Les Enfants du Paradis (PG) (This review on FilmJuice.com)
Voted ‘The best French film ever made’ by the French Film Academy, this stunningly restored edition of Les Enfants du Paradis (1945) is a sumptuous cinematic treat. Garance, a courtesan and actress iconically played by Arletty, one of the great beauties of the twentieth century, is pursued by four very different yet equally amorous gents.
Principal among them and the only one for whom Garance has any reciprocal feeling, is the unappreciated but brilliant mime-artist Baptiste. At their first meeting, the mime uses his performance skills to demonstrate Garance’s innocence when she is falsely accused of pickpocketing. Their paths diverge however when Baptiste hesitates in wooing her, and they each settle for loveless relationships whilst longing that their paths might cross again.
Jean-Louis Barrault plays Baptiste, a character modelled on real life nineteenth century mime-artist Jean-Gaspard Deburau, whom Barrault had been fascinated by ever since hearing how he had beaten a street-boy to death for taunting him in front of his family. The other male characters are largely also based on real people, such as intellectual criminal Pierre-François Lacenaire, who stakes his own claim to Garance’s heart. The romance is a catalyst allowing these disparate characters to be explored in one story.
Director Marcel Carné is known for his affinity with the working classes, and though Les Enfants du Paradis is about the theatre, it is also about the paying masses on who’s dreams and fantasies actors and writers live. The cheap-ticket holding common folk are even affectionately referred to as ‘the gods’, as their laughs and gasps at whatever drama unfolds on stage is acknowledged as the theatre’s true lifeblood. The balconies where these ‘gods’ are seated were referred to colloquially as ‘paradis’, hence the actors are their dependent offspring.
The Oscar nominated script by Jacques Prévert is a soul-searching, despairing treasure-trove of wit and humour, with dazzling dialogue full of memory-branding lines. The soft, abstract-shadow filled cinematography is an interesting contrast to the razor-sharp imagery that is in fashion today, and Maurice Thiriet’s fabulously restored score is a frenzy of orchestral emotion.
Many will likely be daunted at the prospect of an old black and white French film that runs over three hours and takes place largely in the confines of a theatre setting, but anyone who gives it a half a chance is sure to have their hearts won over. It is unashamedly melodramatic but uproariously entertaining, not to mention technically dazzling and even something of a miracle, given that it was shot during the years of France’s Nazi occupation.
The anguish filled finale is every bit as much a sledgehammer to the heart as those of better known dark classics like The Third Man and Brazil. At one point a character muses “Audiences want something new... novelty, what does that mean?” Les Enfants du Paradis could be that something for present day audiences, a rediscovered relic of cinema from another time and place.
Blu-ray & DVD extras: Theatre, Love and War: Making Les Enfants du Paradis, Once Upon a Time... Les Enfants du Paradis, The Restoration, The Restoration - Before and After, Trailer
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