KEY POINTS:
At the crossroads of the Boulevard St-Germain-des-Pres and the Boulevard Saint-Michel, no cobblestones are flying, just occasional wrappers caught by the spring breeze.
The scent of teargas and patchouli dispersed long ago, to be replaced by the waft of traffic exhausts and perfume from passing tourists. The Latin
Cluny self-service restaurant - once a backdrop to the events that shook the world - has been replaced by a McDonald's.
Forty years have passed since the upheaval of student demonstrations and striking workers, known as May '68, gripped France.
For a month-and-a-half, the rest of Europe looked on, bemused or terrified, as France was wrenched by revolutionary convulsions tinged by the free-wheeling, liberated mood of a hippie happening. The events shook President Charles de Gaulle and the conservative establishment, challenged capitalist doctrines, opened up an era of sexual liberation, gave a voice to the young - and unleashed a debate that rumbles to this day.
"It was a student revolt, it was a revolutionary movement by small, disunited groups, it was a social crisis and an unprecedented strike, it was a political crisis, all rolled into one, and it was a cultural revolution on top of that," says historian Michel Winock.
It began on May 3 when students occupied the Sorbonne in the Latin Quarter, on the city's Left Bank. Violent clashes erupted with riot police, leading to hundreds of injuries and arrests. Barricades were thrown up around the Sorbonne, leaving the district in the hands of the protesters.
Within the university, lecture theatres, residence halls and study rooms were transformed into a free-for-all where Maoists, Trotskyists, anarchists, communists and socialists debated, staged workshops on the ills of capitalism, the rights of the individual and the Vietnam War.
By May 13, the movement had extended to universities across France - and then to thousands of factories as well, where unions hoisted the red flag, downing tools and staging sit-ins to demand higher pay and greater rights.
The country became paralysed by this unprecedented movement where workers marched in lock-step with the scions of the middle classes. At one point, nearly 11 million people were either on strike or unable to work.
Fumbling through all this was France's 77-year-old war hero, Charles de Gaulle, angry and baffled at the "chienlit" - "havoc" - that had swept his country. After weeks of hesitation, sensing that public sympathy for the students had been replaced by resentment, he used his sweeping powers to dissolve the National Assembly, or lower house of Parliament, and call new elections.
His supporters organised a counter-demonstration that drew hundreds of thousands of people to the Champs-Elysees. By mid-June, the mini-revolution had fizzled out, amid acrimony between rival left-wing groups. By month's end, De Gaulle's conservatives scored an emphatic victory in the elections. But nothing would be quite the same again.
Today, the legacy of May '68 unleashes a polarised debate, reflected in nearly 100 books published on the occasion of the 40th anniversary, the innumerable newspaper and magazine articles and dozens of TV documentaries, films and exhibitions.
Left-wingers, though, defend May '68 passionately. Where conservatives see sterile, doctrinal or violent confrontation, they see contact, dialogue, a breaking with the tongue-tied past.
"May '68 was a moment of grace, even for the opposite side," says singer Georges Moustaki. "All of a sudden there was an awareness that ... we couldn't remain in the slumber that prevailed before."
In the occupied factories and faculties, there was music, theatre and poetry, and intellectuals such as Jean-Paul Sartre would give lectures to packed rooms. The grassroots debates, while usually unfocused or chaotic, were lively and the emphasis was always on freedom. "Il est interdit d'interdire" - it is forbidden to forbid - is the best-remembered slogan of the time.
Feminists, for the first time, were a visible political and social force, and sexual liberation, helped by the legalisation of the contraceptive pill a year before, dawned.
"What impressed me most was the gathering of people who were very diverse, who never spoke to each other before," Jean-Baptiste Ruffet, a 28-year-old trainee metro driver at the time, told Le Parisien.
"There were university and high school students, striking workers, union officials, architects, engineers, teachers, worried bosses of small companies. I learned a lifelong lesson from this, which is to accept the differences of other people."
Among today's youngsters, one senses a mixture of thoughts about May 68.
There is boredom at how their parents or grandparents - now respectable bourgeois - drone on about their glory days. Yet there is also respect bordering on envy for the event itself, for such a revolt against authority is almost unimaginable today.
In 1968, the country was run by a starchy, conservative, Catholic paternal figure. Teachers were lofty figures who taught by rote with iron discipline. In the workplace, bosses ruled the roost and workers kept their heads down. In sexual behaviour and women's rights, the edicts were knee-length skirts, no intercourse before marriage, no divorce by mutual consent.
So the situation was ripe for revolt, driven by the demographic bulge of the baby boomers, their confidence and prosperity founded on France's post-World War II boom.
Today's youngsters look at a dour future. The jobless rate is more than four times that of 1968.
A student who graduates in 2008 is likely to spend four or five years unemployed, doing ill-paid "training" programmes or living precariously on fixed-term contracts before finding a secure job. Surviving on tiny incomes and worried about their future, French students are not in a revolutionary mood.
"Three-quarters of the people here don't know what happened here in March 1968," says Martin Ammari, a history student at the grim, concrete campus of Nanterre University, west of Paris, where a protest on March 22, 1968, led to the bust-up at the Sorbonne.
Marie-Claude, a 52-year-old Renault worker who preferred not to give her last name, says she finds her children's generation "sadder and indifferent" compared with her own. "In our day, we were more focused on our freedom. We could quit a job on a whim, to be with our boyfriend for instance, and there would be no fear of long-term unemployment," she said.
"Kids today maybe would like to do the same, but they have less certainty about finding another job."
The leaders of May '68 became some of the prominent men and women of their generation, especially in politics, the media, the cinema and arts.
Leading lights include the philosopher Andre Glucksmann, Serge July, who went on to edit the left-wing daily Liberation, Dany "le Rouge" Cohn-Bendit, a German left-winger who is now a Euro MP for the Greens, and the cartoonist Georges Wolinski.
While most people today make comparisons between May '68 and May '08, historian Michel Winock takes a longer view. He says May '68's real touchstone was 1789, and the contact was a blessing and a curse at the same time. As in the French Revolution, individuals chaotically asserted their liberty. But it came at the cost of entrenching confrontation, which explains why reforms in France in politics and the workplace are rarely achieved smoothly, he argues.
"In France, the spirit of confrontation, of protest, is like something embedded in the genes," says Winock.
REMEMBERING THE REVOLUTION
"All of a sudden there was an awareness that we had to wake up." Singer Georges Moustaki
"We were more focused on our freedom, our independence." Renault worker Marie-Claude
"I learned a life-long lesson to accept the differences of other people." Jean-Baptiste Ruffet
