‘The inhabitants are taken into account’ (?)

The 1964 designation of the Marais as a conservation area by Culture Minister André Malraux was a watershed in its history. Gentrification also had its downside, and the pros and cons of the area’s renovation are here explored through a variety of representations, literary and cinematic. René Fallet’s novel Paris au mois d’août, filmed by Pierre Granier-Deferre with Charles Aznavour, finds a place here cheek-by-jowl with a rather seedy 1968 guide to local commercial sex and Gérard Oury’s film Les Aventures de Rabbi Jacob. Contrasting political stances are taken by Isabelle Backouche who criticises the gentrification and effective social cleansing of the area and Yvan Christ who with his collaborators proffers an out-and-proud advocacy of the Marais as ‘the living memorial of bygone France.’