Edgar Faure
Acting
Biography
Edgar Jean Faure (18 August 1908 – 30 March 1988) was a French politician, lawyer, essayist, historian and memoirist who served as Prime Minister of France in 1952 and again between 1955 and 1956. Prior to his election to the National Assembly for Jura under the Fourth Republic in 1946, he was a member of the French Committee of National Liberation (CFLN) in Algiers (1943–1944). A Radical, Faure was married to writer Lucie Meyer. In 1978, he was elected to the Académie Française. Faure was born in Béziers, Hérault, to a French Army doctor. He was nearsighted yet a brilliant student since his youth, earning a baccalauréat at 15, as well as a law degree at 19 in Paris. At 21 years of age he became a member of the bar association, the youngest lawyer in France to do so at the time. While living in Paris, he became active in Third Republic politics; he joined the Radical Party in 1929. During the German occupation of World War II, he joined the French Resistance in the Maquis. In 1942, he fled to Charles de Gaulle's headquarters in Algiers, where he was made head of the Provisional Government of the Republic's legislative department. At the end of the war, he served as French counsel for the prosecution at the Nuremberg Trials. In 1946, he was elected to the French Parliament as a Radical. While the popularity of his party declined to less than 10% of the total vote, none of the other parties was able to gain a clear majority. Therefore, early on, his party often played a disproportionately important role in the formation of governments. He thus led the cabinet in 1952 and from 1955 to 1956. Faure was a leader of the more conservative wing of the party, opposing the party's left, under Pierre Mendès France. Faure's views changed during the Fourth Republic; after initial opposition to the Fifth Republic (he voted against presidential election by universal suffrage in the 1962 referendum), he eventually became a Gaullist. The Gaullist Party, the Union for the New Republic, sent him on an unofficial mission to the People's Republic of China in 1963. In government he served in successive ministries: Agriculture (1966–1968), National Education (1968–1969, where he was responsible for pushing through reform of the universities) and Social Affairs (1972–1973). He declined to be a candidate at the 1974 presidential election, in which he supported Valéry Giscard d'Estaing against the Gaullist candidate, Jacques Chaban-Delmas. He had the reputation of a careerist and the nickname of "weathercock". He replied with humour, "it is not the weathercock which turns; it is the wind!" He was a member of the National Assembly for the Jura department from 1946 to 1958, as well as for the Doubs department from 1967 to 1980. He presided over the National Assembly from 1973 to 1978. He sought another term as President of the Assembly President in 1978 but was defeated by Chaban-Delmas. Faure was a Senator from 1959 to 1967 for Jura and again, in 1980, for Doubs. In 1978, he became a member of the Académie Française. ... Source: Article "Edgar Faure" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
Known For
Apostrophes was a live, weekly, literary, prime-time, talk show on French television created and hosted by Bernard Pivot. It ran for fifteen years (724 episodes) from January 10, 1975, to June 22, 1990, and was one of the most watched shows on French television (around 6 million regular viewers). It was broadcast on Friday nights on the channel France 2 (which was called "Antenne 2" from 1975 to 1992). The hourlong show was devoted to books, authors and literature. The format varied between one-on-one interviews with a single author and open discussions between four or five authors.
Apostrophes
"Bains de minuit" (Midnight Baths) was a late-night talk show hosted by Thierry Ardisson on La Cinq in the late 1980s, filmed in the famous Parisian nightclub Les Bains Douches. Ardisson interviewed personalities from the worlds of music, film, fashion, literature, sports, and politics, seated among the audience in the club's authentic atmosphere. The concept was to immerse these personalities in the world of nightlife and festivities, far removed from traditional television studios. The interviews were often irreverent and direct, with a provocative tone that would become Ardisson's trademark. He considers this show one of his freest and most audacious creations. It helped solidify his image as a cosmopolitan, transgressive, and highly scripted late-night talk show host.
Bains de Minuit
This exceptional, disturbing, and thought-provoking two-part documentary compares the atrocities committed by the Nazis as revealed during the Nuremberg trials to those committed by the French in Algeria and those done by the Americans in Vietnam. The four-hour epic questions the right of any country to pass self-righteous moral judgements upon the actions of another country.