Remontons les Champs-Élysées (1938)

The film showing at the Normandie cinema in 1938. It traces the history of the Champs-Élysées, as recounted by a schoolteacher (a descendant of Louis XV, Marat, and Napoleon I), from the Place de la Concorde in 1617 to the Place de l’Étoile in 1938. Among the episodes mentioned are the assassination of Concino Concini; the circumstances that led Louis XV, tired of the Marquise de Pompadour, to have the Parc-aux-Cerfs laid out; the establishment of the first puppet theaters on the Champs-Élysées; the death of the Beloved, heralded by the death of Minister Chauvelin six months earlier, and his nighttime burial; the dark days of the Terror; the chance and improbable encounter between Bonaparte and Napoleon, with the former reproaching the latter for betraying his youthful ideals; the nighttime assassination of the inventor of gas lighting; Richard Wagner’s early days in Paris; the return of the Emperor’s ashes in 1840; Louis-Philippe’s departure into exile; the success of Béranger’s songs and the triumph of Métra’s waltzes; and a ball at the court of Napoleon III…