Dangerous Liaison is a proposed four-hour documentary series that will show how the United States and modern France were built together out of linked experiences – and how cultural transmissions through key individuals drew these two countries together over time as allies in politics, philosophy, culture, technology, and war.  Both nations remained distinct, while learning from one another and defining themselves through the perspective of the other. How did the French interpret the American Revolution – and how did the Americans interpret the French Revolution? How did Americans take French inventions and make them their own?  Which nation started modernism in art? Why did the French hear jazz differently than Americans did? How did these two nations react to large numbers of immigrants?  We will explore these questions and many more through the lives of key American and French culture brokers.

 

The United States would not be the country it is today without its long historical connection with France.  And France would not be the country it is today without its long historical connection with the United States.  Though most Americans and most of the French don’t fully realize it – their two nations have been built and enriched by their complex political and cultural ties.