Albert Barillé's series, "Once upon a time... man" is one of the best, if not the best educational series in matters of history. Combining entertainment and real education, it managed to make history popular among young children during its original release, and still does. Still, the moment where it really shines is when it gets serious. Its penultimate episode, "Les années folles" (The crazy years) has a seriousness almost unheard of for a children's programme. Like the age it describes, it starts off full of hope, but sinks into depressing pessimism in its last, frightening sequence.
The episode starts by showing us one of the most important human inventions: the aeroplane. It is, indeed, true that, for a humanity that had mostly stayed on the ground for thousands of years, the ability to transcend this ground and reach the skies was something incredible. The aeroplanes develop and now the notion of flying becomes a reality, stops being the naïve dream of a few pioneers.
Together with progress comes war. The war that comes in this case, The Great War, uses aviation in all purposes, from scouting missions to bombings of cities. Most importantly, the concept of the dogfight is born; two planes fight in a modernised duel. Because this mode of combat has historical roots, it also creates heroes. The protagonists of the series, Pierre and Le Gros, are two of these modern duelers. Along them is a young pilot named Robert, who saves Pierre's life during a dogfight and thus becomes a close friend to him.
When the war ends, these heroes have to adjust to society. They do so successfully. Being members of a Lost Generation, they no longer bear the seriousness and paranoic nature of war. All they want is frivolity, fun. The society agrees, and everything becomes different. The barriers of the pre-war era are lifted. Sexual freedom increases, gender roles change, women now being more independent and dressing in more gender-neutral fashion, with short hair. In the cabarets, women dressed in tuxedos and top hats perform their songs with a seductiveness stemming not only from their beauty,but also from their provocative nature.
Not only is this new society obsessed with the new, it is also fixated on the different. Singers of foreign origin become popular in France, Joséphine Baker being the most obvious example. It is a France that is now changing rapidly, and the wider world does too. In the cinema, new stars like Rudolph Valentino, personify this new age of ambiguous gender roles, while the flying pioneers of the past find successors in the face of Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart. The latter is also the model of the new woman; brave, intelligent and, most importantly, doing a stereotypically masculine job, she inspires other women to become aviators, one of those being Robert's girlfriend, Pierette.
Unfortunately, Lindbergh's voyage symbolically signifies the end of this age of transcendence. For, two years after his return, the Stock market in Wall Street crashes. In the words of the narrator, "all hope for peace is lost". Because the recession spreads on the rest of the world. Forty million people become unemployed. Already facing political instability (America's refusal to join the League of Nations, Mussolini's rise in Italy, Stalin's reign in Russia), the world sinks in chaos.
One leader takes advantage of this chaos to impose his evil ideology over the world. I'm talking, of course, about Adolf Hitler. His thirst for power is limitless, and France and England do nothing to stop him, prefering to deal with their own political problems, France facing, too, a resurgence, albeit an unsuccessful one, of the right. Having no real enemies, Hitler annexes Czechoslovakia, and then Austria. In 1939, he takes the big step, and signs a non-agression pact with Stalin. This enables him to invade Poland.
This is the beginning of the most destructive war human history has ever witnessed, one that would leave behind fifty million dead, and would end with the use of the most destructive weapon ever made, the atomic bomb. As "Sarabande" plays, we witness this catastrophe ourselves, seeing everything that this epoch of freedom built, being destroyed by the bombs of a regime that never embraced this revolutionary way of thinking that the 1920's promoted. We learn that six million Jews were slain in the name of hate. We learn that fifty nations took part in this war. Only twenty one years after the end of "The war to end all wars", humanity is at it again.
It is this sequence that makes this episode so frightening, so serious, that makes one think. It stops having children as its target. For, children would not be able to understand the deeper motives of this conflict, as explained by the narrator. Without these motives, the war becomes just another conflict, loses all of its significance, and the viewers don't see the factors differentiating it from other wars. This war paved the way for an age of piece, based, according to Barillé, on "the balance of terror". The Cold War was surely such an age, the nuclear threat being a part of everyday life.
Every time I watch "Les années folles", I am filled with a relentless pessimism. I feel pity that an age characterised by freedom was consumed by an oppressive regime, by a total war. I feel sad for all those that lost their lives fighting against this regime. Above all, I ask myself if this can happen again. Can our age of prosperity be disrupted by such a conflict? Can we learn from the mistakes of the past, and evade it? Will our years be remembered as a period of short-lived harmony, or as one of freedom and happiness? Will they be "Les années folles" or "Les années malheurs"? These are questions still pending to be answered. The last page has not been written of this story that started with "Once upon a time.. man".
The episode starts by showing us one of the most important human inventions: the aeroplane. It is, indeed, true that, for a humanity that had mostly stayed on the ground for thousands of years, the ability to transcend this ground and reach the skies was something incredible. The aeroplanes develop and now the notion of flying becomes a reality, stops being the naïve dream of a few pioneers.
Together with progress comes war. The war that comes in this case, The Great War, uses aviation in all purposes, from scouting missions to bombings of cities. Most importantly, the concept of the dogfight is born; two planes fight in a modernised duel. Because this mode of combat has historical roots, it also creates heroes. The protagonists of the series, Pierre and Le Gros, are two of these modern duelers. Along them is a young pilot named Robert, who saves Pierre's life during a dogfight and thus becomes a close friend to him.
When the war ends, these heroes have to adjust to society. They do so successfully. Being members of a Lost Generation, they no longer bear the seriousness and paranoic nature of war. All they want is frivolity, fun. The society agrees, and everything becomes different. The barriers of the pre-war era are lifted. Sexual freedom increases, gender roles change, women now being more independent and dressing in more gender-neutral fashion, with short hair. In the cabarets, women dressed in tuxedos and top hats perform their songs with a seductiveness stemming not only from their beauty,but also from their provocative nature.
Not only is this new society obsessed with the new, it is also fixated on the different. Singers of foreign origin become popular in France, Joséphine Baker being the most obvious example. It is a France that is now changing rapidly, and the wider world does too. In the cinema, new stars like Rudolph Valentino, personify this new age of ambiguous gender roles, while the flying pioneers of the past find successors in the face of Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart. The latter is also the model of the new woman; brave, intelligent and, most importantly, doing a stereotypically masculine job, she inspires other women to become aviators, one of those being Robert's girlfriend, Pierette.
Unfortunately, Lindbergh's voyage symbolically signifies the end of this age of transcendence. For, two years after his return, the Stock market in Wall Street crashes. In the words of the narrator, "all hope for peace is lost". Because the recession spreads on the rest of the world. Forty million people become unemployed. Already facing political instability (America's refusal to join the League of Nations, Mussolini's rise in Italy, Stalin's reign in Russia), the world sinks in chaos.
One leader takes advantage of this chaos to impose his evil ideology over the world. I'm talking, of course, about Adolf Hitler. His thirst for power is limitless, and France and England do nothing to stop him, prefering to deal with their own political problems, France facing, too, a resurgence, albeit an unsuccessful one, of the right. Having no real enemies, Hitler annexes Czechoslovakia, and then Austria. In 1939, he takes the big step, and signs a non-agression pact with Stalin. This enables him to invade Poland.
This is the beginning of the most destructive war human history has ever witnessed, one that would leave behind fifty million dead, and would end with the use of the most destructive weapon ever made, the atomic bomb. As "Sarabande" plays, we witness this catastrophe ourselves, seeing everything that this epoch of freedom built, being destroyed by the bombs of a regime that never embraced this revolutionary way of thinking that the 1920's promoted. We learn that six million Jews were slain in the name of hate. We learn that fifty nations took part in this war. Only twenty one years after the end of "The war to end all wars", humanity is at it again.
It is this sequence that makes this episode so frightening, so serious, that makes one think. It stops having children as its target. For, children would not be able to understand the deeper motives of this conflict, as explained by the narrator. Without these motives, the war becomes just another conflict, loses all of its significance, and the viewers don't see the factors differentiating it from other wars. This war paved the way for an age of piece, based, according to Barillé, on "the balance of terror". The Cold War was surely such an age, the nuclear threat being a part of everyday life.
Every time I watch "Les années folles", I am filled with a relentless pessimism. I feel pity that an age characterised by freedom was consumed by an oppressive regime, by a total war. I feel sad for all those that lost their lives fighting against this regime. Above all, I ask myself if this can happen again. Can our age of prosperity be disrupted by such a conflict? Can we learn from the mistakes of the past, and evade it? Will our years be remembered as a period of short-lived harmony, or as one of freedom and happiness? Will they be "Les années folles" or "Les années malheurs"? These are questions still pending to be answered. The last page has not been written of this story that started with "Once upon a time.. man".
