Bastille Day 2015

July 14, 2015

     We English speakers may call July 14 Bastille Day, but to the French it's just La Fete Nationale.

     A highlight of the day is the parade featuring all the French military services and paramilitary services.  All sorts of technical skills are on display during the broadcast, which tests the ingenuity of various newscasters: Michel Drucker flew his own Tigre helicopter alongside the squadron that starts the aerial display; another newscaster, a young woman, donned scuba gear to describe how underwater demoliton experts attached to the French army disarmed a bomb.  The voice portion was not perfect, but it was impressive to see.

     And no Fete Nationale would be complete without fireworks.  The French are expert pyrotechnicians, with a long history of making elaborate fireworks displays. (The first fireworks display in France took place in 1615 upon the marriage of Louis XIII to Anne of Austria.)   In little Caunes there was a fireworks display last night, as the big fireworks display is tonight in Carcassonne.  Caunes' fireworks were lovely, multi-colored and in interrupted sequence, a pleasure to watch from my bedroom window.  They were every bit as enjoyable as fireworks I've seen in New York.

     I had dinner with a friend tonight and although we had planned to watch the fireworks from her terrace, I was too tired after three hikes with Beau in one day.  (My way of celebrating La Fete Nationale.)  So I came home turned on the television and Voila! The concert on the Champs de Mars by the Eiffel Tower was ending and the fireworks starting.

     "Yes", every French village worth its salt, every town, every large city has fireworks on July 14, including Paris.  Except that in Paris on Bastille Day, the Eiffel Tower is the backdrop for an hour's worth of son et lumiere plus fireworks.

     And here is where the inventiveness of the French in matters of artistic really comes through.  I cannot describe within the limitations of my vocabulary how astonishing the patterns the fireworks designers managed to arrange were, each built around a particular song and lighting changes on the Eiffel Tower.  Fireworks shot out of the Tower's different levels as if it were a vertical machine gun, words appeared , iridescent colors poured out of the tower, like a rocket ship, the towers appeared about to take off at one point, and all the meanwhile Catherine Wheels, cloudbursts, shooting stars and pyrotechnically created "snowflakes" framed the tower.  The music included the theme from "Skyfall" and other popular hits, a choir of whistles played La Marseillaise, then the music switched to salsa.  At one point the skies over Paris were drenched in colored clouds of smoke.  For a moment, the image of a bicycle rider (an homage to the Tour de France) appeared, and the tower lit up, lights glistening everywhere, the Tower shimmering like a dancer at the Folies Burgers.

      And then a rocket, trailing a flume of smoke shot up to the theme from "Star Wars" and white rockets exploded everywhere.  The End.

     But don't just read about it here: find it on YouTube and see for yourself.