Friday, February 28, 2025
DANCE TO THE MUSIC, SING IN TEMPO
https://jacquescoulardeau.medium.com/dance-to-the-music-sing-in-tempo-d36b5ac0e874
The film covers nearly thirty years, but we do not see the actors aging, or time going by. Then it is dense and density for dancing is good, even intense, except that the aging Louis XIV is only revealed by his no longer being able to dance what he used to do all the time, twenty years earlier. Even Sun Kings become old and stiff. The Mayas knew that. But apparently, Louis XIV thought he could be eternally young.
There is a heavy allusion to the libertine atmosphere among these artists, Molière, Lully, and a few others. They are more or less adopting the Italian Love of this time, which did not differentiate between genders, at least for males, though they seemed to prefer the girls or the boys they seduced being rather young. That’s how Scapin is attracted to the Turkish galley, though he did not get the young apprentice deckhands, but he was heavily taken advantage of by the older sailors who loved using this white European servant.
We could say “Beware! A deck boy generally hides a perverse adult behind his back.”
But the film practically completely ignores the great Marshals or Generals of Louis XIV, Henri de Turenne, and The Prince of Condé. The Chaplain and Confessor of the king, Bossuet, is not even mentioned, and the political ventures of the kingdom are more or less made volatile. What about the decision that royal justice was to abandon all procedures against witches?
But this film is magnificent with the brilliant costumes, the Versailles and other palace settings, the inebriating lights, and the giddy-making vertigo-generating music. So it is entertaining and maybe even enriching about some details. What about the bagpipe from Auvergne known as the “cabrette” that was transformed for the King’s court into a softer and milder instrument, the “musette de cour” used for court dancing?
That was a very great, contradictory, and oxymoronic century in France AND Europe. We all learned how to dance to the great successes of the King and thus forget the misery of people in some provinces. Remember Twist Again, not so long ago.
2025 • Éditions La Dondaine, Medium.com
Music, * Operations Research, * Molière, * Versailles, * Louis XIV
