Sergei Loznitsa - Une nuit à l’opéra AKA A Night at the Opera (2020)

Using archive images, Sergei Loznitsa revisits the gala evenings organized at the Palais Garnier in the fifties and sixties. Between prestige and protocol, these evenings gathered both celebrities and ordinary people who came by the thousands from the Place de l’Opéra to watch this spectacle, of which the director amusingly brings out the irony…
Quote:
Medals, swords, courtesans and cascades of diamonds parade on the steps of the Garnier Opera House. The repetition of archives orchestrated by Sergueï Loznitsa could make you smile. But, with its editing, the gilded members of the French Republic appear very like the invariables of the monarchy. Decidedly, opera, the “all-embracing art form”, is still the preserve of the grandees of this world… -Stéphane Bonnefoi and Adrien Faucheux.