Depardieu on trial, and so is France. A cultural reckoning in the #MeToo era
PARIS — Gérard Depardieu once seemed larger than France itself. With his hulking frame, crooked nose, and volcanic charisma, he reigned over cinema for half a century — a national icon as familiar as the baguette.
But this week, the actor who starred in more than 230 films — and who inspired writer John Updike to lament, 'I think that I shall never view a French film without Depardieu' — sat slumped on a special orthopedic stool in a Paris courtroom.
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Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Swan Ball 2025: Nashville brings glamorous gowns and gussied-up guests, see our best photos
It was with great anticipation that guests for the 63rd Annual Swan Ball arrived at Edwin Warner Park to enjoy an evening benefiting the Friends of Warner Parks, and they were not disappointed. Co-chairs Melanie Baker and Laura Niewold, working with Dori Thornton Waller of The Social Office, left no detail unattended. The doors to a stunning glass Atrium were opened by members of the Swan Ball Dance Committee as ladies in gowns and gentlemen in white tie and tailcoat suits were offered champagne or a favorite cocktail along with passed appetizers from Kristen Winston Catering. Guests perused the eclectic jewelry from Swan Ball Jeweler Sidney Garber, where the first Swan Award, presented to Swan Ball founder Jane Anderson Dudley in 1970, was on display. (I admit here that I was unaware of the significance of the extraordinary award and actually commented that the gold swan with emerald eyes was my favorite piece…who knew!) The park, visible through the glass tent, provided a perfect backdrop as the evening began to blossom. As the dinner bell rang, guests moved into the dining room, centered by a magnificent tree laden with various shades of pink cherry blossoms. The tables were adorned with pink and white linens and anchored in the center with elegant pink florals from Jim Knestrick/Knestrick by Design, bringing oohs and aahs. It was, well, just breathtaking!Guests were seated to a summer cheese plate of Delice de Bourgogne, strawberry preserves, berries, buttered pecans, butter lettuce, and greens served with a vinaigrette and toasted baguette. Swan Ball Initiative, Inc. co-chairs Kathryn Carell Brown and Elizabeth Litterer Nichols welcomed guests and presented the 2025 Swan Award to philanthropist, jewelry designer, and art patron Brooke Garber Neidich. Brown and Nichols also thanked co-chairs Melanie Baker and Laura Niewold for their dedication to the ball, presenting them with a gift of appreciation. The evening continued with a dinner of filet of beef with French fingerlings and corn sauté, asparagus, and sugar snaps in maître d'hôtel butter. Lawrence Wine Estates provided the wine pairings, a 2019 Burgess Burnside Road Chardonnay and a 2018 Burgess Contadina Cabernet Sauvignon. Profiteroles with vanilla ice cream and chocolate brandy sauce completed the meal. After dinner, guests headed to the dance floor as they awaited Grammy Award winner Patti LaBelle, and at age 81, she still has that golden voice. I must add here that I had the opportunity to see LaBelle, as they say, back in the day (circa 1983) when she was at the top of the Disco Charts. My friends, she still has it and did not disappoint! Following LaBelle's performance, Blue Rhythm took the stage, energizing the crowd as guests continued to dance into the early morning hours. The 63rd Annual Swan Ball, A Legacy Blossoms, brought Nashville's Spring Social Season to a close, with all the grandeur and elegance ball guests have enjoyed since 1962. While the venue and the beneficiary of the Swan Ball have changed, the Swan Ball remains the Grand Dame of Nashville's social scene. This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Swan Ball in Nashville: See photos of Friends of Warner Parks benefit
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Yahoo
Marcel Ophuls, maker of The Sorrow and the Pity, which examined French collaboration with the Nazis
Marcel Ophuls, who has died aged 97, was a German-born documentary-maker who fled his homeland in the 1930s and spent much of his career interrogating the various legacies of the Second World War; his international breakthrough, the landmark The Sorrow and the Pity (Le Chagrin et la Pitié, 1969), revealed the extent to which his adopted France had collaborated with the Nazis. The son of the German-Jewish director Max Ophuls – known for such elaborate melodramas as La Ronde (1950) – Marcel began his career in film drama but achieved greater traction with complex, rigorous, meticulously edited non-fiction work. In documentaries such as The Memory of Justice (1976) and Hôtel Terminus (1988), the filmmaker set multiple testimonies side by side, sometimes corroborating, often contradicting, always inviting the spectator to shake any passivity and judge for themselves. In The Sorrow and the Pity, Ophuls spent four and a half hours of screen time – and many more hours of shooting – staking out the city of Clermont-Ferrand 'to analyse four years of collective destiny'. Patiently hearing from residents of all walks of life, the film picked insistently away at the Gaullist myth of a country united against an occupier, instead revealing two Frances at odds with one another – one resisting, the other collaborating. In France, Sorrow was denounced by conservative politicians as 'a prosecutorial film' and initially rejected for both theatrical and television distribution. After much legal wrangling, it finally opened in 1971, earning an Oscar nomination the following year, but it did not air on French television until 1981; a station director said the film had 'destroyed myths the French people still needed'. Ophuls subsequently made films on Vietnam (The Harvest of My Lai, 1970) and the Irish Troubles (A Sense of Loss, 1972), though the latter was rejected by the BBC. His personal favourite, The Memory of Justice, revisited the Nuremberg trials in the context of more recent conflicts in Algeria and Vietnam, though the project was again beset by lengthy and expensive legal challenges; Ophuls filed for bankruptcy shortly thereafter and spent a decade on the lecture circuit. He made a triumphant return, however, with the Oscar-winning Hôtel Terminus, on the life of the Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie. As free-roaming as its subject, unearthing material both disturbing and absurd, the film ends in one of documentary cinema's most extraordinary sequences, as Ophuls witnesses a chance encounter between a woman who as a child had seen her father carted away by the Gestapo and an elderly neighbour who had turned a blind eye to the same events. Though Hôtel Terminus sparked violent arguments at Cannes, the critic Roger Ebert admired its tenacity, calling it 'the film of a man who continues the conversation after others would like to move on to more polite subjects'. Yet as a characteristically combative Ophuls countered in 2004: 'I'm not obsessed. I just happen to think that the Holocaust was the worst thing that happened in the 20th century. Think I'm wrong?' He was born Hans Marcel Oppenheimer in Frankfurt on November 1 1927, the son of Max Oppenheimer and his actress wife Hildegard Wall. The family fled Germany for France in 1933, taking French citizenship in 1938, whereupon Max dropped the umlaut from his stage name, Ophüls; after the occupation they fled anew to Los Angeles, where Max began an unhappy spell as a studio filmmaker and Marcel attended Hollywood High and Occidental College. Marcel Ophuls completed military service in Japan before studying at UC Berkeley, taking US citizenship in 1950. Upon graduation he moved to Paris, briefly studying philosophy at the Sorbonne, before dropping out and working as an assistant director (initially under the pseudonym Marcel Wall, to dodge nepotism accusations) on John Huston's Moulin Rouge (1952) and his father's sweeping Lola Montès (1955). He made his directorial debut with a German television adaptation of John Mortimer's The Dock Brief (Das Pflichtmandat, 1958), before being tapped by François Truffaut to contribute to the portmanteau film Love at Twenty (L'amour à vingt ans, 1962). By now he was part of the New Wave set: Jeanne Moreau funded his detective comedy Banana Skin (Peau de Banane, 1963), but his fiction career came to a halt after the flop thriller Place Your Bets, Ladies (Faites vos jeux, mesdames, 1965). Ophuls moved into documentary, taking a job with the French broadcaster ORTF, where he railed against the prevailing state censorship; he was eventually fired in May 1968 after making a film deemed sympathetic to the student rioters, though by then he was well into post-production on The Sorrow and the Pity. After Hôtel Terminus, Ophuls suffered mixed fortunes. November Days (1990), on the subject of German reunification, played as part of the BBC's Inside Story strand, but The Troubles We've Seen (Veillées d'armes, 1994), on wartime journalism and the Bosnian conflict, failed to reach an audience, despite a César nomination in France. He worked more sparingly in the new millennium, completing Max par Marcel (2009), on his father's legacy, and the career overview Ain't Misbehavin' (Un voyageur, 2013), his final completed film; a later project on anti-Semitism and the Middle East, Des vérités désagréables (Unpleasant Truths), ran into financial and legal troubles and remained unfinished at the time of his death. During a visit to Israel in 2007, Ophuls attempted to define his life's work: 'I'm not a preacher, a judge or an adviser. I'm just a filmmaker trying now and then to make sense of crises... Life made me, unwillingly, an expert on 20th-century crises. I would've preferred to direct musicals.' He is survived by his wife Regine, née Ackermann, and three daughters. Marcel Ophuls, born November 1 1927, died May 24 2025 Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Indianapolis Star
13 hours ago
- Indianapolis Star
GOP's health care plan: We're all going to die, so whatever
If death and taxes are the only certainties, Joni Ernst is here to cut one and fast-track the other. 'We all are going to die," she said. You might think that's a line from a nihilistic French play. Or something a teenage goth said in Hot Topic. Or an epiphany from your stoner college roommate after he watched Interstellar at 3 a.m. But that was actually the Iowa Senator's God-honest response to concerns that slashing Medicaid to achieve President Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill' would lead to more preventable deaths. The full exchange at a May 30 town hall included one audience member shouting at the stage, 'People will die!' And Ernst responding, 'People are not — well, we all are going to die, so for heaven's sake.' That's not a health care policy — that's a horoscope for the terminally screwed. As you can imagine, the internet didn't love it, because losing your health should not trigger the equivalent of a shrug emoji from someone elected to serve the public good. But rather than walking it back, Ernst leaned in, filming a mock apology in a graveyard because nothing says, 'I care about your future,' like filming next to people who don't have one. Ernst's comments aren't just philosophical musings. She's justifying policy choices that cause real harm. If passed, this bill would, according to the Congressional Budget Office, remove health coverage for up to 7.6 million Americans. That's not just 'we all die someday' territory. That's 'some people will die soon and needlessly.' What makes this even more galling is that the people pushing these cuts have access to high-quality, taxpayer-subsidized healthcare. Congress gets the AAA, platinum, concierge-level government plan. Meanwhile, millions of Americans are told to try their luck with essential oils or YouTube acupuncture tutorials. Honestly, it felt more like performance art than policy: 'Sorry about your grandma getting kicked out of her assisted living facility. Please enjoy this scenic view of her future! LOL!' We're not asking you to defeat death, senator. Death is both inevitable and bipartisan. But there is a broad chasm between dying peacefully at 85 and dying in your 40's because your Medicaid plan disappeared and your GoFundMe didn't meet its goal. Fundamentally, governing is about priorities. A budget is a moral document. When a lawmaker tells you 'we're all going to die' in response to a policy choice, they're telling you 'I've made peace with your suffering as collateral damage.' And if a U.S. Senator can stand in a cemetery and joke about it, you have to wonder — who do our federal legislators think those graves are for? This isn't just about one comment or one bill. It's about a mindset that treats healthcare as a luxury rather than a right. If death is inevitable, then access to healthcare you can afford is what helps determine how long you have, how comfortably you live, and whether you get to watch your kids grow up. Healthcare isn't about escaping death. It's about dignity and quality of life while we are here. Ernst got one thing right: death will come for us all. But leadership, real leadership, is about helping people live as long and as well as they can before that day comes. You want to make jokes, Senator? Fine. But if your punchline is 'You're all going to die anyway,' don't be surprised when your constituents realize the joke's on them.
