Les Enfants du Paradis (1945)

Directed by Marcel Carné. Starring Jean-Louis Barrault, Pierre Brasseur, Arletty, Marcel Herrand, Louis Salou, Maria Casares, Pierre Renoir, Gaston Modot, Marcel Pérès, Pierre Palau, Jane Marken, Fabien Loris, Etienne Decroux.

A uniquely extraordinary movie masterpiece, miraculously completed during the Nazi occupation of France with French Resistance fighters and Jews-in-hiding employed by the filmmakers, set in and around the Théâtre des Funambules on Paris’ “Boulevard of Crime” during the first half of the 19th century. Opening with the masterful staging of a boulevard carnival teeming with performers and dancing and music and food, the engrossing narrative concerns the courtesan, Garance (Arletty), who has inspired the infatuation of four men—mime Barrault, theater actor Brasseur, gangster Herrand, and aristocrat Salou—and the ways in which their lives are affected by those desires. Originally shown in two segments due to rules about films lasting more than an hour-and-a-half, the lively, sprawling first part takes place several years before the lamentations and fatalistic choices made in the back half. The difference between the dynamic images in the first part compared to the more formal and static compositions of the second suggests the movie is a bit like life itself—the excitement, speed, romance and dreamy optimism of youth gives way to a slower and more more resigned and wistful adulthood (even the rear bookending carnival sequence is a backdrop for heartbreak and death). In addition, think of how many people have these character types as shimmering facets of their singular personality (the showman, the dreamer, the clown, the seducer, the writer, the criminal, the libertine, the elitist, and so on—it’s almost a Tarot deck come to life). Distribution in the U.S. (as Children of Paradise) resulted in multiple versions getting screened (some with more than a half hour cut from the runtime), marketers describing it as France’s response to Gone with the Wind, and an Academy Award nomination for Jacques Prévert’s screenplay at a time when Oscar so rarely paid heed to foreign films.

99/100