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Serge Gainsbourg’s pop art science-fiction cartoon ‘Marie Mathématique’
05.08.2018
03:18 pm
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Incroyable! Hosting the legendary French pop show Dim Dam Dom in 1965, Sandie Shaw introduces the first installment of “Marie Mathématique,” an animated short made by “Barbarella” creator Jean-Claude Forest. Serge Gainsbourg wrote the music and sang André Ruellan’s lyrics. The Marie character is the younger sister of Barbarella—she’s sixteen—and her adventures take place in the year 2830.

In total, there were six installments of “Marie Mathématique.” There was never a proper soundtrack release, but it was bootlegged.
 

 

Another five episodes of “Marie Mathématique,” after the jump…

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Posted by Richard Metzger
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05.08.2018
03:18 pm
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Je T’Aime: Cool photos of Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg when they were in love
08.30.2017
12:58 pm
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Jane Birkin (with her famous wicker basket in hand) and Serge Gainsbourg, 1969.
 
According to Jane Birkin’s brother Andrew, Serge Gainsbourg was the love of her life. When he passed away in 1991 at the age of 62 from a heart attack (likely brought on by his epic chain-smoking and equally epic consumption of booze), Birkin, though she and Gainsbourg had long since separated, was devastated and she and her daughter Charlotte Gainsbourg mourned his death by staying with Serge’s body for three days. When Gainsbourg was finally laid to rest, Birkin placed her “Munckey” a toy monkey that she kept since childhood, in her former lover’s coffin.

The pair met on the set of the 1968 French film L’amour et l’amour (aka Slogan) and at first, Birkin was just not that into Gainsbourg and referred to her co-star as “horrible,” “arrogant,” and “snobbish.” Andrew Birkin also recalled that his sister was so turned-off by Serge that she had difficulty pronouncing his last name and would mangle it by calling him “Serge Bourguigon.” Birkin’s distaste for Serge would not last, however, and the two would become one of the most celebrated celebrity couples in France during the decade or so that they were together. As you might imagine, there are many mythical stories concerning the exploits of Gainsbourg and Birkin—many which have the lovebirds battling it out in public spats. One of the more infamous tales involves Birkin hurling a custard tart in Serge’s face after she discovered him digging through her wicker handbag. The skirmish continued with Birkin chasing Gainsbourg down the Boulevard Saint-Germain screaming before she jumped into Seine river. In 2013 Birkin’s brother Andrew published Jane & Serge: A Family Album, a beautiful book containing photos Andrew took of the couple during their time together, some of which have never been previously published. The book also contains Andrew’s intimate insights into Jane’s childhood and her deep connection to Serge.

I’ve posted numerous images of Birkin and Gainsbourg below looking happy and in love. Some are slightly NSFW.
 

 

 

 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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08.30.2017
12:58 pm
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Nico sings Serge Gainsbourg, bares all in ‘Strip-Tease’
07.06.2017
09:20 am
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Between appearing in La Dolce Vita and cutting a single with Jimmy Page and Andrew Loog Oldham, Nico beat out Ursula Andress for the lead role in a feature film: Jacques Poitrenaud’s 1963 Strip-Tease (a/k/a Sweet Skin and Lady Strip Tease). Billed as “Krista Nico,” she stars as German dancer Ariane, a character described by Poitrenaud as “a stripper lost in the nocturnal world.”

In White Light/White Heat: The Velvet Underground Day-by-Day, VU biographer Richie Unterberger quotes from an interview with Ciné Monde in which Nico discusses filming her nude scene:

They did it as I preferred. They cleared the set. I then drank several glasses of port. And they played a haunting tune to carry me through the ordeal. As for the rest, a woman always finds out how to keep on top of the situation.

 

 
Serge Gainsbourg, who scored Strip-Tease (and makes an uncredited appearance sharing a piano with Big Joe Turner), recorded a demo of the title song with Nico in ‘62.

Continues after the jump…

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Posted by Oliver Hall
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07.06.2017
09:20 am
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The worst/best cover version of Serge Gainsbourg’s infamous ‘Je t’aime…’ that you’ll ever hear
04.21.2017
03:47 pm
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Serge Gainsbourg’s infamous duet with Jane Birkin, “Je t’aime… moi non plus” (“I love you… me neither”) released in the “annee erotique” of 1969, had originally been recorded in late 1967 with Brigitte Bardot who the song was written for, a penance/apology from Gainsbourg for a disastrous first date. Bardot’s estranged husband, German photographer Gunther Sachs, got wind of the steamy song via reporters eager to drum up another scandal surrounding the sex kitten. The number’s orgasmic female moaning was said to be “audio vérité” (apparently at least half true, as Gainsbourg is alleged to have fingered the actress in the vocal booth) and Sachs demanded the release be pulled. The famously private Bardot begged her notoriously sardonic lover to withhold the song, prompting him to tell her “For the first time in my life, I write a love song and it’s taken badly.” Their original version would not be released until 1986.

Gainsbourg asked Marianne Faithfull, Valérie Lagrange and Mireille Darc (the model/actress perhaps best known for her role in Jean-Luc Godard’s Week End) to record the duet with him, but they all turned him down, until, as fate would have it, he was to meet his greatest muse, English model/actress Jane Birkin on the set of the film Slogan. Birkin quickly agreed, seething with jealousy over the idea of someone else singing this sexy chant d’amore with him. When “Je t’aime…” was finally released, the song was banned from radio play in Spain, Sweden, Brazil, the UK, Italy, and Portugal. Even in France, the song was forbidden to be played before the hour of 11 pm. Most US radio stations didn’t touch it, but still the song went on to sell over four million copies.

“Je t’aime…” has been covered—a lot. There are moog versions, parodies and recordings of the song by the likes of Nick Cave and Anita Lane (who also recorded it with Barry Adamson), Psychic TV, Giorgio Moroder and Donna Summer, Pet Shop Boys with artist Sam Taylor-Johnson, Einstürzende Neubauten, and by Placebo’s Brian Molko with Italian actress Asia Argento (who reversed the gender roles). And that’s a very partial listing. I think it’s also safe to assume that at this very minute and indeed during every future minute before time comes to an end, that there are at least two drunken fools in love singing “Je t’aime…” in a karaoke bar somewhere on the planet.
 

Serge Gainsbourg et Jane Birkin performing “Je t’aime…” at the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

But probably the weirdest cover of “Je t’aime…” ever performed is by an enigmatic little old man by the name of Zvonimir Levačić or “Ševa” as he was known to viewers of Noćna mora (“Nightmare Stage”), the defiantly strange long-running live late-night telecast on Croatian television, which as far as I can tell was something analogous to an Eastern European version of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! Ševa was one of the show’s most popular performers and according to his bio (unless Google translate was way off, which it think it might be in this case) was a bit of a war hero who was considered to be an intellectual and philosopher. Still he seems a bit more Richard Dunn than Slavoj Žižek to me.

Watch it after the jump, and no, this is NOT a recent Happy Mondays reunion…

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Posted by Richard Metzger
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04.21.2017
03:47 pm
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‘Jane Birkin: The Mother of all Babes’
02.20.2017
11:48 am
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Jane Birkin was—is—the unlikely girl who became a kind of royal figure in France due to her marriage and decades of collaboration with the country’s nonpareil musical genius Serge Gainsbourg. The Mother of All Babes is a documentary from 2003 directed by Birkin’s friend Gabrielle Crawford, who produced the DVD for Birkin’s Arabesque concert at the Odeon in Paris as well as published a book of photos of Birkin.

When Birkin went to France to do a film test for Pierre Grimblat’s movie Slogan, she had already appeared in Richard Lester’s The Knack and How to Get It as well as a memorable romp in the nude in Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up.
 

 
Birkin’s first time meeting Gainsbourg, at that film test, was seemingly inauspicious. Discomfited by Gainsbourg in a taciturn mood, she demanded to know why he hadn’t asked “How are you?” “Because I don’t really care,” was Gainsbourg’s typically blunt reply. Birkin’s husband of three years, Goldfinger composer John Barry, had recently left her, and Birkin’s emotional state as well as her incomplete command of French made the test a challenge, but Gainsbourg gallantly assisted her and helped her get the part.

More after the jump…

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Posted by Martin Schneider
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02.20.2017
11:48 am
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Brigitte Bardot, badass biker babe
10.18.2016
09:40 am
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Brigitte Bardot posing on a yellow Harley-Davidson chopper built by Maurice Combalbert.
 
It’s fairly well known that golden haired French film goddess Brigitte Bardot was a huge fan of the Solex (or “Velosolex”), a kind of moped/bicycle hybrid which the bombshell was widely photographed riding around in the 1970s. No stranger to knowing how to have a good time Bardot was also photographed tooling around while looking flawlessly beautiful on other kinds of motorized two-wheelers such as a Yamaha AT-1 for which Bardot did a series of 1971 print advertisements clad in hotpants and white gogo boots.

Some of the most iconic photos of the actress/model/singer and animal rights activist (Bardot dedicated herself to helping animals after retiring in 1973) and a motorcycle were taken along with a Harley-Davidson custom built by Parisian chopper pioneer Maurice Combalbert when Bardot performed her wacky love proclamation to the iconic motorcycle on her 1967 French television special Brigitte Bardot Show.

Here’s a nice selection of Brigitte Bardot looking cooler than any of us will ever look on various motorcycles, as well as a few where she’s making riding a regular bike look like the best time ever.
 

 

More Bardot on bikes after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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10.18.2016
09:40 am
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‘Cannabis’: Take a big hit of Slim Twig’s Serge Gainsbourg cover for 420 Day


 
I’ve been fairly unabashed in my praise of Toronto-born rocker Slim Twig. Two of my very most favorite albums of the the past two years are his creative handiworks, A Hound At The Hem and its worthy follow-up Thank You For Stickin’ With Twig, both out in America on DFA Records. And so without any further preamble—you can read my past ruminations on Slim Twig here and here—it’s my great pleasure today, here on the sacred herbal holiday of 420 Day to debut this video for Mr. Twig’s slinky, smoky cover of Serge Gainsbourg’s ode to “Cannabis.”
 

Slim Twig goes casual at the bowling alley

Cannabis” comes from the soundtrack to a 1970 French film of the same name which actually stars Gainsbourg as well, portraying a hitman for the mafia who falls in love with Jane Birkin, the daughter of an ambassador. The original number was performed and written by Gainsbourg and orchestrated by his future Melody Nelson collaborator Jean-Claude Vannier. Cannabis, which was amusingly retitled French Intrigue for the puritanical US market, was uploaded in its entirety to YouTube. It’s in French, with no English subtitles, but you still get to see Serge as a gun-toting, rabbit-fur coat-wearing badass causing mayhem, smoking a lot of cigarettes and je t’aiming Jane Birkin as often as possible.

DFA have set up a special Weedtransfer site for legally purchasing “Cannabis” in digital or physical formats.

“In a scene like this, you get a contact-high!”
 

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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04.20.2016
11:33 am
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Stained glass windows of Aleister Crowley, Serge Gainsbourg, Johnny Cash, JG Ballard & many more


 
In 2010 and 2011 the English artist Neal Fox executed an utterly gorgeous series of stained-glass windows in imitation of the iconography of saints found in cathedrals all over Europe. The series included Johnny Cash, J.G. Ballard, Hunter S. Thompson, Albert Hofmann, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Serge Gainsbourg, Aleister Crowley, William S. Burroughs, Billie Holiday, and Francis Bacon.

Now, it’s perfectly possible that you will see these images and think, “Wow, those paintings in the stained-glass style are awesome.” So it’s important to emphasize that these are not paintings, Fox actually created the stained-glass windows themselves—in fact, he worked with traditional methods “at the renowned Franz Mayer of Munich manufacturer” in order to produce a dozen windows, each using leaded stained glass in a steel frame and standing 2.5 meters tall.

Put them all together in a room, as the Daniel Blau gallery in London did in 2011, and you have “an alternative church of alternative saints.” Here is what that room looked like:
 

 
The Daniel Blau show was called “Beware of the God.” Alongside the well-known provocateurs and trouble-makers like Crowley and Hawkins is a figure that might challenge even the most astute student of antiheroes, a man named John Watson. Far from the complacent invention of Arthur Conan Doyle, this John Watson is the artist’s grandfather, described by his loving grandson as a “hell raiser” and “a World War II bomber pilot, chat show host, writer and publisher, who in his post war years sought solace in Soho’s bohemian watering holes.”

Quoting the Daniel Blau exhibition notes:
 

As traditional church windows show the iconography of saints, through representations of events in their lives, instruments of martyrdom and iconic motifs, Fox plays with the symbolism of each character’s cult of personality; Albert Hoffman takes a psychedelic bicycle ride above the LSD molecule, J G Ballard dissects the world, surrounded by 20th Century imagery and the eroticism of the car crash, and Johnny Cash holds his inner demon in chains after a religious experience in Nickerjack cave.

 
You can order prints of some of these images for £150 each (about $214).
 

 

 
Many more after the jump…

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Posted by Martin Schneider
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04.15.2016
02:27 pm
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Watch the insane 1970 satire ‘Mister Freedom,’ featuring Serge Gainsbourg
07.31.2015
09:41 am
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Mister Freedom on the cover of Evergreen Review #77
 
Meet Mr. Freedom, a shit-kicking superhero employed by America’s largest corporation, Freedom, Inc. He hates blacks, Jews, Communists, foreigners, women, JFK, and everyone else who has been compromised by the dangerous ideology of antifreedomism. Carried through the world on a tide of blood, the hero of William Klein’s French satire beats the snot out of anyone who would thwart his right to take pleasure in indiscriminate violence. Does that sound like American foreign policy to you? Plus ça change…

You’ll recognize Donald Pleasance as Dr. Freedom, Delphine Seyrig as Marie-Madeleine, and Yves Montand as Mr. Freedom’s opposite number in France, Capitaine Formidable. Of course, my favorite member of the cast is Serge Gainsbourg, who appears in several scenes—most of them in the movie’s last third—as Mr. Drugstore, a French partisan of the cause of freedom. Gainsbourg also composed the soundtrack with the help of his arranger Michel Colombier.
 

Serge Gainsbourg, Delphine Seyrig and John Abbey in a still from Mister Freedom
 
Grove Press—the legendary American publisher of Samuel Beckett, William S. Burroughs, Henry Miller and Jean Genet—released the movie in the U.S., hoping to break into the movie business thereby. Richard Seaver, Grove’s editor in chief, devoted a page of his memoir The Tender Hour of Twilight to Mister Freedom:

The April 1970 issue of Evergreen Review had on its cover a fully clothed, futuristic male, looking for all the world like an astronaut-hockey player, complete with shoulder pads, a helmet, a Rangers jersey, gloves, and a hip-holster pistol. In his arms—one hockey glove grasping the midriff, the other the wrist—Mr. Freedom (for that’s who our hero was) held a scantily clad, sequin-spangled red-white-and-blue redhead, whose open mouth could just as easily be construed as a cry for help as a moan of ecstasy. Let the beholder decide.

The magazine cover, intriguing in itself to most, was also a prime example of Grove’s new internal synergy (a word we actually used in our discussions of Grove’s future, God help us all!). Not only did it supply grist for the Evergreen Review mill, it also served as the poster for the U.S. release of the Grove film, Mr. Freedom, a not-too-subtle satire on America as it moved out of the turbulent 1960s. A scathing attack on American foreign policy, especially its “vulgar and grotesque” involvement in Vietnam and the Strangelove notion that democracy had to be brought to the rest of the world, even at the cost of destroying it, the French-made film was written and directed by the ex-patriot (sic) William Klein. It starred John Abbey as Mr. Freedom; Delphine Seyrig (who had been propelled to cinematic stardom as the Garboesque lead in Alain Resnais’s Last Year at Marienbad) as Marie-Madeleine, organizer of the Whores-for-Freedom network; Donald Pleasence (whose voice and accent bore an uncanny resemblance to Lyndon Johnson’s) as Dr. Freedom, the mad mastermind behind the movement to save the world from anti-freedom infiltration; and Philippe Noiret as Moujik Man, Russia’s answer to Mr. Freedom.

On the surface it was a perfect vehicle for the Grove Movie Machine: irreverent, sexy, outrageous, politically pointed, a no-holds-barred attack on the establishment. Unfortunately, its script, dialogue, and direction, alas, were sufficiently amateurish to give film critics a golden opportunity to lambaste it.

I’m not sure “amateurish” is the right word. As befits a playful, cartoonish satire, the movie’s politics are a bit crude here and there, and maybe the dubbing is shit in places, but Mister Freedom is expertly made, by my lights. It’s a feast for the eyes and a gas to watch.
 

Thanks to Sam McPheeters and Tara Tavi for jumping me into the freedom gang.

Posted by Oliver Hall
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07.31.2015
09:41 am
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Charlotte For Ever: Serge Gainsbourg laid bare
05.05.2015
10:15 am
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Serge Gainsbourg wrote it, directed it, stars in it and cast his daughter, Charlotte, as his movie daughter in Charlotte For Ever. It’s a family affair that crosses into an uncomfortable realm of implied incest that Serge often exploited/explored in his art. The PC police may get their knickers in a twist but fuck ‘em. One of the functions of art, and a healthy one at that, is confronting taboos and shedding light on how humans behave in the dark places. Gainsbourg’s lack of artifice and Cassavetes-like blurring of the line between drama and reality makes Charlotte For Ever almost unbearably intimate. Gainsbourg took chances in unloading a shitload of his id into his creations and the pleasure principle was the carburetor that fueled his engine. His cri de coeur is often muddled by the blurting of his cock.
 

 
Gainsbourg wasn’t the only modern French director to explore incest. Louis Malle, Bertrand Blier, Christophe Honore and Leos Carax have all gone there. In Malles’ Murmur Of The Heart a mother introduces her son to sex and somehow it seems almost wholesome. Maybe it’s a French thing?

Charlotte For Ever was released in 1986. French audiences were repelled and it promptly disappeared. The story of a suicidal alcoholic writer desperately looking for a link to redemption through his beautiful young daughter was too dark, too disturbingly erotic, for even the arthouse crowd. Or maybe it’s just too damned pretentious. I’m divided. As a fan of both Serge and Charlotte, I admire the chances taken and the commitment made to a project that required profound sensitivity and trust. How much is autobiographical I don’t know. But like the films of Cassavetes it doesn’t really matter. What matters is the fact that there are artists who see film not merely as a storytelling medium, but as a kind of scalpel that can peel back the hidden parts of what makes us human. And that can be painful… and exhilarating.
 

 
As for those of you who might worry for the young Charlotte Gainsbourg, I wouldn’t. She seems to have survived her father’s inspired madness with her head firmly intact. In fact, she’s continued in the Gainsbourgian tradition of dropping turds in the punchbowl with the films she’s done with Lars Von Trier and her uncle Andrew Birkin. La pomme doesn’t fall far from the tree.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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05.05.2015
10:15 am
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Three hours of Serge Gainsbourg singing, drinking and telling Whitney Houston he wants to fuck her
03.02.2015
02:30 pm
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Serge Gainsbourg died on this date 24 years ago. Which is a good enough reason, not that one is required, to share this close to three-hour video compilation of Gainsbourg performing his songs between the years of 1973 and 1991.

The compilation includes songs sung with Jane Birkin, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Catherine Deneuve. Plus footage from the infamous night a thoroughly drunk Gainsbourg appeared with Whitney Houston on French TV talk show Champs-Elysées and said, in his best slurred English, that he wanted to “fook her.” This was the occasion on which the French public at large was first introduced to Whitney Houston. Gainsbourg made it particularly memorable.

There are segments in French. If you don’t speak the language be patient, they’re brief.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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03.02.2015
02:30 pm
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Serge Gainsbourg’s reggae version of ‘La Marseillaise’ that earned him death threats
07.14.2014
11:19 am
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Serge Gainsbourg offended many of his patriotic countrymen in 1979 when he rewrote the French national anthem “La Marseillaise” as a reggae number, “Aux armes et caetera.” The song was the title track from his 13th album, recorded in Kingston, Jamaica, giving him the distinction of being only the second (to Mick Jagger, who dueted with Peter Tosh) major white European performer to record there. Serge did not anticipate the shitstorm that followed the TV premiere of his song, including death threats from nationalists and threats from soldiers to kick his ass if he performed the song in public. The French embassy’s website still has a reference to this controversy:

The French national anthem has had a turbulent past. Every now and then, there is an outcry to have it banned, or at least updated; it has been a long time since the Revolution was endangered by bordering European monarchs. Some people are offended during national ceremonies, when they hear such vengeful verses as “these ferocious soldiers who slaughter our sons and wives” or demanding “that impure blood flow in our fields.” But the majority of French people do not wish to change so much as a comma in their national anthem. Didn’t the members of the Resistance in WWII sing it as a final and supreme challenge to Nazi-occupying forces as they fell beneath the bullets of the firing squad?

The extent of the attachment of the French to their national anthem was revealed in the 1970s, when President Giscard d’Estaing attempted to impose “his” Marseillaise by having it played to a slower tempo in order to give it greater solemnity. The President’s initiative raised a storm of protest and Hector Berlioz’s orchestration was maintained. Late controversial singer and composer Serge Gainsbourg tried to rewrite the Marseillaise his own way in 1979 by having the national anthem played by a reggae band. The reception was less than stellar: A group of legionnaires threatened to give him a hard time if he performed his new version in public. Gainsbourg did sing the Marseillaise, but a cappella. One cannot tamper with that which is sacred!

 

A little gallows humor on the cover of Hara Kiri magazine
 
When a group of paratroopers caused a 1980 concert in Strasbourg (where “La Marseillaise” was written) to be shut down, Gainsbourg defiantly sang an a capella traditional version instead of “Aux armes et caetera” and was joined by the paratroopers! A year later in a defiant but classy move he bought an original manuscript of the anthem’s lyrics by Rouget de Lisle at an auction in France. Gainsbourg then proved to the public that his version—and the controversial “et caetera” of the title—was in fact, more faithful to the original than any other version: de Lisle, in fact, did not write out repeated verses by hand, but merely wrote “et caetera, et caetera, et caetera”!

Serge Gainsbourg, “Aux armes et caetera”:

 
Serge Gainsbourg sings the original “La Marseillaise” to calm everyone down, and at 2:09 the auction for the lyrics’ manuscript begins:

Posted by Kimberly J. Bright
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07.14.2014
11:19 am
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Serge Gainsbourg, France Gall and the most ridiculously phallic music video of 1966
05.12.2014
05:06 pm
Topics:
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“Les Sucettes” (“The Lollipops”) was written for the virginal blonde 18-year-old France Gall by that arch-lecher himself, Serge Gainsbourg, who wanted to market her as the ultimate French “Lolita” pop star. The song’s lyrics depict a young girl, Annie, who likes aniseed-flavored lollipops. Here’s a translation of a verse so you get the gist:

When the barley sugar
Flavored with anise
Sinks in Annie’s throat,
She is in heaven.

Annie’s aniseed. Think about that for a minute…

Christ, he’s good…

But here’s the thing: France Gall apparently had no idea that she was singing a song about oral sex and swallowing… seed.

When she performed the number on the television program seen in the clip below, she did so oblivious to what every other person present was thinking! It wasn’t until she was on tour in Tokyo that someone let the cat out of the bag. Gall was infuriated and greatly embarrassed by what she’d unwittingly taken part in. She felt betrayed by the adults around her and mocked like a naïve fool. She refused to leave her home for weeks afterwards and ultimately entirely stopped singing Gainsbourg’s songs that had made her so famous. For years afterwards her career suffered from her association with this scandal, even if “Les Sucettes” had been a big hit.
 

 
It’s interesting to note that Walt Disney himself wanted France Gall for a musical adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, but the project was shelved with Uncle Walt’s death in 1966. Bernardo Bertolucci reportedly wanted her for the leading female role in his X-rated Last Tango in Paris opposite Marlon Brando. Can you imagine? No offense to the late Maria Schneider, but it’s too damned bad that didn’t happen!
 

 

Regarding “Les Sucettes” with a rare public comment from France Gall about the scandal it caused.
 

“Teenie Weenie Boppie,” about LSD and Mick Jagger on Dim Dam Dom.

More France Gall on Mod Cinema’s two DVD France Gall collection

Posted by Richard Metzger
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05.12.2014
05:06 pm
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‘Erotissimo’: Sexy French pop art cinema (with suitably sleazy Serge Gainsbourg cameo), 1968

image
 
The 1968 French sexual revolution comedy Erotissimo is one of those ultra stylish Sixties films that art director types go totally nuts over. With good reason.

Starring Annie Giradot as a married woman confused by the rapid change in sexual mores around her. Erotissimo takes place precisely at the point in the 1960s where SEX became an inescapably “in your face” component of modern life, advertising and urban dwelling. As such, it is a perfect time capsule of the end of one era and the beginning of another. Giradot’s heroine struggles to understand the matters I presume would have been vexing a fair amount of the film’s audience during that time period as well.

But plot aside, the film’s reputation these days is due to its unique—and very Sixties—art direction: Gerard Pires’ Erotissimo looks like almost no other film I can think of. Nearly every frame is a masterpiece of visual composition, in the vein of William Klein’s Who Are You, Polly Magoo? The groovedelic soundtrack is the aural equivalent of a white molded plastic chair…
 
image

 
Mod Cinema sells a DVD of Erotissimo with English subtitles, making it possible for those of us who paid no attention in French class to enjoy this treat.

A married woman in her 30’s (Annie Girardot) tries to spice up her sex life with her distracted husband Philippe (Jean Yanne) under the deluge of sexy Swedish movies, sexy advertising on the streets, sexy intimate clothing in ladies’ shops, and even talks about sex and marital infidelity with her mother and female friends. Philippe, a general manager of a dynamic company specializing in baby products becomes preoccupied with an upcoming tax audit. Even the presence of a beautiful fashion model who lives with Annie’s brother fails to divert his attention. This amazing and colorful work of 60’s pop art features an original psychedelic soundtrack by French composer William Sheller & singer-songwriter Michel Polnareff, and don’t miss the cameo by monsieur Serge Gainsbourg!

Gainsbourg’s cameo is appropriately sleazy: He plays a guy who hits on Annie as she is leaving a Swedish “art film.”
 

 
Below, the NSFW Erotissimo trailer:
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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02.04.2014
10:48 am
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Marianne Faithfull sings Gainsbourg in 1967’s ‘Anna’
10.18.2013
04:43 pm
Topics:
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Marianne Faithfull sings “Hier ou Demian” (“Yesterday or Tomorrow”) in a scene from the incredible 1967 French TV movie musical, Anna. Directed by Pierre Koralnik, and with songs written by Serge Gainsbourg (who also appears in the film). Anna starred Godard muse Anna Karina. The film is practically a musical pop art paean to her beauty. Suits me just fine.

 

image
 

A gorgeous young Faithfull, who never looked better (and that’s saying a lot), singing a Gainsbourg-penned tune. What more could you ask for? The entire film? Well you’re in luck, because you can purchase a copy of Anna (with English subtitles) from Mod Cinema.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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10.18.2013
04:43 pm
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