In Bordeaux, an exhibition brings back France from the post-war period

By entering the hall of the Aquitaine museum, in Bordeaux (Gironde), which reopens after six months of work, we are surprised to come face to face with … a Citroën 2CV.

“This iconic vehicle marks the entry into” Le Monde according to “, that is to say the decade 1944-1954 on which our exhibition focused, explains Laurent Védrine, the director. This car recalls memories to the ancients, fascinates the youngest and therefore arouses dialogue between generations. »»

The route is full of other emblematic objects of the period: the Red Formica kitchen table and the Marshall plan tractor rub shoulders with a fully equipped Stenodactylo office, a light dress in the colors of the Liberation and one of the first electric washing machine. “We plunge the public for three quarters of a century back, in a bygone era, but which structured our society and continues to irrigate our imaginations,” said Romain Wenz, exhibition commissioner, before sliding with a smile: “Many of what we show here today a very fashionable vintage side! »»

Difficult early days

It is with a long dark corridor that the visit begins. Posters, videos, weapons and staff cards tell the end of the Second World War and the intense battles which lasted in the region until April 1945. Then it was the release, enamelled with jubilation scenes, but marked by shortages and the difficult return of prisoners. After the time of expeditious justice and summary executions, the trials of “collaborators” and war criminals open. The big photo of the trial of the massacre of Oradour-sur-Glane (Haute-Vienne), which opened in Bordeaux in 1953, reminds us.

Politics, economics, work, health, leisure … The continuation insists on the daily life of the French, with a series of posters which boast the recovery of French productivity, celebrate the exploits of the runners of the Tour de France, encourage themselves to be vaccinated against tuberculosis or to open a savings book.

This is the start of the baby boom. Foreign labor and campaigns are emptying. The engineers imagine cities for workers and apartments of the first large sets are equipped with all modern comfort.

Even the Élysée is concerned with commanding, to great creators, furniture intended to be replicated in cheaper materials. A carpet of Paule Leleu and a set of dining room by René Gabriel illustrate the phenomenon, as well as the furniture that the architect Colette Guéden drew in 1947 for the Chamber of Children of the President of the Republic René Coty.

What about culture? She too is democratized. With the cinema first, “a place where it is hot in winter and fresh in summer, where you can kiss discreetly,” recalls Romain Wenz in the reconstituted room as at the time. “We can also, of course, admire masterpieces. The dictator of Chaplin or Children of Paradise by Marcel Carné are immense successes, as well as the cartoons of Walt Disney, in an era marked also by the rise of the Cannes Festival ”. But the big novelty is television: from 297 aircraft in 1949, we increased to 125,000 five years later. On a big job, the visitor can look at the images of the first major event broadcast in Eurovision: the coronation of Elizabeth II, in 1953.

Life in songs

One of the strengths of the exhibition is to take at the foot of the letter the expression which serves as a subtitle: “tomorrows that sing?” And to remind us that, from farm courtyard to the building courtyard, we sang a lot in those years. What a pleasure to hear the voices of Edith Piaf, Bourvil, Brassens, Tino Rossi or Boris Vian, of which The deserter, Written against the Indochina War and judged antipatriotic, was long prohibited from dissemination on the air.

The exhibition ends, as it had opened, with a highly symbolic object of the 1950s and the following: the Juke-Box, which will quickly invade bistros and dancing. Bambino, From Dalida, accompanies the visitor to the exit – the “small format” disc will flow in 1956 to a million copies. But it’s already another story …