Carnaval de Venise

A correspondent in Rome does not live on conclaves and bombings alone. Italy is also the country that knows how to turn an entire city into a theatre, and in February 1980 all eyes were on Venice.

The carnival, once the glory of the Most Serene Republic before it faded away, had just been revived. White masks, tricorn hats, black cloaks: the city was getting its eighteenth-century ghosts back. For TF1's lunchtime news, presented by Yves Mourousi, I went to film the festivities.

Six days, six minutes

The report was broadcast on 19 February 1980. Nearly six minutes to tell the story of the six days of carnival: in a news bulletin that is a generous length, the kind granted to stories that are watched as much as listened to. Mourousi's one o'clock news, always open to the arts and entertainment, liked such breathing spaces.

Those stories mattered as much as the others in my work as a correspondent. Between 1977 and 1983 I showed French viewers the Italy of the Red Brigades and the Italy of the popes, but also that of President Sandro Pertini, whom I interviewed, that of the private television stations springing up like mushrooms, and the eternal one that puts on a mask in Venice when February comes round.