Original subtitles

[instruments rattling]

[film reel clicking]

[suspenseful music]

[cart squeaking]

[air whooshing]

[horn blowing] [steamboat chugging]

[cart sputtering] [footsteps pattering]

[rockets whistling]

[firecrackers popping] [bells chiming]

At the Bateau-Lavoir in 1906,

Picasso painted a revolutionary work:

the "Demoiselles d'Avignon."

Guillaume Apollinaire had become an art critic.

After publishing several books, he began to live by his pen.

Max Jacob remained in the shadows.

Georges Braque had taken his place beside Picasso,

and the two artists were exploring

a new form of art together: Cubism.

[light music]

In 1911, the "Mona Lisa" vanished from the Louvre.

The investigation led the police to suspect

Guillaume Apollinaire of stealing the famous work.

The poet was thrown into jail.

Then Picasso was called in for interrogation.

In the end, the case was dismissed.

It was during those troubled times

that Marie Laurencin broke off with Guillaume Apollinaire.

[door slams]

Picasso left Fernande for Eva,

taking her with him to his new quarters in Montparnasse.

War broke out and finally separated the companions

from the old Bateau-Lavoir days.

[camera shutter clicks] [soft music]

While waiting to be posted,

Guillaume Apollinaire fell in love with Lou.

They had a short but intensely passionate affair.

Then he went off to war.

[intense music]

The front inspired him to write marvelous poems,

which he addressed to Lou,

and then to Madeleine,

a young woman he met on a train

when he was returning from leave.

He fought with extraordinary courage,

sustained by poetry and love.

[explosions booming] [gunshots popping]

But one day in 1916,

shrapnel from an exploding shell pierced his helmet.

"Oh, how lovely war is," he wrote in "Calligrammes."

[passionate music]

The poet collapsed and lost consciousness.

[explosion banging]

[explosion banging]

[explosion banging]

[explosion banging]

[gunshots popping]

[explosion banging]

Guillaume Apollinaire was wounded

in March 1916 in Berry-au-Bac, France,

and evacuated to an aid station.

Fragments from a 150mm shell were lodged in his temple.

The head physician of the 246th Regiment bandaged his head.

They gave him his canteen and put him to sleep.

[explosion banging]

The next day, in an ambulance that took him

to the hospital in Chateau-Thierry,

his wound was incised and a few shards were extracted.

[solemn music]

After a few days, he was brought

to the Val-de-Grace military hospital in Paris.

[patients faintly chattering]

[metal clanking]

10 days later, he underwent a trepanation

and an operation for a brain abscess.

On April the 11th, he sent a telegram to Madeleine.

The operation had gone well.

[gentle music]

A few weeks later,

he received a visit from an unknown woman, Jacqueline.

She was free and available.

[birds chirping] [cheerful music]

He took her to live in his apartment

on Boulevard Saint-Germain.

She became the new beloved little fairy.

[birds twittering]

[train brakes screeching]

When he recovered, Guillaume Apollinaire found himself

in a Paris that he did not recognize.

The street lamps and car lights were masked.

Windows were decked with anti-bomb blast tape.

Cafes and restaurants closed early.

The art dealers had left town.

The galleries were closed.

And the foreign painters were starving.

The money some of them used to receive

could no longer enter the country.

[brooding music]

Most of the artists from Eastern Europe

lived in La Ruche, or The Hive,

an artists' enclave that was for Montparnasse

what the Bateau-Lavoir had been for Montmartre.

It was created by Alfred Boucher,

an academic sculptor and patron of the arts.

After the Exposition Universelle in 1900,

he had bought some of the fair's pavilions

made by Gustave Eiffel,

and rebuilt them in a vacant lot

near the Vaugirard slaughterhouses.

A number of studios surrounded the main building,

the former Wine Pavilion, whose roof looked like a beehive.

[enchanted music]

The painters who lived there paid next to nothing in rent.

Its circular floors resonated

with the songs of the Italians, the discussions of the Jews,

the sobbing of models in the Russian studios.

[residents faintly chattering in foreign language]

[woman laughing]

In this hive of artists,

Chagall lived like an exile before the war.

He worked late, always alone,

and received very few visitors.

He painted naked in front his easel,

eating nothing but the head of a herring

on the first day of the week,

its tail the next,

and surviving on bread crusts until Sunday.

[bells softly chiming]

[residents chattering in foreign language]

La Ruche's residents often congregated

in a canteen in the Impasse du Maine

that wasn't subject to the curfew.

Behind the bar, a tiny woman would be cooking.

[man speaking in foreign language]

Marie Vassilieff was a Russian painter and sculptor

who had studied under Matisse.

[group speaking in foreign language]

She made doll portraits out of felt

that she used to sell before the war

to the fashion designer Poiret

and to well-off Parisians living on the Right Bank.

Her sculptures, incorporating fabric,

twisted wire, and Bakelite,

were as innovative and fanciful as she was.

[women speaking in foreign language]

Her soup kitchen was filled with artists

living in Montparnasse,

those who had survived the draft

and outlived the Bateau-Lavoir.

They paid just a few cents for a bowl of broth,

some vegetables, sometimes a dessert.

The richest among them could also treat themselves

to a glass of wine or three Caporal Bleu cigarettes.

[women chattering in foreign language]

[lively music]

People ate, sang, and played the guitar.

They conversed in Russian, exclaimed in Hungarian,

and laughed in every language.

[patrons faintly chattering]

[men laughing]

[siren blaring]

When the air raid siren sounded,

they just sang a little louder to drown out fear and danger.

[siren blaring] [lively music]

[gate clacking]

[metal creaking]

[horns honking] [tub thudding]

[whistle blowing]

When they weren't at Marie Vassilieff's,

the artists could be found in the cafes

on the Carrefour Vavin, the Dome and the Rotonde.

[upbeat music] [women laughing]

[bicycle bell ringing]

[pedestrians softly speaking in foreign language]

They could sit there for hours on end,

sipping their cafes creme, coffee with milk,

the drink of the poor,

not good enough to be downed in one gulp,

not bad enough to be left in the cup.

It was hot and cheap.

[patrons speaking in foreign language]

[men laughing]

At the Rotonde,

the La Ruche crowd could even wash in the sinks.

Libion, the owner, was kind and generous

to the struggling artists.

He told the waiters not to insist

on drinks being regularly ordered.

And if one of the customers was out of money,

Libion was even known to chip in himself

in order to help out.

That was how he financed the French lessons

that Chaim Soutine took at the Rotonde.

The painter paid his tutor

with cups of coffee generously offered by good old Libion.

[man speaking in foreign language]

At the Rotonde, Soutine was like Quasimodo with a fever.

He would sit at the back of the café with his tutor

and repeat the words she taught him,

fending off the cold in a tattered gray coat.

He wore a hat with a turned-down rim

that hid his shiny black hair,

and gazed out from underneath with his burning eyes.

[women laughing]

Soutine looked everywhere, at everything,

to see who loved him, who didn't love him,

who would buy him a coffee or offer him a cigarette.

[man speaking in foreign language]

[men laughing]

He was freezing to death, he was starving.

[flies buzzing]

He often went through the neighborhood trash cans

looking for old clothes or a cracked boot

that he might be able to exchange for a herring or an egg.

Soutine had never learned the art of good manners.

[metal pinging] [solemn music]

[pedestrians speaking in foreign language]

Soutine was Jewish.

He had grown up in the ghetto of Smilavichy near Minsk.

[children laughing]

He was the 10th child of a poor village tailor

who beat his son whenever he found him drawing.

In the Jewish ghettos of Russia and Poland,

art was above all religious.

Hasidic law condemned idolatry

and, therefore, any representation of the human face.

"Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image,

"or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above,

"or that is in the earth beneath,

"or that is in the water under the earth."

[men praying in foreign language]

When he was 16, Soutine transgressed the law

by painting a portrait of the village rabbi.

The punishment was immediate.

He was locked up by the butcher of Smilavichy

in the cold room and brutally beaten.

[blows thudding]

[metal creaking]

And so turkeys, rabbits, ducks, chickens, carcasses of beef,

all skinned and rotting,

would find their way into Soutine's paintings.

[metal clacking]

The only way to find freedom,

as well as to get away from the anti-Semitism

and limited openings at official schools, was to leave home,

and that is what Soutine

and all the Eastern European artists

who arrived in Paris a few years before the war did:

Kikoine, the grandson of a Lithuanian rabbi,

Kremegne, Mane-Katz, Chana Orloff, Kisling from Poland,

Archipenko, Zadkine, and many others.

[train chugging]

They all belonged to the Paris School,

which was soon to become famous throughout the world.

[men speaking in foreign language]

[whistle blowing]

Soutine was the poorest of them all.

At 20, he was already overcome by anguish

and devastated by life.

He never painted on fresh canvases,

but covered over old or poor paintings

that he bought at the Clignancourt flea market.

[shoppers faintly chattering in foreign language]

[intense music]

When he was unhappy with the result,

which was almost always,

he would rip up what he had just finished with a knife.

The Montparnasse painters passed the word around.

No one should criticize Soutine's paintings

because if they did, he would destroy them.

[canvas ripping]

When he ran out of materials,

he would retrieve his lacerated canvases,

take a needle and thread,

sew the mismatched pieces together,

and begin painting the deformed faces,

twisted limbs and monstrosities

that were the mark of his genius.

[soft music]

[man speaking in foreign language]

[men speaking in foreign language]

[man singing in foreign language]

When the door of the Rotonde opened and Modigliani came in,

Soutine's face would, for once, light up.

He would lose interest in learning French

and, instead, follow the Italian

as he walked among the tables.

[patrons speaking in foreign language]

Modigliani was the exact opposite of Soutine.

He was 10 years older, but looked five years younger.

[patron applauding]

[men speaking in foreign language]

He went from one group to another smiling

with a long scarf floating in his wake.

He was very handsome, affable, playful.

[man speaking in foreign language]

He would sit down opposite a stranger,

push away the cups and saucers,

and begin to sketch a portrait

without asking for the person's consent.

[man speaking in foreign language]

[man singing in foreign language]

He would finish it in a flash,

and hand it to his model with a flourish.

"It's yours for a glass of vermouth."

[men speaking in foreign language]

Unlike Modigliani, Soutine was not at ease with people.

He supported himself by carrying crates in train stations.

He gave away nothing because he had nothing.

Soutine was dirty.

One day, a doctor actually discovered

a nest of bugs in his right ear.

[bugs buzzing] [dramatic music]

[women laughing]

He didn't have much success with women.

He didn't know how to approach them.

In Paris, he went to brothels.

[engine sputtering]

[women giggling]

[women chuckling]

He chose the ugliest girls, those with deformed features,

their skin reddened by alcohol and a harsh life,

like the women in his paintings.

[women laughing] [intense music]

Modigliani's only wealth was his drawings,

but half of Montparnasse had one of them.

When he didn't exchange them for a glass of something,

he gave them away.

His generosity was legendary.

[church bell ringing]

Modigliani was Italian, and he never forgot it.

In Paris, he always missed his country,

but once in Tuscany, he would want to return to France.

Invariably, he repeated that he found his strength in Italy,

but that he could only paint when he was in torment.

And torment, for him, was Montparnasse.

[horn honking]

[man speaking in foreign language]

[pedestrians softly speaking in foreign language]

[soft music]

Modigliani was courageous.

When war was declared, he wanted to enlist.

[metal scraping]

The military authorities refused him for health reasons.

He felt great despair over this rejection.

That did not prevent him from expressing,

loudly and clearly, his anti-militaristic spirit.

One day he was beaten up for insulting

some Serbian soldiers passing through Montparnasse.

[body thuds]

Modigliani was always freshly shaven and very charming.

His clothes may have been old and threadbare,

but he wore them like a prince.

[birds chirping] [dog barking]

Soutine had only one friend:

Modigliani, who had taken him under his wing.

[gentle music]

It was he who instructed him to chew with his mouth closed,

to refrain from sticking his fork into his neighbor's food,

as well as not to snore when he fell asleep in restaurants.

For Soutine, Modigliani was like a brother.

The two men were completely different,

but they shared some very strong bonds.

Like Soutine, Modigliani was Jewish.

He was even known, occasionally, to punch an anti-Semite.

Like Soutine, he destroyed things,

both his paintings as well as his sculptures.

Both of them shared the same desire for independence.

They did not belong to any clique or school.

They both had to struggle against the same enemy

that was ravaging them from the inside.

Soutine suffered from a tapeworm and stomach pains

that would turn into an ulcer.

He swallowed extraordinary quantities of bismuth,

which did little to relieve the pain that plagued him.

[sugar sizzling]

Modigliani drank.

Whenever he had a few drinks under his belt,

he would sing in the streets

at the top of his lungs, harangue passersby,

and whirl around wildly on the sidewalks.

[deep music]

[man faintly singing]

He would sometimes fall asleep in a dumpster,

and the garbage men would pick him out the next morning.

[flies buzzing]

He suffered from a pulmonary lesion

that he had contracted as a child,

and which had turned into tuberculosis.

[dramatic music]

He was racked by terrible fits of coughing

that wore him out.

The works of both of these painters

express the inner torment that inhabited them.

For a long time,

Modigliani struggled through his bouts of illness,

seeking to achieve his dream,

the one and only thing that truly mattered to him:

to be a sculptor.

But stone was too expensive

and buyers were few and far between.

[man coughing] [metal clanking]

But above all,

the dust that came from striking the stone

was making its way painfully into his lungs.

Modigliani carved, and he coughed.

[bells softly chiming]

[wood creaking]

Holidays taken in the sun, in Livorno or elsewhere,

didn't change anything.

His health prevented him

from becoming the sculptor he dreamed of being.

[intense music]

So he turned to painting.

His works from the war years and those that followed

always seem to contain a sense of that unfulfilled desire.

They're like sculptures on canvas.

These pure forms, elongated faces and busts,

the extended arms, necks, and bodies,

are strangely reminiscent of the heads he sculpted

between 1906 and 1913.

[patrons laughing]

[men speaking in foreign language]

When Guillaume Apollinaire came through the door

of the Rotonde, he encountered a scene

that offended his patriotic sensibilities.

[patrons speaking in foreign language]

Modigliani was shouting out anti-military slogans.

Soutine was grumbling, stark naked beneath his coat.

Derain, who was on leave, was making little cardboard planes

that he threw straight into other customers' cups.

[men speaking in foreign language]

[paper plane rumbling]

Max Jacob was there, too.

He still lived in Montmartre,

but he had established his quarters in Montparnasse.

The Rotonde was his new Lapin Agile.

He rushed over to greet his old friend

from the Bateau-Lavoir.

He admired Lieutenant Apollinaire's magnificent uniform

decorated with the medal of the Cross of War,

and shouted out with joy when Guillaume showed him

the official documents granting him French nationality.

[men speaking in foreign language]

[woman speaking in foreign language]

[patrons speaking in foreign language]

[paper plane buzzing]

He was concerned about the head wound,

which was covered by a leather bandage.

After that, Max talked about his war training duties.

He had served as a civilian ambulance driver

for one month in Enghien.

[birds chirping]

At that time, the wounded were still quite rare,

and he spent 30 days in a garden,

surrounded by tearful wives and mothers,

putting his poems and manuscripts in order.

He was still laughing about it.

But not Guillaume, Max found him changed.

He had become anxious and irritable.

[man laughing]

He criticized the selfishness he saw all around him.

Life in Paris seemed so far removed

from the horrors of the front.

Naturally, they talked about Picasso.

In low voices, because the painter was in mourning.

Eva had succumbed to tuberculosis.

A few of them had gone to the cemetery with him.

[rain pattering] [woeful music]

Eva had tried to hide her condition from her lover,

who panicked at the sight of illness.

She was afraid he would leave her.

But Picasso was faithful to her.

He remained by her side until the very end,

going with her on her regular visits to the doctors

and the clinics where she was treated.

It was Modigliani who told the story.

At the time, he was still friends with the Spanish painter.

That was before that winter's day

when Marie Vassilieff had thrown a dinner

in honor of Braque, who was returning injured from the war.

Woo! [silverware clinking]

She made a drawing of the evening.

[guests faintly chattering] [cymbal crashing]

Marie Vassilieff had invited the creme de la creme

from Montmartre and Montparnasse.

She had also invited a young English poetess,

who had just left Modigliani,

and who arrived arm in arm with her new lover.

[cymbal crashing]

Modigliani was not amused.

The machine guns were drawn. [whistle blowing]

[intense music]

[guests chattering in foreign language]

[gun clicking] [shot screeching]

Blaise Cendrars, who had lost an arm in Champagne,

raised the other one to the health of the pugilists

while Matisse, imperturbable behind his glasses

and his beard, tried to calm things down.

Max Jacob was the referee.

A terrified Juan Gris eyed the maniacs going at each other

like two furious cocks.

[dramatic music]

Modigliani was finally pushed out ingloriously

into the street, with the help of Picasso.

After that, relations between the two painters

were never quite the same.

Modigliani was not aware

that a rumor was going around the cafes in Montparnasse.

It was said that, during a bombardment,

Picasso, spurred by inspiration, but lacking a canvas,

had covered over one of the Italian painter's works,

a still life made with a knife.

[men speaking inn foreign language]

[engine sputtering]

Picasso lived on Schoelcher Street

near the Montparnasse Cemetery.

[door slamming] [bird squawking]

The studio's bay window looked out over the graves.

It was a relatively large room,

cluttered with tubes, palettes, and brushes.

The Spanish painter tended to stock up

because he was always afraid of running out of materials.

[brush scratching] [siren blaring]

He painted all the time, not only paintings,

his style was now closer to Ingres than to Cubism,

but objects, chairs and walls, as well.

He couldn't stand blank spaces.

[pedestrians faintly speaking in foreign language]

He rarely left his studio.

[men speaking in foreign language]

In cafes, he was often insulted by soldiers on leave

who did not understand why such a robust young man

was not out fighting on the front.

[children chattering in foreign language]

At the bar of the Rotonde, a young man of 26 was listening.

When he heard Picasso's name, his ears perked up.

On his dangling feet,

he wore aviator boots tightly laced up to the ankle.

His red trousers fell impeccably

over the little buckles in yellow leather.

His black tunic was very striking,

and even more so the painted purple helmet

that the young man twirled nonchalantly

over a fine white-laced wrist.

[patrons chattering in foreign language]

Jean Cocteau was back from the war.

He had first been assigned to the Supply Corps in Paris.

Then he had obtained a transfer to an ambulance unit

under the command of the Count Etienne de Beaumont.

An extraordinary experience and very beautiful.

[bright music]

[camera shutter clicking]

[pedestrians faintly chattering in foreign language]

[engine sputtering]

Jean Cocteau's greatest desire, since his return,

was to be loved.

And more specifically to be loved by Picasso.

He would, at every opportunity, offer him little gifts,

trying to lure the artist into his golden net.

He wrote him letters filled with tragic limpidity.

"My dear Picasso,

"you must paint my portrait soon because I'm going to die. "

[pedestrians faintly speaking in foreign language]

[light music] [birds chirping]

He was finally able to get through the door to the studio

on Schoelcher Street.

What he saw dazzled him.

[door slamming]

And so he pursued his dream of bringing Picasso

into the realm of the avant-garde arts he was cultivating.

[pedestrians faintly chattering]

[quirky music]

When he came to Montparnasse,

the finest ornament on his lapel

was the shimmering gem of the Ballets Russes.

[bright music]

Serge Diaghilev's aim, when he founded the company,

was to break away from classical ballet by bringing together

choreographers, painters, and musicians.

At the Theatre du Chatelet, before the war,

two pieces choreographed by Nijinsky

had taken Paris by storm:

"Afternoon of a Faun" with music by Claude Debussy

and "The Rite of Spring" with a score by Igor Stravinsky.

[audience applauding] [audience cheering]

Cocteau's idea was to create a similar sensation,

but around a realist ballet that he was writing

with Erik Satie for Serge Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes.

He told Picasso about it, then he set up a meeting.

And finally, miraculously, Picasso agreed.

[audience faintly chattering]

On May 18, 1917, "Parade," a one-act ballet,

opened at the Theatre du Chatelet.

The scenario was by Jean Cocteau, the music by Erik Satie,

the costumes and sets by Pablo Picasso.

[stick thudding]

[audience applauding] [intense music]

At the start of the show,

there was some irritation in reaction

to the stage curtain decorated with harlequins,

a winged mare, and a circus rider.

But it was nothing compared to what came next.

[curtain rattling] [dramatic music]

[metal clacking] [footsteps thudding]

The monstrous, oversized characters designed by Picasso

had awkward movements due to the rigidity of the costumes,

and were accompanied by mechanical sounds,

sirens, pans, typewriters.

[horse neighing]

[audience faintly shouting in foreign language]

[metal banging]

[whistle blowing]

Soon, an explosion of insults filled the room.

"Aliens, shirkers, reds!"

Woo! [audience member whistles]

Boo! [audience members whistling]

The society ladies attacked the artists

with their hat pins.

Some, in evening gowns, were escorted by gentlemen

dressed in tails or in grand uniforms

decked out with their Legion of Honour medals.

[horse neighing] [dramatic music]

Others wore nurse's uniforms

in order to remind Guillaume Apollinaire

that he wasn't the only one who had served in the army.

[men faintly shouting in foreign language]

[audience members whistling]

Boo! [audience members whistling]

[audience members faintly shouting]

The critics blasted "Parade."

"Kraut art," Diaghilev was pilloried.

Accused of insulting French taste,

of lacking talent, skill, and imagination,

Erik Satie responded by telling the newspaper columnist

for the "Carnet de la Semaine,"

"My dear sir and friend, you are an ass, if I may say so,

"and what's more, an ass without music."

[solemn music] [explosion booming]

Meanwhile, in the plains of northern France,

the bodies were piling up in the trenches.

[explosion booming]

The decimated battalions began to revolt

and called for an end to the bloodshed.

The French President Poincare appointed Philippe Petain

Commander-in-Chief of the armies.

Petain immediately had 49 rebels shot

in order to set an example.

♪ Om

49 soldiers on top

of the 29,000 men who had been killed

during the battles at Chemin des Dames.

[explosions booming] [air whooshing]

[solemn music] [bird squawking]

[dog barking]

[birds squawking]

[train whistle blowing]

Five weeks after "Parade,"

the Renee Maubel theater in Montmartre featured a work

by Guillaume Apollinaire, "The Breasts of Tiresias,"

with a description that would soon become very meaningful,

a surrealist drama.

[balloons screeching]

The play told the story of Therese who becomes Tiresias

by changing her sex and taking on the power of men.

It rejected the conventions of the past,

and advocated a role for women comparable to that of men.

Once again, the press panned it, and the public as well.

The work was accused of being Cubist,

Apollinaire's name was dragged through the mud.

However, "The Breasts of Tiresias"

was the major avant-garde event of that year, 1917.

In order to pay tribute to Guillaume Apollinaire,

Andre Breton, who was in the audience, and Philippe Soupault

would take up the term used by the poet, surrealist.

The day after the performance of "The Breasts of Tiresias,"

Apollinaire was posted to the press office

of the Ministry of War, to the Censorship bureau.

[typewriter clacking] [scissors snipping]

[paper rustling]

[water sloshing]

He was living with Jacqueline,

who had definitively supplanted the images

of all of the lovers that had come before her.

[light music]

As for Picasso, his canvases were now taken up

with the towering, radiant, majestic figure

of Olga Khokhlova.

She was 27, she was Russian,

the daughter of a colonel in the Czar's army,

and a ballerina with the Ballets Russes.

[air whooshing]

Picasso had met her in Rome through Diaghilev.

And Diaghilev said to him, "A Russian woman, you marry her."

Guillaume was the first to tie the knot.

On May the 2nd, 1918, he married Jacqueline Kolb.

[church bells ringing]

A religious ceremony was held

at the Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin Church in Paris.

[men praying in foreign language]

Two months later,

at the town hall in the city's 7th arrondissement,

Pablo Diego Jose Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno

Maria de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santisima

Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso married Olga Khokhlova.

[witnesses applauding]

Picasso's witnesses were Guillaume Apollinaire,

Max Jacob and Jean Cocteau.

[witnesses faintly shouting in foreign language]

Picasso was a different man that day.

His friends from the Bateau-Lavoir hardly recognized him.

He was wearing a suit and a tie,

with a pocket handkerchief and a watch chain,

an outfit he would adopt from then on.

[child speaking in foreign language]

Modigliani had also met his soul mate.

Nicknamed Coconut because of her very pale skin,

Jeanne Hebuterne was beautiful and fragile,

detached and impenetrable.

[rain pattering]

Her expression was usually one of infinite sadness,

masking a gaze that was striking and profound.

[air whooshing]

[bells chiming]

Out of love for Modigliani,

she had broken off with her parents,

who were devout Catholics

and who did not accept their daughter's liaison

with an artist who was Jewish, impoverished,

and much older than she was.

She was 19, he was 35.

[choir singing in foreign language]

[rain pattering]

Zborowski, Modigliani's art dealer,

found them a small artist's studio

on Rue de la Grande Chaumiere in Montparnasse.

[birds chirping] [broom rustling]

[cat purring]

[cat meowing]

The painter slept there,

but spent most of his time working next door

at his dealer's place.

[paws pattering]

[men excitedly chattering in foreign language]

The staircase in the building where Zborowski lived

was always full of people.

[man whistling]

All the Montparnasse artists could be found there.

[man shouting in foreign language]

As Modigliani went up to his dealer's place,

he would pass a model coming down the stairs,

run into Apollinaire,

who would meet Jean Cocteau

when he went to visit the painter Moise Kisling.

[lively music] [tenants excitedly chattering]

[tenants laughing]

Kisling was Polish, he was 25 years old.

He had come to Paris a few years before the war began.

Like many others,

he had answered Blaise Cendrars' appeal and enlisted.

[church bells ringing]

He was badly wounded in the Battle of Carency

and subsequently discharged,

awarded the Cross of War with palms,

and most important of all,

he had received the supreme reward

that all foreign artists fighting in the trenches coveted:

French nationality.

[patriotic music]

Back in Paris, Kisling hung around Montparnasse.

[metal screeching]

[dog barking]

[men speaking in foreign language]

He was a jubilant reveler,

dressed in torn overalls and sandals

that served him in many a sidewalk battle,

while the curls he had worn when he arrived from Krakow

were now no more than a memory.

[pedestrians speaking in foreign language]

The door to his studio was always open:

after nine o'clock in the morning for the models

that filed in behind his easel one after another;

in the afternoon and evening for his friends.

Frehel and Argentinian tangos resonated

throughout the building.

The gramophone was never at rest.

[lively music]

At the Rotonde, one autumn evening,

Kisling noticed a young 18-year-old girl

wearing a man's hat, an old patched up cloak,

and shoes that were much too big for her.

She sat down at Soutine's table and talked to him.

Kisling observed and listened to her.

The girl had a special kind of beauty,

a mixture of sassy humor, vivaciousness,

and unabashed language that was reflected in her smile

and in her gestures.

Kisling asked Libion, "Who's that new whore?"

[glass clanking]

[men speaking in foreign language]

[match sizzling]

Kisling went up to her, "What do you do for a living?"

"I show my tits to old men

"behind the Montparnasse train station.

"Two francs for a look, five to touch, and that's it."

The room roared with laughter.

When things had quieted down again,

Kisling hired the girl as a model for a three-month period.

And that is how Alice Prin,

known as Kiki and then as Kiki of Montparnasse, started out.

[playful music]

She'd go on to become a legendary,

world-renowned figure, the queen of the neighborhood,

the artists' lucky charm, who would pose for Foujita,

Man Ray, Soutine, Derain, and many others.

[excited music]

On November the 3rd, 1918,

Guillaume Apollinaire lay down on his bed

below the painting that Marie Laurencin had made of him

with Max Jacob and Picasso.

His wife, Jacqueline, was worried.

The poet was running a fever.

The doctor, who was sent for by Jean Cocteau,

diagnosed him with the Spanish flu.

[brooding music]

It was a fatal disease.

Brought over from the United States

by the American Expeditionary Forces,

it had infected Europe.

It killed faster than the war,

taking 25 million lives in just two years.

On the Chemin des Dames,

the generals signed truces in order to evacuate its victims.

In Paris, there were lines of hearses

going one after another to the cemeteries.

[carriage rattling]

[carriage rattling]

Guillaume Apollinaire saw his death approaching.

On the front, he had dealt with it every day,

and he had not been afraid.

[explosions rumbling]

Now, he was seized by panic.

He begged the doctor to save his life.

He was only 38 years old.

He was too young to die.

He didn't understand.

He had survived a piece of shrapnel piercing his skull.

He couldn't die from a mere microbe.

Friends came to visit.

And then came back.

Max Jacob would not leave his side.

There were flowers in his house.

[ominous music]

A leaden gray sky hanging over the rooftops.

At 202 Boulevard Saint-Germain,

death came on November the 9th, 1918

at five o'clock in the evening.

Guillaume Apollinaire was laid out on the bed

in his officer's uniform with his kepi beside him.

Had he had time to hear the news

that was spreading like wildfire that day all over Paris?

The Kaiser had signed his abdication.

The war would be over.

More than eight million were dead,

20 million had been wounded.

[heavy music]

Under a canopy bearing the French colors,

the poet was taken to the church of Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin,

then to the Pere Lachaise Cemetery.

A section of the 237th Territorial Battalion

performed military honors.

[crowd faintly shouting in foreign language]

The armistice was signed, the war was over.

[crowd faintly shouting in foreign language]

In the streets, the crowds celebrated the victory

with cries of, "Death to Guillaume!"

[man speaking in foreign language]

[bells softly chiming]

Under a cold sun, peace had returned to Paris.

Demobilization was underway.

[snow crunching]

Tourists began to arrive.

First of all, the American soldiers.

They had known France in times of war.

Now, after trading in their uniforms for their suits,

they were returning with joy and with pleasure.

The bistros on Boulevard Montparnasse were full.

Every day, Zborowski would make sure his beard

was neatly trimmed, put on a well-cut jacket,

and go off to make the rounds of the galleries.

Modigliani never asked him about figures or accounts,

just for advances.

To pay for his drinks, for his meals,

for his bouquets of flowers.

And Zborowski gave him what he could.

[patrons speaking in foreign language]

When a potential buyer showed up,

Zborowski would sell off Modigliani's works for a pittance,

letting go of paintings

that would be worth 100 times more five years later.

[woman speaking in foreign language]

But his goal was to save his friend at any price.

[dark music]

Modigliani continued to drink.

He drank too much.

And he never stopped coughing.

[glass rattling]

He received his models at Zborowski's place

or in his studio.

He would draw a line, take a sip of rum, and begin again.

[liquor sloshing]

When he was done, he would go around to the bars.

[glasses clanking]

He was sick.

Nobody ever heard him complain about the tuberculosis

that was eating away at him.

Not even Jeanne Hebuterne.

Zborowski tried to persuade him to go to Switzerland

to seek medical treatment in a sanatorium.

Modigliani wouldn't listen to him.

[church bells ringing]

Yet, death was lurking in the shadows,

and he must have sensed it.

He drank to ease his suffering, his pain,

the troubles that had plagued him for so long.

The war on the outside had ended over a year ago.

Inside, it was still digging trenches

and clearing the way for the final assault.

[metal clanking] [brooding music]

[rain pattering]

[suspenseful music]

One evening in January 1920,

Modigliani left the Rotonde with some friends.

[wind whooshing] [rain pattering]

He headed toward the Tomb-Issoire,

waited for two hours in the cold,

then went back towards Denfert,

and sat down under the Lion of Belfort.

[sinister music]

He was coughing.

He didn't even have enough strength to drink.

He made his way home, staggering up the street,

climbed the excessively steep staircase to his studio,

and collapsed on the bed next to Jeanne.

He spit up blood.

[men faintly speaking in foreign language]

On January the 22nd, the painter Ortiz de Zarate,

who lived in the building, knocked at his door.

[hand knocking]

He had had no news of Modigliani.

There was no noise coming from the inside.

Ortiz knocked again and again.

[hand knocking]

[foot banging]

[door creaking] [snowflakes pinging]

Modigliani was lying on the bed, cradled by Jeanne.

He was moaning softly, calling out for Italy.

[narrator speaking in foreign language]

An emergency doctor came

and ordered the patient to be taken immediately

to the Charite Hospital on Rue Jacob.

[thwarted music]

Two days later, on January the 24th, 1920,

tuberculous meningitis won the final battle.

The time was 8:45 in the evening.

[church bells ringing] [solemn music]

[bird squawking]

The next day, a woman in black walked across

the snow-covered courtyard of the hospital.

She had the rolling gait of a pregnant woman,

Jeanne Hebuterne.

[snow crunching]

She was taken down one corridor after another

until they reached the morgue.

Jeanne asked to be alone.

She stayed there for a long time.

[ominous music]

She cut off a lock of her hair

and placed it on Modigliani's stomach.

Then she left and went back to her parents' house.

[air whooshing]

[wind chime tinkling]

At three in the morning, she got up,

crossed the room, stepped out,

and threw herself over the railing from the 5th floor.

[nightgown rustling]

A worker found the shattered body early in the morning.

[woeful music]

Friends were notified,

and while Jeanne's parents watched over their daughter,

Modigliani was buried.

[snowflakes pinging]

Kisling paid for the funeral and notified the family.

The painters, poets, and models pitched in to buy flowers.

A large crowd, silent, closely-packed,

accompanied Modigliani on his last journey.

Soutine wept in Kiki's arms.

Modigliani was buried in Pere Lachaise,

not far from Guillaume Apollinaire.

They had both been part of the original layer.

They would never see the struggling artists,

the penniless poets,

their friends from the good times and the bad times

climb out of the horse-drawn carts

into the backfiring automobiles

that were driving straight into the future.

[heavy music]