The gardens of Montmartre, by Vincent van Gogh. 1886
During the 19th Century, when Montmartre resonated to the music of Offenbach and bathed in the colors of the Impressionists, it was not part of Paris. Montmartre was a separate municipality, a small village of vegetable gardens and windmills, some working, and some converted to places of entertainment.
When van Gogh painted this picture of Montmartre, fifteen years had passed since the glory and the tragedy and the infamy the village experienced in 1871.
In March 1871, with the Prussian armies still in France, the citizens of Paris rose up against the invaders. The National Guard defected from the surrendered French army and ran Paris as the Central Committee. The French Government, now based in Versailles, sent troops into Paris to disarm the citizens. This army refused to follow their orders and killed their own generals. The citizens of Paris elected a new municipal council, consisting of workers and intellectuals, and the Central Committee of the National Guard resigned.
From this point Paris was besieged and bombarded by the French Army, shooting captured communards. At the end of May the Versailles army entered Paris by the lightly protected Northern flank (then still held by Prussian forces).
The resistance was fierce and heroic, but futile. In the end the commander ordered a retreat to the hills of Montmartre, including a detachment of twenty-five women. They were soon overwhelmed and the forces from Versailles spent 8 days massacring as many as 30 000 civilians.
Vegetable Garden, Montmartre. Van Gogh. 1887
Hardly recognizable today, this was the peaceful village of gardens, windmills, dancers, and Impressionists, but it is a story seldom told. Joy returned, joy flowing from beauty, but we need to recognize the courage and the strength of a generation of dreamers.
Around the time that van Gogh and Renoir were living in Montmartre, the French government began building work the Sacre Coeur at the top of the hill, apparently to atone for the massacre of fifteen years earlier, but from these paintings we are clearly still in a rural setting. The Moulin Rouge, made so famous by Toulouse Lautrec, only opened in 1898, and in the Boulevard de Clichy. All that it has in common with the windmills of Montmartre is its name.
My fantasy is stimulated by the real cancan, the real dancers, and the real windmill-nightclubs. These are the subject of my screenplay, Quadrille.
