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The summer of their 20th birthday: in 1950, in Saint-Tropez, this fisherman's son "spied on the first nudists"

2020-07-18T09:27:30.297Z


THE PARISIAN WEEKEND. In 1950, the small port of the Côte d'Azur seduced the Parisian bourgeois but was still only a village. The young Fran


Summer 1950. The century is at mid-life, and it is one-fifth of its own. At 20, everything is possible. Even stay at home. At this age, François Coppola, born in 1930, already has a great love: his village, Saint-Tropez (Var). Son of a fisherman, he was born in a port house in the center, one of those stone houses whose windows open onto the sea and the tartans, local sailing boats augmented by a large mast. With a letter close, François Coppola would he have been the godfather? He smiles at his almost homonymy with the famous American filmmaker. "He took my name. I got there first. "

Twenty years were enough to get passionate about the history of Saint-Tropez, get involved in its traditions, want to leave its mark. Seven times he will be a member of the municipal council. To walk with him in the village today, even crowded with tourists, is to be stopped every 100 meters, to shake a hand here or there (ah, distancing!), To take news…

At 90, François Coppola still lives in the city of his childhood, of which he was a municipal councilor. / Personal archive of François Coppola / DR  

But, when you are 20 years old in Saint-Tropez in 1950, and you want to stay in the country, the choice is limited: the vine, like these peasants whose lands are now dotted with sumptuous villas , fishing (around forty fishermen at the time, three today…) or the torpedo factory. François wanted to be a sailor. His mother decides that he will go to the factory. "We didn't argue with her," he smiles on the terrace of his long house, located on a hill a little outside the village. But I do not regret it. The torpedo factory is the Whitehead factory in the neighboring village, Gassin, nationalized in 1937. Founders, millers, turners work side by side. Most workers are homegrown.

"My real passion was bravado"

To enter, this tall brown with elongated face followed the whole course. At 17, he obtained his professional certificate and started a year later in workshops where he quickly became an adjuster-precisionist. “We made compressed air torpedoes. To adjust the chrome metals and bronze, it was necessary to work to the nearest micron. Afterwards, he will pass to control. “The days were long. It was necessary to work for national recovery, and the forty-five hour weeks were frequent. But working hours are quickly forgotten at this age. “My real passion was bravado. »Three days of religious ceremony and procession in honor of Tropez of Pisa, this officer converted to Christianity and beheaded on the orders of the Roman emperor Nero in 68 AD. His body, offered to the waves of the Arno, came to run aground in the gulf which today bears his name.

For nothing in the world, François would not have missed the bravado of May: three days of processions in honor of Saint Tropez./Archive personnel de François Coppola / DR  

At 20, François is in the "company of sailors", responsible for firing rifles while walking behind the saint. Later, he will be in the body of the "musketeers" and this time will blast, this 17th century firearm secretly manufactured on the spot by the workers of the torpedo factory. For nothing in the world, he would not miss the procession on May 16, 17 and 18. In his office, his uniform is still hanged, next to the naive pictures his father painted.

François' family owns a tartan (here in 1924), a typical sailing boat in the region / Personal archive of François Coppola / DR  

In the evening, during this summer of 1950, young people of his age, fishermen, workers, winegrowers, stroll on the port, which is not yet the display of restaurants and glaciers today. The family tartane is still swinging there, which was used mainly to transport sand, coal, wine ... He sees the ballasters, these dockers who work in long shirts, without pants, to prevent the sand they wear ( bags weighing 50 to 90 kilos) do not penetrate between the fabric and the skin. Sometimes he meets the city's only diver, Pierre Martina, extricating himself from his heavy suit.

The first "people" appear

They drag from the lighthouse to the tower, then from the tower to the lighthouse, then from the lighthouse to the tower or on the promenade of the Jean-Réveille mole, which has just recovered from the wounds of war. The first generation "people" are there. The painter Paul Signac had paved the way at the beginning of the century.

Seduced by this small port which he discovered in 1892, Paul Signac installed his workshop there and produced several paintings, such as "the Port of Saint-Tropez" (1901-1902) ./ Fine Arts Images / Heritage Images / Getty  

The writer Colette and the actor Charles Vanel followed by buying houses around the gulf already invaded by the wildlife of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. American cinema is spreading again, and those who have missed Hollywood have late films to catch up on. "Gone with the Wind" was on the bill that year, François saw it with enthusiasm at the La Renaissance cinema, place des Lices. And he sees Clark Gable, leaving one of the three hotels in the city, and Errol Flynn, who has come to ask François' father to make him an awning, a canvas shelter, to protect his yacht, Zaca, from the tropezian sun.

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At 20, François is no longer old enough to bathe in the port, as he did when he was a child, diving between the boats to recover the silver coins that the rich sailors threw there, this port from where tugs came out the cars that the drunk tourists had let sink, this port which keeps the marks of the destruction by the Germans, dynamiting it at the time of fleeing.

Can you be 20 years old in 1950 without having sacrificed your carelessness in the shadows of war? François, child, knew the shame of the defeat and the pride of the "no" of General de Gaulle, to the political family of which he is always faithful. In the evening, at sea, his father listened to Radio-London (he still imitates the jingle) and reported the news to those who wanted to hear it. The Germans arrived in 1943. They fortified the port, which they then destroyed, making prisoners of the Red Army work.

When the Landing was announced, the German command asked for arms to cut trees and build "Rommel asparagus", large peaks on which the paratroopers and gliders trying to land were impaled. Like other adolescents, François had been requisitioned. “We didn't plant them very deeply. When there was mistral, they fell on their own. The end of the war brought its share of bombardments, rearguard battles. Anti-personnel bombs are dropped and one of his friends is injured. From 1945 to 1950, he saw his people rebuild this destroyed port, and do it in a Tropezian style, a style that belongs only to them. Not like in Toulon, where everything has been rectified anonymously.

Django Reinhardt's guitar

Nightclubs flourished all around. His favorite is L'Amiral, located near the statue of General Suffren. In the front door was cut out the silhouette of an admiral to which, as a child, he sometimes hung condoms he found on the floor and swelled with water. At 20, older and especially tipsy, he renewed the feat but changed victim, this time decorating the statue of Suffren. He and his friends made, by rubbing in the right place, "shine his ballots".

There, as at La Tour, another fashionable club, the young people try to "grab" the tourists, taking them out to drink and dance in the evening. He who continues to hate the "Boches" will nevertheless marry, eight years later, in 1958, a young German woman met here. Sixty-two years later, good luck, she is still by his side.

Major artists are already performing in these clubs. Although listening rather to Tino Rossi and Jean Sablon, François attends the concerts of Gilbert Bécaud and Mouloudji, intends to sing the guitar of Django Reinhardt. We don't drink whiskey there yet (it won't appear until 1951 or 1952) but "water fines". A large homosexual community ("especially women") may have its own places, it also frequents those, open to all. Discrimination, he does not remember.

"We looked at them as eccentric"

Sundays are reserved for fishing, most often with a longline (a line wrapped around a cork plate with several hooks hung on it). To do this, he looks for beach worms, the "esques". We cover the hook before launching it into the water, and we bring back mackerel, pageots, oblades and girelles if we don't get desessed… when the fish bite the bait without being caught. In the harbor, he catches octopuses, cuttlefish, sea urchins, sea urchin forests. “It was our caviar. "

But there is another goal to this quest for "esques": to see the nudists. Before the Logis-chef Cruchot and his brigade track them down in 1964 in "Le Gendarme à Saint-Tropez", naturists go to the then uncrowded beach of Pampelonne, where the famous now stands Club 55. On a bike, on these coaster bikes that the Germans abandoned in large numbers at the Liberation, the young men came to rinse their eyes. “We looked at them as wacky. We weren't used to nudity. But, very quickly, we realized that, contrary to the fantasies of some, it was absolutely nothing sexual! "

Once again, his 20 years dream of sailing. It is even towards this that he directs the other great adventure of this year 1950, that which exalts or terrifies the boys of his age: military service. He is not resistant to it. His preparation delighted him: driving Jeeps was a great pleasure. The Korean War begins. He follows a training in Mimizan, near Bordeaux, then asks to go to Casablanca and finds himself… in Toulon.

Roger Vadim chose the village to shoot, in 1956, "And God ... created the woman". He offers the leading role to his wife, a certain Brigitte Bardot./John Chillingworth / Hulton Archive / Getty  

The year 1950 therefore ended for him on board the oil tanker La Garonne. Each permission sees him return to Saint-Tropez, his village. Six years later, in the summer of 1956, a filmmaker from the Nouvelle Vague, Roger Vadim, came to film a film on the spot, "And God ... created woman". Alongside Jean-Louis Trintignant and Christian Marquand, young actors we are starting to talk about, the first role is attributed to the director's wife, a starlet by the name of Brigitte Bardot. And, that summer, the devil created Saint-Trop '.

To read to go further: "Saint-Tropez: history of local people", by Jean-Charles Meyer and Raymond Bernardi, Sutton.

READ ALSO> The summer of their 20 years: in 1945, this resistant dream of "building a tomorrows that sing"

Source: leparis

All life articles on 2020-07-18

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