In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

REVUES 193
Moulin Rouge, featuring the dancer Mistinguett and "the eighteen Hoffman
Girls." The competition includes "La Folie du Jour" (a vehicle for
Josephine Baker) at the Folies Bergeres; Jacquy Fragsy at the Concert
Mayol; and the current show at the new, particularly elegant Champs­
Elysees Music Hall (Annees-memoire, 86ff.). As a system of entertainment,
the revues concentrate in certain neighborhoods. In Paris, the
Champs-Elysees boulevard is becoming an alternative to Montmartre as
the classic entertainment district, and while Berlin's FriedrichstraSe, near
the river Spree, has long been notorious for its nightlife (Carle and
Martens, 177), a new center is emerging in the western part of the city,
around Kurfiirstendamm. All these revue companies in France, Germany,
and the United States compete for the most popular stars and the trendiest
groups in an international market. England seems to participate only
on the producer side. Hermann Haller hires the London-based Tiller
Girls away from Ziegfeld's Follies (Jelavich, 175). Berlin's Nelson Theater
loses to the Folies-Bergeres in an intense bidding war for Josephine
Baker. [see Dancing] Despite the often eccentric contents of their programs,
revues have become a normal element in the everyday life of big
cities. The proletarian uprising in Fritz Lang's film Metropolis is directed
against Yoshiwara, the city'S "pleasure center," where "great curtains
hang from the ceiling" and "the gilded youth of Metropolis dance
wildly" (117). And in Jules Supervielle's novel Le valeur d'enfants (The
Man Who Stole Children), theaters-along with railway stations and
crowded streets-are among the scenes that trigger the criminal imagination
of the main character, Colonel Bigua, who acquires a family by
abducting children: "At the music hall, when a family of trapeze artists
was announced, Bigua thought, 'It may be my daughter who's about to
come on stage'" (72).
What are the elements that distinguish revues from other spectacles,
such as cabaret acts, operettas, and more traditional forms of theater?
How does this type of entertainment attract the large crowds of wealthy
spectators that are essential for its survival? Its most important element-which
also figures largely in the fantasies and appetites of its
audience-is the display of half-nude female bodies. In Germany and
France, complicated legal battles have produced a compromise which,
while acknowledging "artistic value" in the nudity of "living pictures"
that reproduce classical paintings and historical scenes, prohibits female
dancers from baring their breasts: "Women dancers must cover com-