George Platt Lynes often used this director's chair in his portrait work. You'll see it twice more in today's series. Here we have Jean Cocteau in it. Lynes took several photos of the French artist.
This is a Lynes photo of Maurice Khill (1912-1940) who was a promising young film director and Cocteau's lover from about 1932 until his death. Maurice was killed on the Alsatian Front in World War II because due to poor communications his unit counterattacked without knowing an armistice had been arranged. That communications issue is a big reason the French lost the war.
In 1940, during the Battle of Britain, the French Roman Catholic Church of Notre Dame de Paris in Leicester Square was badly damaged and, post war, had to be rebuilt. In 1960, Jean Cocteau was commissioned to execute three murals in the Lady Chapel, depicting the Annunciation, Crucifixion and Assumption. They are stunning works, restored in 2012. The bohemian and artistic - and by that time increasingly gay - quarter of Soho not being far, it is understood that Cocteau enjoyed himself immensely. It is breathtaking in its hypocrisy that the Roman Catholic Church should have wanted Cocteau's art whilst condemning him as a man.
ReplyDeleteBreathtaking hypocrisy was nothing new to the Church, then or now.
DeleteAfter the fall of France, on October 21, 1940, Winston Churchill took to the airwaves and in his own inimitable style, addressed the occupied French in both French and English:
ReplyDeleteDormez bien. Rassemblez vos forces pour l’aube. Car l’aube se lèvera ; brillante pour les braves, douce pour les fidèles qui auront souffert, glorieuse sur les tombeaux des héros. Vive la France!
Good night, then. Sleep to gather strength for the morning. For the morning will come; brightly will it shine upon the true, kindly on all who suffered for the cause, glorious on the tombs of heroes. Thus will shine the dawn. Vive la France!
Maurice Khill, RIP.
Churchill had his faults, but he was a genius when it came to inspirational communication with the people. That and his tenacity have made him a hero for the ages.
DeleteA needless death due to the conservatism of a French military establishment that refused to modernize with the times. Those IDIOTS assumed WW2 would be fought like WW1, through trench warfare and its outdated tactics.
ReplyDeleteTotally neglecting the mechanized warfare, enhanced by airpower, perfected by Nazi Germany.
The French Army and Navy held the lion's share of the French governments military budget, leaving few resources for the French Air Force. By the time the government realized its mistake of neglecting their air forces, it was too little, too late. A military establishment that refused to adapt to changing military tactics and new technologies in aviation, their arrogance and their pride, left La Belle France on her knees!
-Rj/IE