Les Enfants du Paradis (no 15) *****

 

by Allan Fish

(France 1945 193m) DVD1/2

Aka. Children of Paradise

A stroll down the Boulevard du Temple

p  Fred Orain, Raymond Borderic  d  Marcel Carné  w  Jacques Prévert  ph  Roger Hubert  ed  Henri Rust, Madeleine Bonin  m  Maurice Thiriet, Joseph Kosma, G.Mouque  art  Alexandre Trauner, Léon Barsacq, Raymond Galbutti  cos  Antoine Mayo

Arletty (Garance), Jean-Louis Barrault (Baptiste Debureau), Pierre Brasseur (Frédéric Lemaître), Marcel Herrand (Pierre-François Lacenaire), Maria Casarès (Natalie), Pierre Renoir (Jericho), Êtienne Decroux (Anselme Debureau), Fabien Loris (Avril), Louis Salou (Eduard, le Comte de Montray), Gaston Modot (File de Soie, the blind beggar), Marcel Perès (director), Jane Marken (Mme.Hermine), Robert Dhéry (Célestin), Paul Frankeur (Inspector), Pierre Palau (manager), Albert Remy (Scarpia Borigni),

Marcel Carné’s recreation of 1840s Paris is truly one of the wonders of the cinematic world, a masterpiece so universally proclaimed not only by critics of the vernacular (who rate it the greatest film in their nation’s history), but of world cinema also.  Certainly it is one of the truly great recreations of a time and a place put on camera, so lovingly composed by a team of superb technicians and thespians at their peak as to be an object lesson in period recreation.  That they managed to do so under the extremely oppressive Vichy regime and did not let a three year completion period deter them is a great testament to French ingenuity and spirit. 

            In two parts (The Boulevard du Crime and The Man in White), the film follows the loves and losses of a struggling actress and model, Garance, living in the infamous Boulevard du Temple in Paris.  Famed as much for its many criminal activities (including numerous murders), it’s also feted for its theatres, in particular that most popular theatre of the people, the Funambules.  Four men compete for her affection – a struggling actor Frédéric, with dreams of playing Shakespeare; a mime artist from a like minded family, Baptiste; an aristocrat, Eduard, with a high opinion of himself; and a polished criminal, Lacenaire, who prides himself on his ingenuity and writes literature on the side.  As Baptiste fails to take his chance with Garance she becomes the mistress of Frédéric, before she accepts the protection of the aristocrat to escape the police.  She returns some years later to find Frédéric and Baptiste celebrated on stage and the latter married off it.

Such a complicated love story is really the bare bones of the proceedings here.  Carné is more fascinated by what drives these characters on, by their hidden desires, their ambitions and the actual theatrical performances of the period.  He successfully recreates the last period of the people’s theatre (as Shakespeare once maintained it) and we are as entranced by proceedings as the audience on film.  The great Will himself knew that “all the world’s a stage” and Carné’s film exemplifies this.  They act on stage, they act off stage, but they remain men, doomed to mortality and a life that, in the end, amounts to little beyond its remembrance.  But there is much to be said for remembrance when it is so fondly recalled as here by Carné.

            Yet much credit must of course go to Carné’s collaborators, and Trauner, Kosma and – particularly – Prévert are rightly praised, but most credit must go to the actors, many of whom are theatre stars themselves.  Arletty may really be a decade too old in retrospect, but she has a truly indefinable mystery; Brasseur is superb as the exaggerated Lemaître comparing Garance to Isolde and Iphigenia; Casarès meltingly loyal as the unfortunate Natalie (prior to immortality as Cocteau’s vision of Death) and Herrand (who reminds one of Robert Douglas) deliciously cynical as Lacenaire.  But piece de resistance is Barrault, typifying the loyal poetic lover and magnificent in his mime performances (especially the first of the stolen watch on the streets, a possible influence on Alec Guinness’ Fagin in Lean’s Oliver Twist).  However, it’s Lacenaire who delivers the film’s most telling observation; “actors aren’t people, they’re everyone and no-one.”  How true.