The Night Notre Dame Burned: Storyville, review: a blazing Hollywood-style tale of bravery
"It is as if we were experiencing Victor Hugo’s novel live – the gargoyles spitting molten lead, the flames 50 feet high. You can practically see the hunchback up there in the gallery,” recalled the Paris fire service chief in The Night Notre Dame Burned: Storyville (BBC Four), a superb documentary about the 2019 fire that ravaged France’s most beloved building.
The Naudet Brothers, who famously recorded the collapse of the Twin Towers when making a film about firefighters in New York City, are master storytellers. Over 90 minutes, through a combination of gripping eyewitness testimony and footage from the scene, we followed events from the first wisp of smoke spotted by a bunch of teenagers on a school trip to the situation room, where President Macron was given the stark news that there were only two alternatives now that the end was near: give up the fight and watch the cathedral collapse, or send in a crew in the knowledge that they might not make it out again.
It was all brought vividly to life in words, photographs and illustrations(one of the surprise interviewees was the Paris fire department sketch artist who accompanied the crew into the building). Embers raining down like confetti; a cascade of lava falling into the nave from 120 feet above; fire so hot that the crews’ helmets changed colour. In the words of one firefighter: “And then we see the monster arriving, like an animal, its mouth open wide, coming to swallow the roof whole.”
The account of putting out the fire would have been sufficiently riveting, but there were sub-plots and supporting characters worthy of Hollywood. In addition to putting out the fire, the crews also had to save Notre Dame’s treasures. Sent on a mission to retrieve the cathedral’s greatest holy relic, the Crown of Thorns, one firefighter carried it back to the curators only to be told it was a fake and the real one was in a safe. With the building falling down around them, the general manager took him to the safe which had no less than four locks. The manager’s mind went blank at lock number two and he couldn’t remember the code (he eventually texted a colleague who is able to help). “I’m ready to kill someone. I’m furious. I glower,” recalled the fire chief, who can laugh about it now.
How did the fire start? The documentary did not concern itself with that. Instead, it focused on the extraordinary bravery of these men – and one woman, a rookie who had never been called to a real fire before. When they eventually returned to the station, they didn’t clock off but instead polished their kit ready for the morning inspection. All in a night’s work.
