Les Enfants du Paradis

1945, 3hrs 15m, France, Black and White


This tragic tale ‘is a tribute to the theatre’. Partly because it is based upon the lives of Frederick Lemâitre and Baptiste Debureau, at the beginning of their careers as well as Jean-François Lacenaire, who was a well known dandy in about the ‘Boulevard du Crime’ ( because in those days about 1840 people were getting murdered there. It also represents the French popular theatre of the nineteenth century). Partly because of the children of the gods are the actors.( the play on the word- ‘gods’ means the theatrical gallery in French as well as English- is deliberate, of course.) Yes these children are the actors: Marcel Carné during an interview has admitted so much.
The Children of the gods is a tragic tale and it tells of a woman Garance( played by Arletty) who is loved by four men: the only one whose love she fully returns, she loses, finds again and loses forever. Meanwhile the teeming life of the children of the gods goes on; her one true love(Jean-Louis Barrault) becomes the most celebrated mime of his day; the strolling player( Pierre Brasseur) for whom she is just another conquest until he finds that she is more, goes on to become the greatest actor of the time; “ the icy count to whom she gives her love but not her heart is complimented by the fiery criminal whose pride will not let him beg for her, and whose final act gratuit brings about an ironic resolution of the struggle when it is too late for everybody concerned.” Bernard Levin, Times Newspapers Ltd,1980

It is for the cinema what Balzac and Victor Hugo were for literature in the XIX century; not only French, but the world's. A colossal masterpiece whose truth and beauty are timeless, and the movies does not date at all: even the flamboyant performance of Brasseur doesn’t seem grotesque; instead it jells well with the surrealistic touch of the mime in his white maskface as he desperately struggles through the white clad carnival crowd to reach the carriage, which is carrying Garance away from him forever. That powerful ending, desolation among gaiety, the hearbreak in counterpoint with the carefree, separation in the midst of unity shall remain long after the movie is over.
1995 was the centennial of the invention of movies. In Stockholm the event was celebrated, inter alia, by showing 'Les enfants du paradis' free of charge on the French National Day. It was presented as the best French movie ever made.
Les enfants du paradis is the masterpiece of the duo Carné-Prévert. Marcel Carné began shooting in 1943, when Paris was still occupied. Many members of the French Resistance found cameo roles in order to avoid detection.

2.
Les Enfants du Paradis centres around the ill-fated love between Baptiste, a theater mime, and Garance who is forced to enter the protection of Count Eduard when she is implicated falsely in a crime committed by Lacenaire. In the intervening years of separation, both Garance and Baptiste become involved in loveless relationships with the Count and Nathalie, respectively. Baptiste is the father of a son. Returning to Paris, Garance finds that Baptiste has become a famous mime actor. Nathalie sends her child to foil their meeting, but Baptiste and Garance manage one night together. Lacenaire murders Edouard. In the last scenes, Garance is returning to Eduard's hotel and disaster; even as Baptiste follows her carriage through crowds of merrymakers she has the look of one who is lost.
“The film boasts a picaresque squalor drawn from the time in which it was set, highlighting the tenacious romance at its core. Children of Paradise has a melancholy feeling both authentic and immediate, a romance with moments of pure magic.”
-Robert Lane
I have seen this movie so many times and it remains for me the epitome of classic cinema.
There are a few unforgettable characters of which I shall mention a few: *Lacenaire, a cuthroat who writes comedies on the side and has no compunction to shed blood and the latter's assistant Avril. The scene at the Turkish bath where the count meets his end shall leave a shudder: the close-up and the grimace of ‘mon pauvre’ Avril I can still recall. (The murder of Edouard by Lacenaire can also be taken as a rebellion of the resentful lower classes against the upper classes: the image of the fallen, dead hand with the valuable ring is significant.)
(* Based on real life, Lacenaire was executed in 1836. His memoirs, which were written while he awaited execution, are published in English translation.)
Jericho, the old clothes man moves through the film like the shadow of death (he is at the elbow of the mime, still haunting, amid the crowd in that final scene.) is as powerful as the blind beggar who knows what goes on about him. Robert Le Vigan was originally cast as Jericho but he disappeared at the Liberation when he was suspected of having collaborated, and the part was taken over by Pierre Renoir.
This movie undoubtedly is a vehicle for Arletty whose grave, classic beauty and expressive eyes give the movie an undefinable aura. Never did she excel herself as in Les Enfants du Paradis. (She was imprisoned in 1945 for having had a wartime liaison with a German officer during the occupation of France. In this she was not unusual, as many French women behaved in this manner during World War II. She seems to have later commented on the experience, "My heart is French but my ass is international.")
benny