French Revolution

Imagine the players of revolutionary France in late 20th century San Francisco. But in this telling, Marie Antoinette becomes a 450-pound, ex-pastry chef, now CopySmart employee, named Esmerelda Van Twinkle. Louis XVI is Jasper Winslow, a restaurant coupon salesman who roams Market Street and keeps Esmerelda supplied with the discounts that enable her gluttony. During a seduction facilitated by a Zoogman Bakery’s dessert masterpiece: “triple chocolate truffle swirl cheesecake, with Heath bar crumbs and caramel roses on top,’’ Jasper impregnates Esmerelda.

This full-length portrait study came out of storage at Harvard only a few weeks back. It’s too stiffly sumptuous to qualify as great art. But as a historical document, it’s hard to beat. Europe’s most charismatic leader painted at the height of his powers, in full imperial regalia, by his favorite painter, Jacques-Louis David: How can you not want to look? David was the most accomplished, the most talented, the most influential painter of his day. He was also a strange cross between principled ideologue and shameless Machiavellian.

This full-length portrait study came out of storage at Harvard only a few weeks back. It’s too stiffly sumptuous to qualify as great art. But as a historical document, it’s hard to beat. Europe’s most charismatic leader painted at the height of his powers, in full imperial regalia, by his favorite painter, Jacques-Louis David: How can you not want to look? David was the most accomplished, the most talented, the most influential painter of his day. He was also a strange cross between principled ideologue and shameless Machiavellian.

Imagine the players of revolutionary France in late 20th century San Francisco. But in this telling, Marie Antoinette becomes a 450-pound, ex-pastry chef, now CopySmart employee, named Esmerelda Van Twinkle. Louis XVI is Jasper Winslow, a restaurant coupon salesman who roams Market Street and keeps Esmerelda supplied with the discounts that enable her gluttony. During a seduction facilitated by a Zoogman Bakery’s dessert masterpiece: “triple chocolate truffle swirl cheesecake, with Heath bar crumbs and caramel roses on top,’’ Jasper impregnates Esmerelda.

A dingy, mordantly comic "Rashomon" for the post-Soviet era, "12:08 East of Bucharest" is another sign that Romanian cinema is on the move. Writer-director Corneliu Porumboiu's tale of small-town truth and reconciliation -- or nervous avoidance of same -- is told with the slowpoke realism of last year's "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu," but like that film it finds political echoes in the smallest of everyday occurrences. That its characters don't is reason for hollow laughter. The film starts off so aimlessly that one critic at the screening I attended impatiently stormed off 30 minutes...

What's in a name? If you're Dr. Hector Carpentier, an impoverished young physician in 1818 Paris, everything. As this intricate historical mystery opens, Carpentier believes he has recognized the neighborhood beggar, Bardou, and is taken aback when the apparently starving cripple turns out to be the legendary, and able-bodied, detective Eugène François Vidocq in disguise. Vidocq has it wrong, too. The man into whose home he has inveigled his way is a different Carpentier.

PARIS - After two centuries of misbehavior, a puppet named Guignol is still tweaking authority figures and getting away with it. Guignol began making mischief in 1808, and celebrates his 200th birthday this year. The puppet remains a French icon, with at least 10 Guignol theaters for children in Paris. The word "guignol" has entered the French language as a synonym for clown. "The Guignols" is also a long-running TV show for adult viewers, a satire with life-size puppets that comments on the public personalities and events of the day. What accounts for the longevity of this...

The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World; 1788-1800 , By Jay Winik, Harper, 659 pp., illustrated, $29.95 In the 12 years between 1788 and 1800, one revolution occurred, a second was put down, and a third was solidified. These three events - in, respectively, France, Poland, and the United States - and their role in creating the world of two centuries yet to come, are the subject of "The Great Upheaval," an authoritative study by the historian Jay Winik.

There is a special place in heaven for good history books under 300 pages. This one has earned its spot in those Elysian fields. "Napoleon and the Hundred Days" is a superior read about one of Europe's wilder rides -- the brief period in the spring of 1815 between the escape of the little Corsican from exile on the Mediterranean island of Elba and his defeat at the hands of the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo. Author Stephen Coote, who is British, does a marvelous job weaving the military events with the politics and culture of the period, including a fine précis...

WILLAMSTOWN -- The story of Jacques-Louis David's life and art is nearly as epic as his vast history paintings. It's a rollicking tale of revolution and imprisonment, myth-making and humility, power and passion. The father of Neoclassicism, born in 1748, had already established himself as a bold and visionary artist by the time of the French Revolution. Works such as his hallmark "Oath of the Horatii" (1784) defied the sweet and fusty fashion of court painting, championing a more virile and theatrical form that harkened back to the physical ideals and themes of ancient Greece and Rome.

What's in a name? If you're Dr. Hector Carpentier, an impoverished young physician in 1818 Paris, everything. As this intricate historical mystery opens, Carpentier believes he has recognized the neighborhood beggar, Bardou, and is taken aback when the apparently starving cripple turns out to be the legendary, and able-bodied, detective Eugène François Vidocq in disguise. Vidocq has it wrong, too. The man into whose home he has inveigled his way is a different Carpentier.

PARIS - After two centuries of misbehavior, a puppet named Guignol is still tweaking authority figures and getting away with it. Guignol began making mischief in 1808, and celebrates his 200th birthday this year. The puppet remains a French icon, with at least 10 Guignol theaters for children in Paris. The word "guignol" has entered the French language as a synonym for clown. "The Guignols" is also a long-running TV show for adult viewers, a satire with life-size puppets that comments on the public personalities and events of the day. What accounts for the longevity of this...

The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World; 1788-1800 , By Jay Winik, Harper, 659 pp., illustrated, $29.95 In the 12 years between 1788 and 1800, one revolution occurred, a second was put down, and a third was solidified. These three events - in, respectively, France, Poland, and the United States - and their role in creating the world of two centuries yet to come, are the subject of "The Great Upheaval," an authoritative study by the historian Jay Winik.

A dingy, mordantly comic "Rashomon" for the post-Soviet era, "12:08 East of Bucharest" is another sign that Romanian cinema is on the move. Writer-director Corneliu Porumboiu's tale of small-town truth and reconciliation -- or nervous avoidance of same -- is told with the slowpoke realism of last year's "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu," but like that film it finds political echoes in the smallest of everyday occurrences. That its characters don't is reason for hollow laughter. The film starts off so aimlessly that one critic at the screening I attended impatiently stormed...

Something astonishing happened over the second two-thirds of the 19th century and first decade of the 20th, something so unprecedented as to come almost immediately to be taken for granted. It was, quite simply, this: Optics and engineering combined to reinvent seeing. One would have to go back to Lascaux and the first cave paintings to find a comparable shift in visual perception. The most obvious form this reinvention took was the motion picture. Yet the movies only marked the culmination of a decades-long series of developments that included dioramas and flip books (the latter was patented as...

WILLAMSTOWN -- The story of Jacques-Louis David's life and art is nearly as epic as his vast history paintings. It's a rollicking tale of revolution and imprisonment, myth-making and humility, power and passion. The father of Neoclassicism, born in 1748, had already established himself as a bold and visionary artist by the time of the French Revolution. Works such as his hallmark "Oath of the Horatii" (1784) defied the sweet and fusty fashion of court painting, championing a more virile and theatrical form that harkened back to the physical ideals and themes of ancient Greece...

Something astonishing happened over the second two-thirds of the 19th century and first decade of the 20th, something so unprecedented as to come almost immediately to be taken for granted. It was, quite simply, this: Optics and engineering combined to reinvent seeing. One would have to go back to Lascaux and the first cave paintings to find a comparable shift in visual perception. The most obvious form this reinvention took was the motion picture. Yet the movies only marked the culmination of a decades-long series of developments that included dioramas and flip books (the latter was patented as recently as 1868)

There is a special place in heaven for good history books under 300 pages. This one has earned its spot in those Elysian fields. "Napoleon and the Hundred Days" is a superior read about one of Europe's wilder rides -- the brief period in the spring of 1815 between the escape of the little Corsican from exile on the Mediterranean island of Elba and his defeat at the hands of the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo. Author Stephen Coote, who is British, does a marvelous job weaving the military events with the politics and culture of the period, including a fine précis of the French...