ABSTRACT
Since the early 1880s Montmartre has been branded under many different guises. It was a place that was successively identified with the jocular spirit of the Chat Noir, the argotic songs of Aristide Bruant, and the vertiginous tempos of the French Cancan performed at the Moulin Rouge. It has also been equated with the turn of the century Parisian bohemia and celebrated as the birthplace of the modern avant-garde art. During the interwar period the branding of Montmartre became part of a nostalgic search for bygone eras which emphasised local colour and tradition against changes that occurred in the Butte's present. This was equally done in the writings of former bohemians and customers of the Lapin Agile such as Carco and Dorgels, and the French films of the 1930s that connected Montmartre to the argotic songs of Aristide Bruant and the world of marginal existences celebrated in them. Neighbourhood branding became thus more conservative in tone and enmeshed in sentimentalism.
