“Ulysses – The Pleasure of Discovery”, broadcast on Saturday 30 April at 21.25 on Rai 1, tells the story of Paris’ Belle Époque. It was then that cinema was invented, but according to the Lumière brothers, it was not destined to have a future. Declaring they were wrong will be one of the greatest actresses in cinema history: Catherine Deneuve, special guest of the episode. They were years of great changes in all areas, especially in art with Monet, Renoir, Degas, Pissaro, Caillebotte. Giulio Scarpati will make her better known in the role of her impresario Paul Durand-Ruel. Her canvases at the Musée d’Orsay also depict the great transformation that Paris under Napoleon III experienced. Together with his prefect, George Haussmann, they will change the face of the city and create a visual grandeur destined for long-term success. All the fervor of the Belle Époque reigns on the Haussmann avenues, men in black top hats and raised mustaches and women showing a new femininity because the world around them is new. People go to the Opéra Garnier to meet and seduce, not just to see the shows. Garnier’s is an iconic building that Alberto Angela will tell about impressive spaces such as the beautiful Foyer de la Danse. Edgar Degas immortalized the dancers warming up here. In the Petit Palais it will be possible to relive the amazement of the many millions of visitors to the Universal Exhibition of 1900. Ulysses also stops at the Samaritaine Warehouses, a veritable arsenal of beauty and at the most emblematic place of the time: the Moulin Rouge. From there came Offenbach’s unmistakable “can can” and between the deafening roar of the music, the absinthe fumes, the laughter and the hugs, no one was aware of the precarious political balance that pervaded Europe. The Great War will ensure that everyone wakes up from the Belle Époque dream. Like all dreams, this blurred outline, a light both beguiling and hostile at the same time, has a feeling of happiness that is as concrete as it is ephemeral.
