177. Les Enfants du Paradis (Children of Paradise, or Children Of the Gods) (1945)

Directed By Marcel Carné

Synopsis

A love pentagon in the mid 19th century Paris theatre world. A murderer, a mime, an actor, and a count all want Arletty. The ultimate MILF.

Review

So, in the trailer to this film it was called the French Gone With The Wind. Actually, it is better than that. There might not be Technicolor or Atlanta burning, but it is not far. The whole film is a delight, the acting, the setting, the dresses. There is something about French cinema when it is good that surpasses just about anything. When it is bad it is pedantic, presumptuous and egocentric. When it is good it is art at its best.

And this is French cinema at its best. It is three hours of astounding acting, Arletty who was already great in another Carné film, Le Jour Se Léve is now amazing here. She is way to old for her character, and she just isn't that pretty, but that woman has presence, elegance and that star-quality. Even if you might start off by not quite believing her image, you end up not caring, hey Baptiste isn't that pretty too. But you get why there would be such love for the ugly Baptiste, Jean-Louis Barrault is an amazing mime on screen. You might not like Mimes but he is something else. And talk about the writing, it's Jacques Prévert at his best, and that should be enough.

Then in a twist of fate, the murderer, the constant threat in the whole film, does something unexpected and you know that the film is not going to end as you expect it. The film's end is incredibly anti-climatic, but that is exactly how you would want it, because it does not kill this dream world, it goes on existing even after the curtain has gone down. Indispensable.

Final Grade

10/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The film was extremely difficult to make, the external sets in Nice were badly damaged by natural causes, and exacerbated and compounded by the theatrical constraints during the German occupation of France during World War II. In fact, the extended production of Children of Paradise, which took place during 1943 and 1944, was a veritable tour de force of French spirit overcoming adversities in the wake of their military defeat. The passion and dedication of the team surrounding Carné for this film, who showed remarkable resilience in the face of potentially deadly adversity, and the undertone of defiance of the screenplay in the context of Nazi occupation, may explain, in part, why it became and remains the greatest French film of all times.

The Vichy administration had imposed a maximum time limit of 90 minutes for feature films, so the film was split into two parts - Le Boulevard du crime (The Boulevard of Crime) and L'Homme blanc (The White Man).

Noted critic Pauline Kael allegedly wrote "that the starving extras made away with some of the banquets before they could be photographed". Many of the 1,800 extras were Resistance agents using the film as daytime cover, who, until the Liberation, had to mingle with some collaborators or Vichy sympathisers who were imposed on the production by the authorities. Alexandre Trauner, who designed the sets, and Joseph Kosma, who composed the music, were Jewish and had to work in complete secrecy throughout the production and their work was credited to others in the credits.

The set builders were short of supplies and the camera crew's film stock was rationed. The financing, originally a French-Italian production, collapsed a few weeks after production began in Nice, due to the Allied conquest of Sicily in August 1943. Around this time, the Nazis forbade the producer, André Paulvé, from working on the film because of his remote Jewish ancestry, and the production had to be suspended for three months. Pathé Cinéma took over production, whose cost was escalating wildly. The quarter-mile long main set, the "Boulevard du Temple", was severely damaged by a storm and had to be rebuilt. By the time shooting resumed in Paris in early spring of 1944, the Director of Photography, Roger Hubert, had been assigned to another production and Philippe Agostini, who replaced him, had to analyze all the reels in order to match the lighting of the non-sequential shot list; all the while, electricity in the Paris Studios was intermittent.

Production was delayed again after the allies landed in Normandy, perhaps intentionally stalled so that it would only be completed after the French Liberation. When Paris was liberated in August 1944, the actor Robert le Vigan, who was, ironically, cast in the role of informer-thief Jericho, was sentenced to death by the Resistance for collaborating with the Nazis, and had to flee, along with the author Céline, to Sigmaringen. He was replaced at a moment’s notice by Pierre Renoir, older brother of French filmmaker Jean Renoir and son of the famous painter, and most of the scenes had to be redone. Vigan was tried and convicted as a Nazi collaborator in 1946. One scene featuring Vigan survives in the middle of the second part, when Jericho snitches to Nathalie.

Baptiste's father is played by mime and mime theorist Etienne Decroux, who was Jean-Louis Barrault's teacher. Many of his character's lines about theatre can be interpreted as ironic statements on his own work in corporeal mime.[citation needed]

Carné and Prévert hid some of the key reels of film from the occupying forces, hoping that Paris would be liberated by the time the film was completed

Witness: