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#1
11-06-2005, 05:28 AM
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100 films: Children of Paradise
 starring: Jean-Louis Barrault, Arletty, Pierre Brasseur, and Marcel Herrand written by: Jacques Prévert directed by: Marcel Carné NR, 190 min, 1945, France Filmed in Paris during the Nazi occupation of WWII, Les Enfants du Paradis is an epic tale of tragedy where it is not enough to love and be loved in return. The story revolves around the theatre scene of 1830's Paris. Baptiste (Jean Louis Barrault) is an exceptional mime who falls in love with Garance (Arletty), but in a moment of timidity when he does not allow his love to flourish he misses his opportunity and she ends up with aspiring actor Frederick instead. However, when she's fingered as an accomplice to attempted murder, she seeks refuge with a wealthy admirer. Years later she returns to Paris to find that Baptiste and Frederick have become the pillars of the theatre and that her feelings for Baptiste have only grown stronger with time, but his wife is able to run interference and they are kept apart. While Les Enfants du Paradis is commonly hailed as the greatest achievement in the history of French cinema, the argument has been made that this is perhaps one of the greatest achievements in all of cinema. If that is wrong, it is not wrong by much. This is a big-budget studio movie that feels like a small, personal drama. A large portion of the French Resistance worked as crew members to keep them out of concentration camps, and the entire production took over three years to complete. Under those conditions, it's amazing the film was even made at all. Somehow, they managed to come up with one of the best things you'll ever see on film. Simply stated, this is a tragic tale of love lost. Screenwriter Jacques Prévert infuses the film with a sense of poetic beauty that informs every bit of the production. Somehow he manages to make even a coarse bit of dialogue feel sublime. There are several extended mime performances that would stand alone outside the framework of the film as a whole, but add a fascinating dimension to the proceedings. Director Marcel Carné films on numerous sets because, well, that's what he had to work with. But in a film that revolves around the world of the theatre, it works to the film's advantage. Just as in the theatre nothing is truly as it seems, so it is in the film. All of the characters, for that matter, seem to have a different idea as to their standing in the world at large. At least four primary characters are in love with Garance, all of them thinking at various points that their love is reciprocated, so when she is revealed to be kissing Baptiste on the balcony, Frederick comments that, "Jealousy belongs to all if a woman belongs to no one." And when Baptiste's wife discovers the affair, Garance is gone. He chases her into the street, brushing past his son as if he weren't there, but is unable to navigate through the carnival crowd full of people dressed as his famous mime. He's left struggling against the crowd, desperate and forlorn. the 100 films archive 
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#2
12-11-2005, 08:06 AM
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\"Silence! We can\'t hear the pantomime!\"
Saw the DVD again last night. It is a sublime film, and every time I see it, I fall in love all over again - with the French language.
Some observations & tidbits: - Arletty plays Garance in a modern manner. Her (understated, forceful, "modern") acting was hailed by critic Richard Roud as "perhaps the greatest performance by a woman on film, ever". She was arrested and jailed soon after the film opened for having an alleged affais during the Couupation with a Luftwaffe officer. It was a time when the French, a great number of whom enthusiastically collaborated or remained apathetic during the Occupation, were looking for scapegoats to cleanse their guilt. link - Although screenwriter Prévert is considered a "classic", the play unfolds in a revolutionary manner, as far as the relationship between play and audience is concerned. Everyone seems to be play acting and the actors on stage (screen) seem to be reminding us about that, at every oportunity, even at the moments of greatest pathos - and this is a film full of pathos. The protagonist of a theatrical play breaks with the script and comments freely on it, causing the audience to laugh instead of cry, as the play's authors intended; the criminal admits to be always play acting, tellingly never giving out his real name, if he has one (viz. the scene where Decenaire monentarily cannot understand what Garance is calling him); in the carnival scenes, everybody is dressed up and play acting, but a lead character of the film, the mime, cannot make way towards his love because the crowd/audience gets in the way; at a dramatic climax, the arch-criminal in the film draws apart sharply the window curtains to reveal to the cuckolded Count his lover kissing the mime, as if in a movie theatre; etc. - Paradise refers to the upper gallery in 19th century popular theatre hall, i.e. the cheap seats. The theatre set alone is spectacular enough, but these guys recreated a whole neighborhood! In the middle of the German Occupation, as well. The actor who was supposed to play the criminal fled the movie set because he was allegedly a collaborator and the Resistance condemned him to death. The arch-criminal's right-hand man (who gets karate-kicked by the mime!) is supposed to be extremely tough but blanches when his boss knifes someone. And at the bar, his drink is "hot chocolate". ...I'm hungry for more! Therefore, I'm soon going to watch Le jour se lève (Daybreak), Hôtel du Nord (Hotel North) and Quai des brumes (Port of Shadows). Nobody does films of urban melancholy and nostalgia better than the Frogs , which is why they are the masters of noir. In the movies and in the comics (link).
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#3
12-11-2005, 08:47 AM
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Re: \"Silence! We can\'t hear the pantomime!\"
Just a side note, the French are noted for a very fast and good kicking style that is their country's equivalent of boxing, and indeed incorporates boxing in it. Karate it's not, but it rhymes with it at least to an American eye -- Savate.
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#4
12-11-2005, 09:03 AM
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Re: 100 films: Children of Paradise
I usually enjoy these write-ups, Pryor.
But this time, I stopped reading when I got to the word "mime". My loss, I'm sure.
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#7
12-11-2005, 02:14 PM
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Re: 100 films: Children of Paradise
[ QUOTE ]
I usually enjoy these write-ups, Pryor. But this time, I stopped reading when I got to the word "mime". My loss, I'm sure. [/ QUOTE ] i hate mimes too, but this made me re-think things.
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