“Babylon” in the cinema: Damien Chazelle, the prodigy who revives the Roaring Twenties of Hollywood

Like many film buffs of his generation, Damien Chazelle admits that for a long time he had a fairly superficial, even distorted vision of this era. “At first I only saw the comic side“, he explains. “It was present too, of course. But I realized how catastrophic it had been for some people. Suicides, murders, overdoses. Shattered careers and lives.”

For writing Babylon, the young director studied the tragic fate of several forgotten icons of the time. They nourished to varying degrees the characters played by Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Diego Calva, Jovan Adepo and even Li Jun Li, whose Lady Fay Zu is directly inspired by the star of Asian origin Anna May Wong, a victim of racism who reigned in Hollywood.