Fleapit revisited:The Night Notre-Dame Burned.

"The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire. We don't need no water. Let the motherfucker burn" - The Roof Is On Fire, Rock Master Scott & The Dynamic Three.

Fortunately for the citizens of the French capital, the Paris Fire Brigade (brigade des sapeurs-pompiers de Paris, oh yes) do not receive their training from old school hip-hop artists from the Bronx who have a laissez-faire, at best, approach to all matters pyromaniacal. Although there is one moment in Storyville's The Night Notre-Dame Burned (BBC4/iPlayer) when Emmanuel Macron makes such a considered gamble with the safety of his firefighters it's hard not to side with Rock Master Scott and his crew.

Thankfully, Macron's gamble paid off and not a single person, firefighter or otherwise, was killed and only three people were injured in the twelve hours that followed a huge fire breaking out in Notre-Dame, the 12-14c cathedral that sits on the Ile-de-France in the middle of the Seine at the heart of Paris and is a symbol of that city to almost rival the Eiffel Tower, just after 6pm in the evening on April 15th 2019.

The beginning of holy week! Which is, quite obviously, a big deal at Notre-Dame. Via interviews with volunteers, students on a school trip, Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo, Monsignor Patrick Chauvet, the chief architect of historic monuments, and, most of all, the firefighters themselves (including the sketch artist of the Paris fire department - yes, the Paris fire department appear to employ a sketch artist) the tale is told of how one of the most famous buildings in the entire world was nearly lost to the world, to France, and, most of all, to its home city of Paris.

April 15th had been a sunny day so we're treated to some of the most Parisienne sights imaginable to set the scene:- boats on the Seine, accordion music, and the Eiffel Tower proudly keeping vigil over the twenty arrondissements. If a cyclist in a striped jersey had passed by ringing his bell with a couple of baguettes in his basket they would have hardly made the scene any less cliched.

So when the transepts and spiral staircases of Notre-Dame went up in flames, threatening the sacristy, priceless art, the holy relics, and a collection of "treasures that transcend humanity" according to one observer, a crowd soon gathered by the banks of the Seine to take in the spectacle. A spectacle that some could barely believe. 

Notre-Dame couldn't be on fire! It was supposed to be there for ever! Words and concepts that show how Christianity echoes the folly of the Egyptian pharaohs lampooned in Percy Shelley's 1818 sonnet Ozymandias:-

"Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck"

But as a shower of embers falls from the roof to the floor and the mouth of the fire opens like a huge mythical beast come to swallow the building whole a realisation takes place, if a specifically French and poetic one, that this fire won't be putting itself out. When the spire dramatically comes off it drops to the ground as surely as this sinks in with the assembled viewers and firefighters, a group that now includes Hidalgo and Chauvet (who had been out on his regular bistro call - work, of course).

When Chauvet asks of the fire "pourquoi?" he reminds me of Leonard Cohen in the Tower of Song asking "Hank Williams how lonely does it get". Hank, famously, hasn't answered Cohen yet and Chauvet's god, too, has remained silent. Almost as if he didn't actually exist.

A committee is hastily assembled to decide a plan of action because the fire, as reported by one firefighter - this was, remarkably, Marie-Ange's first ever fire - is now so hot that their helmets are changing colour. The final decision goes to a suitably solemn looking Emmanuel Macron. To let the fire continue to burn and evacuate the firefighters for their own safety or to send them in and risk losing up to thirty lives.

From thereon in the film is a tribute to the bravery of the firefighters that went in to the burning Notre-Dame and saved it. None of them talk like heroes, all speak almost blithely of the encounter - a good day's work but essentially a day's work, but the risks they took that day (and others, and continue to take) render them the heroes of the piece far above any monsignor, mayor, or president.

Before this point I'd been wondering if, well made though the film was, it really deserved an hour and a half running length but when the story of the events that finally ended the inferno were told (still using interviews but spliced with contemporary news footage and drawings - too detailed, I'd wager, for even the most dedicated of on the spot sketch artists) I was both gripped and moved.

The intervention of Quasimodo was not required to keep my attention though the regular images of gargoyles protruding into the sky from the heights of the cathedral did add a visually pleasing gothic dimension to the story as did the resplendent cross shining in the splendour of the aftermath of the fire - almost as if nothing happened.

I found the poetic narrative of some of the observers highly enticing, I found the heroic battle against a deadly primal element let loose in a public place frightening and touching, and I, of course, found the nods to religion a silly irrelevance when very real human lives were placed in danger, not least in a country that proudly boasts freedom of religion, freedom of thought, and whose population is 40% atheist.

I'd not have risked the firefighter's lives to save a religious symbol, no matter how cherished it is, no matter how beautiful it is, no matter how iconic is, and no matter how much money it pulls in to Paris, but I'm glad those brave men and women managed to save Notre-Dame and, next year - all being well and Covid permitting, I'll be leading a two day TADS walk around Paris (the first to ever leave the UK) where I will, no doubt, reheat this story for the benefit of the walkers. It'll be good to look at the cathedral of Notre-Dame as I do so and it'll be even better to know that nobody had to lose their life to save a church.