiers, which includes an Imax 3D cinema (600 sq m) that projects 70 mm films depicting the wonders of the natural world (between 1993 and 1995, attendance at this park more than doubled, from 1.3 million to 2.8 million visitors). The ever-popular Parc Astérix, located in the Ermenoville forest 60 km from Paris, is based on the Belgian comic strip of the same name. But, like the ancient Gauls depicted in the Astérix comics, it must contend with fierce competition from a formidable invading force: the American Disney Corporation.

The biggest and best known of France’s theme parks, Disneyland Paris was originally called EuroDisney. The name change, effected in 1995, signalled an attempt to reverse initially disappointing attendance figures both by linking the park to its successful Californian predecessor and by invoking the romantic appeal of Paris (though the park is actually situated in Marne-la-Vallée, 32 km away). The new name, at once more American and more French, suggests the conflict inherent in its dual identity.

From its inception, the park was viewed by French intellectuals (such as Ariane Mnouchkine, who likened it to un Chernobyl culturel) as an emblem of American cultural imperialism. Many of the employees, and the intellectuals who championed their cause, objected to the imposition of a regimented American work ethic, manifested in the strict dress code and grooming guidelines, the enforced cheerfulness and the corporate environment. Equally unpopular was the park’s ban on alcohol, which followed the company policy in the American parks, but which was not appreciated by the French, who were accustomed to drinking wine or beer with meals. This ban was eventually lifted.

Theme parks have often been compared to world fairs. Although the comparison may be justified to a certain extent, theme parks and world fairs adhere to different temporal and spatial logics. Whereas world fairs literally occupy a city for their duration, they are ephemeral by design: when their time is up, they are razed to the ground, leaving few traces of their existence. On the other hand, theme parks, as self-contained artificial cities, are pushed outside the borders of the real city, but they are permanent (for as long as they are profitable). A fixture of leisure time, peripheral to the city and peripheral to work, theme parks serve as a constant reminder of both.

ELIZABETH EZRA

See also: comic strips/cartoonists

Thorez, Maurice

b. 1900, Noyelles-Godault, Pas-de-Calais;

d. 1964 en route to Russia

Politician

Originally a miner, Thorez joined the Parti Communiste Français (PCF) at an early age. As party leader from 1930 and a member of parliament from 1932 onwards, he played an important role in preventing the PCF from becoming a marginal revolutionary sect and backed the 1936 Front Populaire anti-Fascist alliance. He spent most of World War II in the Soviet Union and advocated resistance in France. He was a senior minister in the period 1944–7. Known as ‘the son of the people’, he was the object of a personality cult in PCF ranks and was a combative proponent of PCF Cold War isolationism.

LAURENCE BELL

Tinguely, Jean

b. 1925, Fribourg, Switzerland;

d. 1991, Berne

Sculptor

Tinguely was the creator of both static sculpture and motorized constructions, including machines designed to produce paintings, selfdestroying machines (one of the most famous of which, Homage to New York, self-destructed in the gardens of the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1960) and large percussion sculptures known as ‘sound reliefs’. Tinguely was interested from his student days in movement as an artistic medium, and in 1955 he participated in an important exhibition of kinetic and mobile art in Paris. The same year he met Yves Klein, with whom he collaborated in 1958. His friendship with Klein and other artists led to the founding of New Realism (Nouveau Réalisme) which sought to reassess artistic form and material. In the 1960s, he produced sculptures made of scrap metal and junk material, especially in the Baluba series. In 1983, the Stravinsky Fountain, on which he collaborated with Niki de Saint-Phalle, was inaugurated beside the Pompidou Centre, on the roof of the Institute for Acoustic and Musical Research (IRCAM) directed by Pierre Boulez.

DEBRA KELLY

See also: sculpture

Toubon law

Passed in August 1994 and named after Jacques Toubon, Minister of Culture and Francophonie in the Balladur government of 1993–5, this law replaced the Bas-Lauriol law of 1975, which had proved difficult to apply and which had few effective sanctions. Both laws represent official policy towards the status of the French language, insisting on its use by public servants in five domains: official government documents, media, commerce, advertising and education. Condemned by the Socialist Party as dictatorial, the law’s provisions were modified by the Constitutional Council to enable ordinary citizens to continue using terms like le hot-dog and le Shuttle, although the main target had been franglais: advertising slogans like Just roule cool.

DENNIS ACER

See also: anglomanie/franglais

Tour de France

The Tour de France is the most famous and the most lucrative road race in world cycling. Held annually since 1903 (apart from interruptions during World Wars I and II), the Tour has become increasingly commercialized and politicized as towns, regions and even neighbouring countries vie for the right to be included in the route and offer large sums of money to be selected as the finishing point of one of the stages. The Tour includes mountain stages (some of which are in the Alps and the Pyrenees) and time trials; it has a points and team classification (teams representing cycle manufacturers and other sponsors work as a unit protecting their leader) and an overall winner based on the aggregated times of all the stages. The leader at any one point and at the end—when the race finishes on the Champs Élysées—wears the coveted ‘yellow jersey’ (le maillot jaune). It is an annual sporting spectacle of huge proportions, which has entrants from throughout the world.

IAN PICKUP

See also: cycling; sport

Touraine, Alain

b. 1925, Hermanville-sur-Mer

Sociologist

After entering the École Normale Supérieure in 1945, Touraine left temporarily to work as a miner in northeast France (1947–8). Finishing his studies under the influence of the sociologist Georges Friedmann, Touraine’s early work analysed the stagnation of the industrial working class. As his fieldwork and analyses evolved, he pointed successively to developments in socioeconomic activity, which indicated that in a post-industrial society social organization would respond to the expanding ‘tertiary’ (or service) sector which would gradually replace the traditional industrial landscape. Especially after May 1968, he traced the emergence of new social movements which would shape a new society: these include the women’s movement, regionalists, autonomists and ecologists.

MARTYN CORNICK

Major works

Touraine, A. (1967) La Conscience ouvrière, Paris: Éditions du Seuil.

——(1971a) The May Movement: Revolt and Reform, New York: Random House (French edition [1972] Le Mouvement de mai, ou le communisme utopique, Paris: Éditions du Seuil).

——(1971b) The Post-Industrial Society: Tomorrow’s Social History, Classes, Conflicts and Culture in the Programmed Society, New York: Random House (French edition [1971] La Société post-industrielle, Paris: Denoël).

——(1983) L’Après socialisme, Paris: Hachette.

——(1992) Critique de la modernité, Paris: Fayard.

——(1993) Towards a New Economic Order, Cambridge: Polity.

Tournier, Michel

b. 1924, Paris

Writer

Tournier is one of the most important modern European novelists. While writing within the tradition of the realist novel, he constantly engages in intertextual play, each of his novels being a rewriting of previous texts or crucial myths. As befits a writer who was trained as a philosopher, his subjects are always vast ones: the human couple, the problem of solitude, deviant sexuality, Nazism, religious belief, the purpose of art. In his fiction and journalism, he constantly intervenes forcefully into debates on politics, sexuality and immigration, as well as writing extensively on painting and photography. His best-known novel is the Goncourt prizewinner The Erl King (Le Roi des Aulnes).

MICHAEL WORTON

trade

Trade is a feature of all societies and all economies. However, during the postwar period, the term ‘trade’ for Western countries such as France has become synonymous with ‘foreign trade’. The increase in importance of foreign trade is one of the main features of the postwar economic development of France, and France is one of the top five exporting economies in the world.

From the moment that France accepted Marshall Aid after World War II, the country was drawn into the process of globalization of trade led by the United States. This was to have dramatic consequences for the French economy and economic policy-making. France has traditionally had a reputation for being protectionist. Particularly in the 1950s and 1960s, the state saw it as its duty to protect fledgling industries from foreign competition. This was possible because much French production was for the home market and therefore France did not need to open the doors of its economy to foreign competition in order to be allowed to enter foreign markets itself. However, with the corning of the European Economic Community (EEC) and the lowering of protectionist barriers for manufactured goods between member-states in 1968, the ability of French governments to protect French industry was eroded. Consequently, trade increased between member-states.

Furthermore, with the increase in oil prices brought about by the 1974 oil crisis, France had to offset the high costs of its imported energy needs with exports of manufactured goods and services. Indeed, from the 1970s onwards, the balance of trade has been a major preoccupation of French governments, since the French economy has more often been in the red than in the black. The French have attempted to reduce their dependence on imported energy by developing the nuclear industry. None the less, the main problem for France concerning foreign trade now comes from the competition which the country faces from the newly industrializing nations of the Pacific Rim. Unfortunately, French industry specializes in the production of the same kind of goods as are produced by these countries, but costs in France are much higher. France therefore aspires to be an economy specializing in high-technology products, like Germany and Japan.

JAN WINDEBANK

transport

Transport networks in France have been shaped to respond to the central role of Paris. However, since the 1970s, the need for better connections with the rest of Europe, as well as regional development policies, have helped to develop more balanced networks. Road is increasingly France’s favoured mode of transport, but rail has maintained a strong presence.

Until very recently, railway and road networks had a striking shape: organized as a ‘star’ structure, centring on Paris and radiating across France, this illustrated the concentration of population and power in the Île-de- France. Before the 1980s, it was sometimes easier when travelling by train from the west of France to the Rhône valley to go to Paris first, and then down again, avoiding the badly served Massif Central.

However, France has a very high density of small départementales (county roads) and narrower chemins communaux (parish lanes) which spread through some 36,500 municipalities. The wider Routes Nationales constitute the primary road network and became a symbol of the growth of travel by car when, in the 1950s, the first cheap models, such as the Citroën 2CV or the Renault 4, became popular. Some of these roads have now become part of popular culture. Charles Trenet’s hit song, Nationale 7, celebrated the national road that follows the Rhone valley towards the Côte d’Azur, and is the emblem of holidays and freedom. The French motorway network was developed from the mid-1960s; it now covers nearly 9,000 km (nearly three times the length of motorways in Great Britain). Most motorways were built by part-public, part-private consortia, which collect tolls from motorway users.

The car has become a way of life for most of the French population, deeply affecting sociocultural behaviour. From the beginnings of the car era, the mythology of speed and individual freedom associated with the possession and control of a vehicle have become major cultural themes. The novelist Paul Morand, in L’Homme pressé (Man in a Hurry), extolled the virtues of speed at any price. More recently, Françoise Sagan, in Avec mon Meilleur Souvenir (With my Best Memory), wrote about racing cars and the excitement of speeding. The car itself is seen as a highly symbolically charged object, the epitome of modern values; this was particularly well expressed by Roland Barthes’s Mythologies in the analysis of the Citroën DS19, a car which appeared in 1955 with a striking ‘designer’ shape.

The cost of a car civilization has been considerable, with France having one of the highest road accident rates in Europe (13,787 people were killed in 1975, the worst year). Since then, the toll has fallen (around 8,500 deaths in 1994, against 1,700 in Great Britain). Traffic jams hit car commuters day after day, as do the mass departures for summer or weekend holidays for which France is famous. Traffic jams and accidents are also now part of the culture—as is evidenced by the themes of films, such as Jean-Luc Godard’s Week-End or Claude Sautet’s Les Choses de la vie.

Other means of transport also took their place in the culture of modernity, when, just before World War I, it transpired for the first time that the whole world was accessible. Since then, the romantic appeal of transcontinental rail travel and ocean liners has died out—the French merchant fleet has dwindled. Apart from ferries in the Channel and Mediterranean Sea, only some holiday cruise ships have upheld the tradition of the great liners such as the series of Normandie and France which competed with the Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth for the Blue Ribbon across the Atlantic Ocean. Similarly, rail had considerable appeal before losing out to the car. It became the most powerful means of transport between the two world wars, hence the use of railway sabotage by the French Resistance during World War II, reconstituted in René Clément’s film La Bataille du rail (1946).

Steam engines now inspire nostalgia rather than awe, despite the fact that the trainspotter does not exist in French popular culture. Many local and regional railway lines disappeared in the 1960s and 1970s. However, the train has survived as an efficient interregional and international passenger transport system, through the train à grande vitesse (TGV) programme. Launched in 1981 on the Paris-Lyon line, the TGV regained the world rail-speed record in 1990, with over 500 kph, which is faster than passenger aeroplanes in 1960. TGV lines have now spread across most regions and compete with internal air flights— indeed, Paris is now 110 minutes away from Lyon, instead of 240 minutes, as in 1960. The Eurostar services between London, Paris, Lille and Brussels have also been immensely successful despite early problems.

France has been one of the pioneer countries for air flight. The first winged device to lift up in the air with a helix and propeller was built and flown by Clément Ader near Paris in 1890, and Louis Blériot first flew over the Channel in 1909. It inspired many dreams, and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote novels imagining the new professional pilot as modern knight.

A last major component of the transport system comprises the urban transport systems (tube, trains, buses and tramways). The most important covers the Paris region, an integrated system of underground railways (the Métro) and a fast regional transit system, the RER (Réseau Express Régional), feeding on each other and on the SNCF commuter network. Urban transport in Paris is relatively cheap, with popular season tickets (the Carte Orange). The system is heavily subsidized by the state, and a special tax is imposed upon the employers to fund the transport system. However, this does not prevent the car from being an urban nuisance, with air pollution and loss of time becoming real problems.

FRANÇOIS NECTOUX

See also: green issues; motor sport

Trenet, Charles

b. 1913, Narbonne

Singer-songwriter

The most influential French singer-songwriter of the prewar and postwar periods, Charles Trenet enjoyed a seemingly never-ending career which stretched from 1933 to 1992 and includes some 350 compositions, excluding his musical settings of works by Verlaine, Rimbaud and others. Having started as a duettist with Johnny Hess (as Charles et Johnny, 1933–7), and characteristically singing songs which offer an escape in time and in space, Trenet was forced to interrupt his career in order to do his military service. Relaunched as a solo performer in 1938 and nicknamed le fou chantant (the singing madman), Trenet incorporated swing, jazz, the waltz and tango, not to mention tropical rhythms, in a repertoire which rejuvenated French song after its decline into the vulgar innuendo of the caféconcert and later cabarets.

A wordsmith of unusual talent whose songs captivated the imagination of the French prewar generation, Trenet was sung by Maurice Chevalier as early as 1937—as in Y’a d’la joie (There is Joy), a song performed much later by Georges Brassens, who enthusiastically acknowledged the immense formative influence of the composer of this piece. Writing often poetic texts which sometimes bear the imprint of Surrealism, or which sketch an everyday scene or the portrait of a woman, Trenet created sounds (onomatopoeia being a favourite device) which merge seamlessly with his music. A prolific composer whose output was scarcely diminished during the war years, Trenet continued to record and to undertake stage performances, refusing to abandon the Americanized rhythms which were scarcely designed to please the German forces of the Occupation. With an ever-broadening repertoire (tender love songs and parodies co-existing alongside swing numbers), Trenet increased his popularity in France significantly before reaching international stardom with arguably his most famous composition, (Somewhere) Beyond the Sea (La Mer), in 1945.

Sung by an ever-increasing number of stars (including Yves Montand, Les Compagnons de la chanson, Juliette Gréco and Tino Rossi), Trenet continued to enjoy huge success in France until the end of the 1950s, when his output of songs declined as he travelled extensively abroad. If foreign tours diminished to some extent his creative verve during the 1960s, Trenet reacquainted himself with a French audience at the Olympia in 1971 and 1975 (the latter allegedly being his farewell performance) before triumphing at the ‘Printemps de Bourges’ (Bourges Spring Festival)—an annual music festival staged at Easter from 1977 where, despite the increasing melancholy which characterized his later work, he captivated a new, young audience. Persuaded to come out of retirement in 1988 (for a concert at the Châtelet) and in 1989 (for a final recital at the Palais des Congrès), Trenet made his last impact on record sales in 1992 when he released thirteen songs. It would be almost impossible fully to assess the importance of Trenet in the field of French song in the twentieth century. In addition to his influence as indicated above, it would be necessary to add the names of Aznavour, Bécaud, Jonasz, Souchon and many more to the list of distinguished performers and singer-songwriters who are clearly indebted to him. Suffice it to say that, without him, French song as we know it today would never have existed.

IAN PICKUP

Major works

Trenet, C. (1993) Le Jardin extraordinaire, Paris: Livre de Poche (this contains all the songs written by Trenet; edited by Pierre Saka).

Trintignant, Jean-Louis

b. 1930, Pont St-Esprit

Actor

Primarily a screen actor, his career took off, curiously given his timid persona, in two notorious Roger Vadim films—And God Created Woman (Et Dieu area la femme) in 1956 and Les Liaisons dangereuses (1959). Trintignant is the master of the understated virtual nonperformance, yet the roles he has most consistently played are ones of extremes in terms of emotions or issues of political or personal power, such as Costa-Gavras’s Z (1969) and Bertolucci’s The Conformist (1970). The larger and more impassioned the character he is to inhabit, the greater the minimalist performance and the wider the range of modulation of his voice—he can exude terror or hatred, love or seduction through an almost silent enunciation.

SUSAN HAYWARD

See also: cinema

Truffaut, François

b. 1932, Paris;

d. 1984, Paris

Director

One of the key figures of the Nouvelle Vague (New Wave), Truffaut is almost certainly the postwar French film director whose work is most widely known in English-speaking countries. He had an unhappy and neglected Parisian childhood against which he reacted by continually playing truant from school to go to the cinema; unlike most of his New Wave contemporaries, he received virtually no formal education. The ciné-clubs of the Liberation were his ‘university’, and it was there that he met the critic André Bazin, who rescued him from the French equivalent of borstal and became an educator and father figure to him much as Truffaut himself was later to become to Jean-Pierre Léaud.

Truffaut first made his mark with his film criticism, above all for Cahiers du cinema. Abrasive, often abusive, his favourite target was the high-budget, studio-filmed cinema de qualité that had been dominant in France since the end of the war, with such figures as Autant- Lara or Jean Delannoy. For Truffaut, this was tired, lacklustre film-making, which he contrasted unfavourably to the work of the major Hollywood auteurs like Fuller, Hawks and Hitchcock. His own work as a director was to bear the twofold hallmark of concise vivacity, often with an improvised feel, and a strongly personal thematic vision characteristic of those film-makers.

These qualities are in evidence from his first feature, The Four Hundred Blows (Les quatre cents coups) of 1959, autobiographical in inspiration and starring the young Léaud as Truffaut’s alter ego, Antoine Doinel. The naturalness and verve of Léaud’s performance and the location shooting in the streets of Paris (often reminiscent of the Italian neo-realists)— and, above all else, the film’s at once plangent and humorous evocation of adolescent experience— made it an instant success. Doinel/ Léaud was to return in three subsequent features— Stolen Kisses (Baisers Volés) in 1968, Domicile conjugal (1970) and L’Amour en fuite (1979)—which take him through a failed marriage and much career hesitation before he realizes his vocation as a writer. The tone of these films is mellower, and the use of cinematic technique less adventurous, than in Les quatre cents coups, and Truffaut’s work from the late 1960s is often thought less important than his earlier films.

Shoot the Pianist (Tirez sur le pianiste), from 1960, combines the iconography of the gangster movie with a use of cinematic techniques from the silent age to tell the melancholy tale of a pianist (Charles Aznavour) haunted by a secret from his past. Charlie Kohler/Aznavour’s move from concert pianist to piano player in an underworld café parallels the film’s amalgam of high and popular culture, which is taken yet further in Jules et Jim (1962). Jeanne Moreau here gives the most memorable performance of her career, as the woman loved by two men—one French, one German— whose friendship is thereby strengthened rather than destroyed. The film received a standing ovation at the Cannes festival, and became, along with the de Beauvoir-Sartre couple, a founding myth of the desire for emotional and sexual independence from bourgeois convention that preceded the impact of feminism.

The brio and exhilaration with which Truffaut uses the camera in these earlier works gives place with his most Chabrolian film, La Peau douce (1964), to a more sober and restrained style, which highlights the preoccupation with friendship, love, and above all death, so characteristic of his work. Those who know him primarily through the bittersweet playfulness of Baisers volés or the comedy of La Nuit américaine (1973), which takes place on a film set, may find this last assertion surprising, but it is not prompted merely by Truffaut’s own early death from a brain tumour. La Mariée était en noir (1968), La Sirène du Mississippi (1969) and Une belle fille comme moi (1972) all centre on actually or potentially homicidal women. L’Homme qui aimait les femmes (1977) ends with the death—literally caused by his pursuit of women—of its central character. La Chambre verte (1978) has Truffaut himself in the lead role, as a journalist who specializes in obituaries and has set up the room of the title as a shrine to the memory of his dead wife.

This is not to suggest that Truffaut was in any sense a purely introspective or egotistical film-maker, for history plays a more important role in his work than may at first appear. The love triangle in Jules et Jim is also an allegory of Franco-German cultural and political relationships from the beginning of the century through World War I to the early days of the Nazi regime. The Last Metro (Le Dernier Métro) from 1980—his most commercially successful film—takes place in a Paris theatre under the Occupation. The theatricality of the setting, abetted by the much-touted pairing of Catherine Deneuve and Gérard Depardieu, often seems to relegate the deadly seriousness of the period to second place, for which the film was much criticized. Truffaut was also involved with the two major French political crises of his own lifetime, as opponent of the Algerian war and as supporter of the May 1968 movement. The credits of Baisers volés are superimposed on a view of the Paris Cinémathèque, and the film is dedicated, in a clear allusion to the ‘Langlois affair’ of February, to Henri Langlois.

Nevertheless, it seems true to say that Truffaut’s later work periodically suffers from a frivolity and lack of substance far removed from the gracefully deadly seriousness of the early masterpieces. For these, for his always sensitive direction of actors, for his seminal work as critic and campaigning figure of the New Wave, for the manner in which he (more than any other film-maker) came to represent French cinema throughout the world, he remains one of the key figures in the French culture of his time.

KEITH READER

See also: cinema

Major works

Truffaut, F. (1975) Les Films de ma vie, Paris: Flammarion (Truffaut’s autobiographical cinematic testament).

TV5

Television channel

TV5 was established in 1983 by a consortium of five francophone public service broadcasters from France, Belgium and Switzerland. In 1986, a Quebec television company joined the consortium. Renamed TV5-Europe in 1988, the venture is the first pan-European francophone channel. It is broadcast on cable and satellite with the aim of promoting francophone culture in all its aspects. Its programming is based on the output of the members of the consortium, supplemented by its own production and co-productions. Its round-the-clock output can be received in Africa as well as Europe.

RAYMOND KUHN