Original subtitles

A rugged shoreline, and azure...

...constitute the Côte d'Azur, the French Riviera.

The English lent their name to landmarks here:

the Promenade des Anglais... - Nice.

- ... the Hôtel des Anglais. - Menton.

... the Eglise anglaise, or the English Church...

and the British Pharmacy.

COASTING ALONG THE COAST

We won't be filming the natives.

Cogolin.

In the popular imagination, they're always old and charming.

Let's leave them to the ox and the ass.

Our subject is the crowd:

the tourists, the curious, the emigrants, the enthusiasts.

Those who one day discover the coast

and gather here to spend their leisure time.

In 40 years, Nice's population grew from 100,000 to 240,000.

104,762 imported sleepers overpopulate it nightly.

Cannes awakens with 32,003 emigrants,

and Saint-Tropez, a village of 4,000 souls,

registers 50,000 in August.

What are they all looking for? And when did they first arrive?

The first to come seeking a cure may have been Cornelia Salonina,

a Roman empress who,

for her fragile health and shattered nerves,

spent the winter at Cimiez's thermal baths.

Nice.

The first tourist was perhaps Cardinal Maurice of Savoy,

who at 50 shed his robes

to marry his niece, Princess Marie-Louise, aged 14.

Their bridal chamber is still visited today.

2 Rue Jules Gilly, Nice.

They spent the winter there, thus inventing "swallows tourism,"

which promises, in any season, not just the sun

but the wild palm...

the mimosa...

the lone cypress...

groves of cypresses...

the maritime pine...

the pink laurel...

the prickly pear, which Moroccans call "the Christian fig"...

and the century plant,

which lives 100 years, flowers once, and dies.

In the 1800s, a trip from Calais to Nice

meant 16 days in a stagecoach, stopping at 107 stations.

Cannes, the 107th stop,

surged in popularity due to the plague,

which closed the gates of Nice to Lord Brougham.

Charmed by Cannes during his quarantine there,

he stayed over 40 years.

Many English followed, including Queen Victoria.

English dukes, Russian grand dukes,

many titles, and even a few names.

Dante Alighieri...

Italian consul in Nice.

Émile Zola...

honeymooned at the Hôtel de Paris in Monaco.

Friedrich Nietzsche...

conceived Act 3 of Zarathustra around the village of Eze.

Lucien Guitry...

barnyard animals...

and the garden in St.-Pons-les-Mûres.

One partly sunny morning in Monaco,

a student resembling Guillaume Apollinaire.

And Colette...

who resembled a Saint-Tropez cat...

wrote Break of Day.

Giraudoux, in Porquerolles...

invented Suzanne and the Pacific.

Painters too ennobled the Riviera.

In Joseph Vernet's paintings... - Antibes.

...one can see the tower of the Château Grimaldi.

In the Château Grimaldi, one can see Picasso's paintings.

A painter and ceramic artist, Picasso worked year-round.

On the coast he has just one serious competitor in painting and firing:

the sun.

The sun's chariot rises up from the sea.

It carries humanity along on its fiery course,

leaving it exhausted at night, to be reborn the next morning

and begin again its cyclical travails,

which require surmounting modesty and boredom,

at the risk of losing one's head or one's skin —

the latter judged by the much coveted suntan.

At this point, it's best to cover up.

Need gives rise to beauty...

and coverings become fashion.

In search of the sun, they found oblivion.

Where are they?

Far away.

Far from the coast.

Far from everywhere.

It's called exoticism.

A pagoda-shaped shop?

It's Sunday in Beijing. - Fréjus.

A Sudanese mosque?

Africa beckons. - Fréjus.

A dome? It's the Orient Palace.

Menton.

A Persian house? The Arabian Nights.

Monte Carlo.

A Russian church with carriage:

Moscow, 1900. - Nice.

A bather...

a metro station:

Paris, 1900. - Cannes.

Finally, the most exotic of all:

the exotic gardens.

A favorite site for nature lovers

longing for the silence of the plant kingdom.

They never bother remembering the plants' names.

They'd rather the plants remember theirs.

They write their own name,

or the name of a beloved, hoping she'll appear.

If they can't see, touch, or speak to Bardot,

they can come drink in Saint-Tropez.

Their appetites change via a process of natural adaptation.

In Cannes they come to eat

when they've failed to see Sophia Loren at the Festival.

And if they can't afford a Matisse, they visit his grave.

Dead or alive, celebrities have their admirers.

Cro-Magnon Man, ancient celebrity and oldest of the dead,

receives visitors before the Trophy of Augustus...

La Turbie.

- ... the Roman aqueduct... - Fréjus.

...and the 13 moth-eaten marble blocks,

destined for the Temple of Augustus in Narbonne —

alas, sunk in a tempest, not raised in a temple.

Saint-Tropez.

But let us render unto museums that which was Caesar's...

and appreciate instead other inhabited relics,

the most precious of the Riviera: its age-old trees.

A gigantic elm from Sulla's day.

In Ramatuelle.

- A 1,000-year-old olive tree. - In Beaulieu.

A bald cypress from Canada and Louisiana,

from a cutting made by Monsieur Robert in 1797.

In Toulon.

- A century-old oak. - In Saint-Cassien.

And the salutary shade of hackberry trees.

In Cogolin.

In contrast to this somberness,

there's the bright color of the local markets.

But tourists passing through prefer the colors in fashion:

yellow and blue.

Hotels too wear the fashionable colors of the day.

Yellow or blue? Blue wins out.

All women wish to be fashionable. All women wear blue.

Except the English...

those learning to swim...

and the Germans, great fans of green.

Camping is the airiest form of freedom,

and the most wildly ceremonial.

Life is good, lived with the majesty of ancient chiefs

retiring to their tents.

Campgrounds crowded with bon vivants lured by the seashore

mirror the campgrounds of the happily deceased

on the same peaceful shores.

In both cases, residents vie for prime real estate.

The coast is indeed "the most."

The Riviera is the most beautiful cemetery in France,

offering unobstructed views and a sea that's ever new.

The Riviera's dead are high-class tourists,

their rest well-deserved.

The landscape is as discrete as a heavy heart without tears...

modest as an arch without roses...

calm as a field without honor...

childlike as a cradle...

silent as a neighboring forest...

and as surprising as finding, just over a wall...

a giant Virgin.

Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat.

The Holy Mother missed her cue to enter the church,

and the cock fell from the bell tower

as if knocked over in this game of boules.

Luck turns at the roulette wheel.

Wheels turn too.

Death surprised Isadora Duncan. - In Nice.

Jean-Gabriel Domergue stands ready before his tomb,

built the way others build less eternal homes,

full of the charm of life.

THE CHARMER

TENDERNESS

FRENZY

FINALLY

The villa is a delirium of decorative dreaming.

Abandoned gardens, forgotten villas —

this is cinema.

Blasco Ibáñez's friends...

enjoyed this retirement home for writers.

Others prefer hotel life.

What makes them prefer one particular hotel...

is the doorman's greeting.

How familiar he is with you is the barometer

that tells whether you're a somebody or a nobody.

Doorman for 20 years at the Grand Hôtel...

he's still playing the game,

welcoming small-timers

with a nagging nostalgia for the big spenders.

Where is the formerly Grand Hôtel?

Where is Eden Roc?

Where is Eden?

The entire coast sighs for it.

The entire coast loves its name.

PEDAL BOATS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF EDEN

There's never enough to go around.

Forbidden Eden creates a stir.

Nostalgia gives way to a carnival.

The carnival burns.

The earth trembles.

The sun goes mad. The waters are calmed.

Carnival is dead. Silence reigns.

Silence in reply to so many questions,

to volcanoes and whirlwinds.

Eden exists.

It's a dawn.

Eden exists.

It's an island.

Paradise was a beach and a pinecone.

But nostalgia for Eden is a garden.

It's no longer the Côte d'Azur...

but a transplanted garden...

the notion of a garden, with flowers, lawns, and colonnades.

Forgetting the nearby sea...

the pond is a lament...

the water lily a lingering sigh.

These are false Eves...

ersatz Adams...

imitation Cupids...

deceptive Venuses...

fake caves and pretend nymphs.

Though these reveries are shared by all,

the gardens are not for the public.

This fake Eden is not for us...

no more than the real Eden.

And worst of all...

summer comes to an end.

Until next year

Until next summer, so far away

They've locked the sea away behind a gray horizon

And thrown away the key

Morning glories bloom but for a day

Summer blooms but for a summer

Yesterday was summer, time for sun and play

Now the dazzling summer has faded

Now the reveling sun is jaded

How silly and sad

The party is over

Summer is gone