As much as a rebellious French child might have wanted to run away with the circus, she or he might have dreamed of the outlaw mystique of a gypsy life. The winner of the Jury prize at Cannes that year, Petrovic’s film-particularly the bitter irony of its title-rang true with everything I was glimpsing of a life at odds with the cultural ideals of the West: stability, wealth, ambition, the rule of law. It was a 1967 film by Yugoslavian director Alexandre Petrovic, called J’ai même rencontré des Tziganes heureux (I’ve even met some happy Gypsies). An early-morning stroll through the industrial wastelands along the Seine in the north of Paris took me (nervously) through a bivouac of sleeping men, women, children, dogs.Īnd, of course, I saw my first movie about modern gypsy life. Suddenly, I was driving past gypsy caravans parked in fields outside French cities I was watching ten-year-old girls in light, flowered dresses stealing wallets in the Paris Metro I was living in a neighborhood where gypsy beggars put in long days “on the job” like steelworkers punching time clocks. The only gypsies I knew were in folk songs and operas and thick novels by Victor Hugo. Gypsies were romantic inventions, like swashbuckling pirates with cutlasses and parrots on their shoulders. Until I was in my late twenties, I don’t think I really believed in gypsies. God have mercy-deliver us from our trials.
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