La Folle de Chaillot

by Jean Giraudoux

A la terrasse de Chez Francis, place de l'Alma, quatre louches personnages complotent de mettre la ville en coupe rA(c)glA(c)e. Dans un moment, le jeune Pierre doit dynamiter la maison de l'ingA(c)nieur qui interdit les forages du sous-sol parisien grA[ce auxquels ils espA]rent appA[ter les A gogos A. Mais Pierre renonce. C'est son suicide manquA(c) qui apprend A AurA(c)lie, la Folle de Chaillot, sublime clocharde, que le monde n'est ni si beau ni si pur qu'elle veut bien le croire. Alors elle dA(c)cide de le purger de ses escrocs, de ses profiteurs. Elle les attirera avec l'annonce d'un jaillissement de pA(c)trole et les fera disparaA(R)tre dans l'oubliette dont 1'Egoutier lui a rA(c)vA(c)lA(c) l'existence.
La Folle de Chaillot, piA]ce posthume, est un des derniers et des meilleurs exemples de l'art de Jean Giraudoux qui sait allier l'humour et la poA(c)sie A un sens aigu du rA(c)el.A

Genres: Plays, Theatre, Drama, France, Fiction, Classics, Comedy

160 pages, Pocket Book

First published January 1, 1945

About the author

Greek mythology or Biblical stories base dramas, such as Electra (1937), of French writer Hippolyte Jean Giraudoux, who also wrote several novels. He fathered Jean-Pierre Giraudoux.

People consider this French novelist, essayist, diplomat. and playwright among the most important French dramatists of the period between World War I and World War II. They note his work for its stylistic elegance and poetic fantasy. The relationship between man and woman or some unattainable ideal in some cases dominates themes of Giraudoux .

Léger Giraudoux, father of Jean Giraudoux, worked for the ministry of transport. Giraudoux studied at the Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux and upon graduation traveled extensively in Europe. After his return to France in 1910, he accepted a position with the ministry of foreign affairs.
With the outbreak of World War I, he served with distinction and in 1915 became the first writer ever to be awarded the wartime Legion of Honour.

He married in 1918 and in the subsequent inter-war period produced the majority of his writing. He first achieved literary success through his novels, notably Siegfried et le Limousin (1922) and Eglantine (1927). An ongoing collaboration with actor and theater director Louis Jouvet, beginning in 1928 with Jouvet's radical streamlining of Siegfried for the stage, stimulated his writing. But it is through his plays that gained him international renown. He became well known in the English-speaking world largely because of the award-winning adaptations of his plays by Christopher Fry (The Trojan War Will Not Take Place) and Maurice Valency (The Madwoman of Chaillot, Ondine, The Enchanted, The Apollo of Bellac).

Giraudoux served as a juror with Florence Meyer Blumenthal in awarding the Prix Blumenthal, a grant given between 1919 and 1954 to painters, sculptors, decorators, engravers, writers, and musicians.

He is buried in the Cimetière de Passy in Paris.

His son, Jean-Pierre Giraudoux, was also a writer.

Reviews

[Lyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

“I remember a time when a cabbage could sell itself by being a cabbage. Nowadays it’s no good being a cabbage – unless you have an agent and pay him a commission. Nothing is free anymore to sell itself or give itself away. These days, Countess, every cabbage has its pimp.”

Read this as a part of a college english class and actually saw it performed.

I liked the play better when I read it than when I saw it, which seems odd even today, maybe I had a different vision of the action than what I saw. Giraudoux' symbolism was the best part of the play, though my direction would have been different.

“Nothing is ever so wrong in this world that a sensible woman can't set it right in the course of an afternoon.”

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[Mona · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this years ago, when I was in school I think. I remember loving it. I don’t remember much else about it.

[Anabelle Bays · Rating 3 out of 5]

We had the read through today.

WTF is this even abt

It’s fine

Ugh

Uh so I’m in this play. I need my reading goal to go up. This counts.

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Huge cast, over forty, my favorite character the trash-picker, Chiffonier, along with the deaf-mute mimic and the Mad-woman, saner than all the rest, a great, full part according to an actress learning her lines (on Goodreads). Amusing throughout, begins with the President of a business inviting the Baron onto the board, insulted when asked what the object of the business was. The President, “None of my board has ever asked me that. To start a business, you don’t need a purpose, only a name. We appeal to the imagination of our underwriters.”* (In the Torfou version, it’s a Baroness.)
The central plot could not be more relevant to Global Warming and oil drilling in US National Forests, as well as offshore. The Mayor and others in authority plan to pull down Paris to dig for oil—so appropriate to our US head and our National Parks, as well as the coastal preserves. Even the current US theme of the false over the true—undermining the age-old impartiality between “la réel e la faux,” as the Mayor / Syndic says (122).
An Unknown man arrives, offers to give the business a title…for some needed funds. The name, Bankers Union of the Parisian Subsoil. He’s an oil prospector. La Folle is sensibly opposed to drilling under Paris, in Chaillot, so the play dramatizes a battle of good and evil.
The drilling investors are described as moustached, fat, dressed in suits though not very good ones. They are the ones ushered down into the pit at the end, though a few are rescued, such as those who saved various animals—a certain dog Pointer, a rare bird on Reunion Island, Indian Ocean (123).
The Torfou theater filmed its production in 2014, where Irma the plongeuse/ dishwasher, “un ange” confronts a statuesque deaf-mute in heels, stage R, who is also “un ange” (unlike the text). The Chiffonier goes around picking up papers thrown on the cafe floor, but is later accused of greed because he finds a gold ingot in some trash, with which he buys a railroad, the Kremlin-Bicêtre to Paris. He has spent mornings for three years outside the house of Zaharov, a Russian munitions maker who mainly throws out flowers, red carnations perhaps. (An English munitions maker is Undershaft in Shaw’s Major Barbara.)
Accused of loving money, the Chiffonier responds, “No, money loves me.” (Also like Undershaft ). “I adore orgies, casinos, even geraniums, but not l’argent. Money doesn’t love distinction, and I am vulgaire. Il n’aime pas intelligence, je suis idiot”(103).
He’s enlisted to defend the title character, the Madwoman (and patron) of Chaillot, because lawyers are the opposite of their clients, the lawyers who defend killers wouldn’t hurt a fly. Told that the trial has begun, the Trash-picker swears, “dire la vérité, toute la vérité,” Josephine corrects him, “You’re not a witness! You’re the lawyer! You need every ruse to defend your clients—not truth! Mensonge, calomnie. (101)
Aurelie, La Folle, quizzes how the Chiffonier has avoided speaking of oil with the oil-drillers, He answers, “ Just as I avoid talking of oil, cotton, or bananas, or rubbers, all you need are a ten-franc note and two 100-sous pieces. Vive l’argent!”(107).
The Trumpster-oilmen are led down into a pit to examine drilling, but of course they are polished off in quick order. The play ends with the sane ones triumphant, Trash-picker happy to be friends with the fisherman who’ll bring his favorite food, and the Folle de Chaillot asking for chicken bones and gizzard for her cat.

* The Business President has made sure that the vendors of shoelaces have the shoeless for clients, the sellers of ties, those without shirts, etc. (32n26).

I read in the Dell edition, ed T Bishop, 1963. Pagination from that.

[Alex (The Scribe Owl) · Rating 4 out of 5]

4/5 stars

[Serena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love this girl!!!!!

[Steve]

M. Giraudoux offered a neat suggestion for what society might do with those devoted to the narrow pursuit of wealth, anticipating by more than five decades today’s lithium SPAC crypto rocket platform gig app disruptive hype where unprecedented riches are to be had for the lucky few who understand how to array properly those magic words and then to deliver that package to ecstatic investors. Executives visit the café terrace at Chez Francis on the Place de l’Alma in Paris. The shares of their newly formed company have been performing spectacularly, fostering handsome trading profits. The problem is their business has no business, nor does it have a suitable name. Along comes a character, a prospector, with the idea to drill for oil beneath Paris and a corporate name, International Substrate of Paris, Inc. Their problem is solved.

The president of this enterprise usefully explained the essence of the promotional art to his board member, Baron Tommard:

My dear Baron, do you imagine that when a subscriber buys a share of stock, he has any idea of getting behind a counter or digging a ditch? A stock certificate is not a tool, like a shovel, or a commodity, like a pound of cheese. What we sell a customer is not a share in a business, but a view of the Elysian Fields. A financier is a creative artist. Our function is to stimulate the imagination. We are poets!

I remember a commercial that aired about a year ago where a well-known actor touted cryptocurrency with the line, “Fortune favors the brave.” Imagination indeed. What’s changed through the decades, really? Fortunately in this tale, Countess Aurelia, the Madwoman of Chaillot, got wise to this plan to drill for Parisian oil and concocted a nifty solution to rid the world of the menacing fortune seekers and their entourage. I can’t be too critical. After all, I worked among the financial profiteers for more than a quarter century, though those days are now long behind.

[Czarny Pies · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cette pièce est bien curieuse. Écrite sous l'occupation allemande, elle raconte l'histoire de la découverte d'un puits de pétrole dans le 16e arrondissement de Paris. La vieille folle du quartier mobilise les gens du 16e afin de s'assurer que le pétrole sert le bien de la société. Elle trouve un stratagème rocambolesque pour empêcher des capitalistes sans scrupule a mettre leurs mains sur l'or noir de Chaillot.
Je ai vu une représentation de cette pièce loufoque au Grand Théâtre de Québec lors de la première grande crise de pétrole. À cette èpoque elle semblait même posséder une certaine actualité. Giraudoux comprend bien le dynamique du théâtre. Pour cette raison, la Folle de Chaillot marche bien sur la scène. Il ne vaut pas la peine de la lire. Les pièces de théâtre exister pour la scène et non pour le Kindle.

[Scott Fuchs · Rating 5 out of 5]

It only gets greater with time! 'GREED' in 1948 and [would you believe] even mnore greed in 2012. In 62 years this li'l ole orb refuses to learn; adamantly refuses to learn.

Oddly enough,although there have been numerous other editions, solely and in anthologies of this masterpiece, none are listed on this data page

[Lisajean · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although Giraudoux deals with themes typical of Theatre of the Absurd, he does so using conventional theatrical forms and so his plays fall a bit flat. The Madwoman of Chaillot has moments of humor and of poignancy but overall is too facetious to be really effective.

[Tracy Schillemore · Rating 4 out of 5]

I saw this once and it sealed the deal that I would act. The part of the Madwoman is awesome.

[Το Άθχημο γατί του θενιόρ Γκουαναμίρου · Rating 5 out of 5]

Μας χρειάζεται επειγόντως μια τρελή του Σαγιό. Υπέροχο έργο. Τόσο επίκαιρο. Kι ας γράφτηκε στα 1943.

[Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

J’ai eu beaucoup de mal à rentrer dedans mais ensuite j’ai adoré!

[Stuart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Somewhere on the border of absurdity and poetry lies this classic play. Though the bulk of it concerns the madwoman of the title, her fellow madwomen, and a ragpicker mystic and clown, the show has a cast of dozens, including a pair of lovers and a trio of harrumphing businessmen, helping to create the world of post-war Paris in all its charm, then pitting it against the rising tide of entrepreneurial capitalism and greed that would destroy the bohemian ideals of freedom, love, and beauty. It's a little hard to see how this show would hold up before the cynicism of modern audiences, who might also balk at the somewhat ruthless way the madwoman and her cohorts condemn almost a dozen people to death, but much of its subject matter still feels surprisingly relevant, and there's no doubt that the Madwoman and the Ragpicker are excellent roles, even if everyone else feels a little bit there to fill the pages. A thought provoking comedy with more than just a little edge and some real veins of darkness, it's a period piece to be sure, epitomizing its era, and maybe even locked in it, but far from a relic, yet.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. A comic play that walks a fine line between surrealism and theater of the absurd – written and performed between the two movements – and avoids the pitfalls of both, in which a “madwoman” (the sanest in the room) attempts to save the world by ridding it of crooked businessmen, bankers, oil tycoons, politicians, and the press. Some scenes are dynamite (pardon the pun) – the lower and working class taking jabs at the businessmen at the cafe, the kangaroo trial, the madwoman putting her plan into action at the end – but others are dull to the point of seeming like filler, and go on a bit too long. If this had been trimmed by a third and played at a manic speed – like a George S. Kaufman play, or even the Marx Brothers – it would have been perfect.

[Diego Valencia Zambrano · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you want to talk about flamboyant characters, this is the perfect play. It isn't an instant favorite for me, but it'll be a text that I'll be revisiting through all 2020. So, it will grow on me eventually.

Si quieres hablar de personas pintorescos, esta es la obra perfecta. No es un favorito instantaneo para mí. Pero voy a estar revisitando el texto durante todo el 2020, así que, eventualmente, lo voy a disfrutar mucho más.

[ross motter · Rating 4 out of 5]

i love a good madwoman

[Michael P. · Rating 3 out of 5]

The idea of the mad being more sane than the sane who are without values is ever-appealing. Here, the sane without values represent Nazis, disguised by Giraudoux as corporate executives with a plan to exploit the resources of Paris without giving anything back. In a way, this makes the story more timely than if Giraudoux had Nazi officers on stage. The resolution, however, is troubling in two ways. At least here, in America, the corporations win, the mad do not, and the way that the mad defeat the executives in this story is ethically problematic. It would not be a problem were these actual Nazis, not corporate allegories. In this way, the play has not dated very well.

[Lauren Rivas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am gonna be in this show soon and i just finished reading and memorizing lines for this play.Its called the Madwoman of Chaillot and its mad crazy!.I really cant even explain the real plot of this play because its crazy complex but its a great whimsical piece of work that can be really peculiar but very funny at times. You can read it over and over again and still not really understand it and there's something new everytime you listen to it.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oil has been discovered under Paris and evil men are set to extract it at all costs. A madwoman is the only one who stop the tyranny of evil men. Very relevant to our times.

[anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great play. Surprisingly funny.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of my favourite plays of all time.

[Martin Denton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jean Giraudoux's Madwoman of Chaillot is the play that he gave to Paris--posthumously, alas--after the Nazis had at last been defeated; the play that depicts--fantastically and extravagantly--the conquest of all the wicked people in the world by an idealistic dreamer in love with life and life's illusions; the play that ends with that dreamer, the Madwoman of the title, declaring indelibly that "Nothing is ever so wrong in this world that a sensible woman can't set it right in the course of an afternoon."

The Madwoman of Chaillot's world is a place where beauty reigns, whether it's real or not: in a classic exchange between Countess Aurelia and one of her friends, Giraudoux has them conclude that memories, like pearls, become real the longer we hold on to them. Into this rarefied, wondrous place come a horde of outsiders--a President, a Baron, a Broker, and a Prospector--who conspire to destroy it in the name of greed. (Specifically, the Prospector has concluded that Paris is floating on a sea of oil, and he has come to these businessman to obtain backing to blow the city up so he can exploit his discovery.) But happily these emissaries from Real Life are no match for the Madwoman, who devises a plan to beat them at their own game, which she implements with the help of a Ragpicker, her fellow Madwomen, and the other life-embracing souls who populate her favorite cafe.

It's a delightful fairy tale, laced liberally with satiric pokes at some of society's principal (and enduring) ills, and even more so with fantastic non-sequiturs that somehow make sense. How can we resist a Ragpicker-cum-economic philosopher who declares: "Countess, little by little, the pimps have taken over the world. They don't do anything, they don't make anything--they just stand there and take their cut." Or a not-so-mad Madwoman who says that all men are called Roderick at noon, and asks one such Roderick to escort her home:

You can take the mirror off the wardrobe door, and deliver me once and for all from the old harpy that lives in the mirror. You can let the mouse out of the trap. I'm tired of feeding it.

Giraudoux deftly combines the whimsical and the essential into a concoction at once giddy and wise; this special play of his is one to cherish.

[Steve · Rating 1 out of 5]

I saw a production of The Madwoman of Chaillot that was awful. I wondered if the script was a trainwreck; that no company could do this script justice.

I feel the script has its moments of fun, of cleverness that seems Wilde-ish and with potential to have fantastical ensemble scenes featuring the lead character, The Madwoman of Chaillot. But overall,
the script has long drags of painful banter that may lead to hair-pulling and the feeling that you are going mad.

The plot is simple but the story is needlessly weird.

SPOILERS

The story takes place at a café in France. Greedy businessmen talk of money and a plan to drill under in order to get at the delicious, delicious oil that resides there. The Madwoman of Chaillot and other
vagabonds (such as The Ragpicker, The Juggler and The Deaf-Mute), discover this plan when an associate of the greedy men tells all after his unsuccessful attempt to drown himself. Irma, a waitress, falls in
love with the associate immediately.

Act Two takes place in The Madwoman’s basement where she meets with The Sewer Man who reveals that there’s a staircase that leads to nowhere. The Madwoman meets with other madwomen of various places. She then plans to lure the greedy men to die but a madwoman convinces her
to have a trial. The Ragpicker acts as the defense of the absent greedy men and everyone decides that the greedy men die. The greedy men and women are lured by the false promise of oil, die and life
itself improves. The End.

Based on the plot, you’re probably assuming that this play is batshit
crazy. And you’d be right. There are long periods of nonsense being thrown at the audience that may cause sleepiness or insanity. The play is a comic fable, a satire that could be fun (at times) if done
appropriately with the right director but there’s too much talk and not enough jokes to sustain the mood of being a happy theatre goer.

[Nabilla Zammali · Rating 3 out of 5]

Texte d'actualité ! Quelle tristesse ! La différence est que les femmes sont devenues aussi avides que ces hommes.

"Voilà nos vrais ennemis, Baron ! Ceux dont nous devons vider Paris, toute affaire cessante ! Ces fantoches tous dissemblables, de couleur, de taille, d’allure !Quelle est la seule sauvegarde, la seule condition d’un monde vraiment moderne : c’est un type unique du travailleur, le même visage, les mêmes vêtements, les mêmes
gestes et paroles pour chaque travailleur. Ainsi seulement le dirigeant en arrive à croire qu’un seul humain sue et travaille. Quelle facilité pour sa vue, quel repos pour sa conscience ! Et voyez ! Voyez, du quartier même qui est notre citadelle, qui compte dans Paris le plus grand nombre d’administrateurs et de milliardaires, surgir et s’ébrouer, à notre barbe, ces revenants de la batellerie, de la jonglerie, de la grivèlerie, ces spectres en chair et en os de la liberté de ceux qui ne savent pas les chansons à les chanter, des orateurs à être sourds-muets, des pantalons à être percés aux fesses, des
fleurs à être fleurs, des timbres de salle à manger à surgir des poitrines ! Notre pouvoir expire là où subsiste la pauvreté joyeuse, la domesticité méprisante et frondeuse, la folie respectée et adulée."

[Raquel Curvacheiro · Rating 5 out of 5]

4,5 ⭐️

Contemporâneo de Eça de Queiroz, Jean Giraudoux era, à semelhança do português, Diplomata e escritor e, também ele, fazia uso da ironia nas críticas contundentes à sociedade da época, nas suas obras. Tinha, obrigatoriamente, que gostar dele.

Este "A Louca de Chaillot", peça de teatro em 2 actos publicada postumamente (adaptada ao cinema em 1969, com Katharine Hepburn no papel principal), é disso exemplo.

"(O Salvador de vidas da ponte de Alma entra transportando um corpo)

- O senhor, que traz aí?
- Um afogado. O meu primeiro afogado. Sou o novo salvador de vidas da ponte de Alma.
- Antes parece alguém que levasse uma carga de pancada. Tem as roupas secas.
- Pancada também é a palavra exacta. Ele preparava-se para saltar o parapeito. As nossas instruções são formais. Bater no afogado para ele não nos arrastar para dentro de água.
- Mas ele estava em terra firme...
- É o meu primeiro salvamento, senhor. Entrei ao serviço apenas esta manhã..."

[Jiří Zygma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Místy naivní protikapitalistická moralita rozhodně není prvoplánová ani povrchní, jen některé "fráze" v ní vyzní vzhledem k dnešní době trochu vyčpěle, pateticky a zbytečně sentimentálně. Pakliže má hra působit především na city, pak se jí to daří; otázkou zůstává, co se zlem, které se tu popisuje a které v lidech bezpochyby je... Pakliže by se vše vyřešilo jako v tomto dramatu, pak by život byl jen pohádka! Trochu mi vadí na můj vkus až moc vysoký počet postav, které by se alegoricky daly vyřešit i jinými jevištními prostředky. Zajímavý je naopak tetralog "bláznivých", kdy jsou mistrně popisovány jevy mezi nebem a zemí a jiné bláznoviny. Jinak mi autor mluví z duše.

[Debi Robertson · Rating 3 out of 5]

So the edition I have is translated by Laurence Senelick and give the author as Jean Giraudoux. The copy I have picked is the stage play from the Theatre de Athenee in Pairs where the play was first produced in December 1945. It is as relevant today, if not more so then it was then. One of the plays I saw in Stratford this year. Was a great production and did not waver far from the play structure I read. Something worth reading just for the relevance.

[Rose Rosetree · Rating 5 out of 5]

Almost like a Shakespearean fool, but with considerably more dignity, Countess Aurelia plays the starring role of "The Madwoman of Chaillot."

Along with her fellow eccentrics, the Countess teams up with her friends -- such as The Sewer Man and The Flower Girl -- to foil the machinations of the "wreckers of the world's joy."

So delightful, so worth FIVE STARS!

Merci beaucoup, monsieur Giraudoux.

[Sally Chan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un peu dur d'accrocher au début mais des que la folle arrive, les choses deviennent plus intéressante. J'aimais bien les metaphors, les sous-textes habillés par le surréalisme mais qui rappelle bien la réalité.