Children of Paradise
Encyclopedia
Les Enfants du Paradis, released as Children of Paradise in North America, is a 1945 French film
by French director Marcel Carné
, made during the German occupation of France during World War II. Set among the Paris
ian theatre
scene of the 1820s and 30s, it tells the story of a beautiful courtesan
, Garance, and the four men who love her in their own ways: a mime artist
, an actor, a criminal and an aristocrat
. A three-hour film divided into two halves, it was described in the original American trailer as the French answer to Gone with the Wind
. The film was voted "Best Film Ever" in a poll of 600 French critics and professionals in 1995.
stated that the title "refers to the actors [...] and the audiences too, the good-natured, working-class audience."
(1830–48), centred on the area around the "Funambules" theatre, situated on the Boulevard du Temple
— pejoratively referred to as the "Boulevard du Crime
". The film revolves around a beautiful and charismatic courtesan, Garance (played by the famous Arletty
). Four men — the mime Baptiste Debureau
(Jean-Louis Barrault
), the actor Frédérick Lemaître
(Pierre Brasseur
), the thief Pierre François Lacenaire
(Marcel Herrand
), and the aristocrat Édouard de Montray (Louis Salou) — are in love with Garance, and their intrigues drive the story forward. Garance is briefly intrigued/involved with them all, but leaves them when they attempt to force her to love on their terms, rather than her own. The mime Baptiste is the one who suffers the most in pursuit of the unattainable Garance.
was an acclaimed actor on the 'Boulevard of Crime
' depicted in the film. Pierre Lacenaire
was an infamous French criminal, and the fictional character of the Comte Édouard de Montray was inspired by the Duc de Morny.
The idea for making a movie based on these characters came from a chance meeting between Carné and Jean-Louis Barrault, in Nice
, during which Barrault pitched the idea of making a movie based on Debureau and Lemaître. Carné, who at the time was hesitant about which movie to direct next, proposed this idea to his friend Jacques Prévert. Prévert was initially reluctant to write a movie about a mime, which of course would not well convey his strength in writing dialogue, but then he saw the opportunity to include the character of Lacenaire, the "Dandy of crime", who fascinated him. The Germans were then occupying the whole of France, and Prévert is rumoured to have said "They will not let me do a movie about Lacenaire, but I can put Lacenaire in a film about Debureau".
in Paris
, nicknamed "Boulevard of Crime" because of all the melodramas and bloody scenarios offered to the largely plebian public each evening. There are two principal theaters: the Théâtre des Funambules ("Theater of Tightrope Walkers") specializes in pantomime, since the authorities do not allow it to use spoken dialogue, which is reserved for the "official" venue, the Grand Theater.
Part I: Boulevard of Crime
A young actor and womanizer, Frédérick Lemaître, dreams of becoming a star. He meets and flirts with Garance, a beautiful woman who earns her living by exhibiting her physical charms (modestly) in a carnival show. Garance staves off Frédérick's advances and goes to visit one of her acquaintances, Pierre-François Lacenaire, a rebel in revolt against society. Lacenaire is a proud, dangerous individual who works as a scrivener
to cover his organized criminal enterprises. Shortly thereafter, Garance is accused of stealing a man's gold watch while she is watching a pantomime featuring Baptiste Debureau and a barker (Baptiste's father) in front of the Funambules Theater. Lacenaire is in fact the guilty party. Baptiste, dressed up as the stock character Pierrot
, saves her from the police by silently acting out the theft, which he has just witnessed. He reveals a great talent, a veritable vocation for pantomime, but falls immediately and irremediably in love with Garance, saving a flower she thanked him with.
Baptiste's father is one of the stars at the Funambules. The daughter of the theater director, Nathalie, who is a mime also, is deeply in love with Baptiste. Before the performance that evening, a used-clothes peddler named Jéricho reads in her palm that she will marry the man she loves, as he knew her father was worried about her mood affecting her performances. When a fight breaks out that evening between two rival clans of actors, Baptiste and Frédérick manage to calm the crowd down by improvising a mime act, thus saving the day's receipts. The most enthusiastic of the spectators are those seated in "the gods
" ("paradis", paradise, in the French theatre), that is, on the top floor of the balcony where the cheapest seats are located.
Later that night, Baptiste catches sight of Garance with Lacenaire and his accomplices in a seedy restaurant/dancehall, "Le Rouge Gorge" (a pun: this means "The Robin" or "The Red Breast", but literally translates as "The Red Throat," a reference to the previous owner's throat having been slit). When he invites Garance to dance, he is thrown out of the restaurant by Avril, one of Lacenaire's thugs. He turns the situation around and leaves with Garance, for whom he finds a room at the same boarding house where he and Frédérick live. After declaring his love, Baptiste flees Garance's room when she says she doesn't return his love in the same way, despite her clear invitation to stay. When Frédérick hears Garance singing in her room, which is next to his, he quickly joins her.
Baptiste becomes the star of the Funambules; fueled by his passion, he writes several very popular pantomimes, performing with Garance and Frédérick, who have become lovers. Baptiste is tormented by their affair, while Nathalie, who is convinced that she and Baptiste are "made for each other," suffers from his lack of love for her.
Garance is visited in her dressing room by the Count Édouard de Montray, a wealthy and cynical dandy who offers her his fortune if she will agree to become his mistress. Garance is repelled by him and mockingly rejects his proposition. The count nonetheless offers her his protection if the need were to arise. She is later unjustly suspected of complicity in an abortive robbery and murder attempt by Lacenaire and Avril. To avoid arrest she is forced to appeal to Count Édouard for protection. The first part of the film comes to an end with this development.
Part II: The Man in White
Several years later, Frédérick has become famous as the star of the Grand Theater. A man about town and a spendthrift, he is covered with debts - which doesn't prevent him from devastating the mediocre play in which he currently has the main role by exposing it to ridicule in rehearsal and then playing it for laughs, rather than straight melodrama, on opening night. Despite achieving a smashing success, the play's three fussy authors are still outraged and challenge him to a duel. He accepts and when he returns to his dressing room, Frédérick is confronted by Lacenaire, who apparently intends to rob and kill him. However, the criminal is an amateur playwright and strikes up a friendship with the actor instead. He and Avril serve as Frédérick's seconds the next morning, when the actor arrives at the duel dead drunk.
Baptiste is enjoying even greater success as a mime at the Funambules. When Frédérick goes to a performance the day after surviving the duel, he is surprised to find himself in the same box as Garance. His old flame has returned to Paris after having traveled throughout the world with the Count de Montray, who has kept her these several years. She has been attending the Funambules every night incognito to watch Baptiste perform. She knows she has always been genuinely in love with him. Frédérick suddenly finds himself jealous for the first time in his life. While the feeling is highly unpleasant, he remarks that his jealousy will help him as an actor. He will finally be able to play the role of Othello
, having now experienced the emotions which motivate the character. Garance asks Frédérick to tell Baptiste of her presence, but Nathalie, now Baptiste's wife, is first informed by the spiteful rag-man Jéricho. She sends their small son to Garance's box to mortify her with their family's happiness. By the time Frédérick alerts Baptiste and he rushes to find her, the box is empty.
When Garance returns to the Count's luxurious mansion, she finds Lacenaire waiting for her. Lacenaire satisfies himself that Garance has no love for him and, on his way out, encounters the Count, who is irritated to see such an individual in his home. Lacenaire reacts to the Count's challenge with threats, revealing the knife at his belt. Later, Garance declares to the Count that she will never love him since she is already in love with another man, but declares she will continue to try to please him, and offers to spread the word on the streets that she is "mad" about him, if he would like.
Frédérick has finally achieved his dream of playing the role of Othello
. The Count, who insists on attending the performance with Garance, is convinced that the actor is the man she loves. At a break in the play, the Count coolly mocks Frédérick, trying to provoke him into a duel. Elsewhere Baptiste, who is also in the audience, encounters Garance at last. When Lacenaire takes Frédérick's side in the verbal jousting, the Count attempts to humiliate him as well. Lacenaire takes revenge by calling him a cuckold and, dramatically pulling back a curtain, reveals Garance in Baptiste's embrace on the balcony. The two lovers slip away to spend the night together in Garance's former room at The Great Post House.
The next morning, at a Turkish bath, Lacenaire assassinates the count for having had him thrown out of the theater. He then calmly sits to wait for the police and meet his "destiny", which is to die on the scaffold. At the rooming house, Nathalie finds Baptiste with Garance. With Nathalie desperate and pleading her wifely rights, Garance declares that she has "been with" Baptiste for the past six years as much as Nathalie, his wife, has. She flees, pursued by the equally desperate Baptiste, who is soon lost in the frantic Carnival crowd amid a sea of bobbing masks and unheeding, white Pierrot
s. The film ends as Baptiste is swept away and as Garance makes her escape in her carriage, still unaware that her protector, the Count, is dead.
during the German occupation of France during World War II. The film was split into two parts because the Vichy administration
had imposed a maximum time limit of 90 minutes for feature films.
Noted critic Pauline Kael
wrote that, allegedly, "the starving extras made away with some of the banquets before they could be photographed". Many of the 1,800 extras were Resistance agents using the film as daytime cover, who, until the Liberation, had to mingle with some collaborators or Vichy sympathisers who were imposed on the production by the authorities. Alexandre Trauner
, who designed the sets, and Joseph Kosma
, who composed the music, were Jewish and had to work in complete secrecy throughout the production and their work was attributed to others in the credits.
The set builders were short of supplies and the camera crew's film stock was rationed. The financing, originally a French-Italian production, collapsed a few weeks after production began in Nice, due to the Allied conquest of Sicily in August 1943. Around this time, the Nazis forbade the producer, André Paulvé, from working on the film because of his remote Jewish ancestry, and the production had to be suspended for three months. Pathé Cinéma took over production, whose cost was escalating wildly. The quarter-mile long main set, the "Boulevard du Temple
", was severely damaged by a storm and had to be rebuilt. By the time shooting resumed in Paris in early spring of 1944, the Director of Photography, Roger Hubert, had been assigned to another production and Philippe Agostini
, who replaced him, had to analyze all the reels in order to match the lighting of the non-sequential shot list; all the while, electricity in the Paris Studios was intermittent.
Production was delayed again after the Allies landed in Normandy, perhaps intentionally stalled so that it would only be completed after the French Liberation. When Paris was liberated in August 1944, the actor Robert le Vigan, who was, ironically, cast in the role of informer-thief Jéricho, was sentenced to death by the Resistance for collaborating with the Nazis, and had to flee, along with the author Céline
, to Sigmaringen
. He was replaced at a moment’s notice by Pierre Renoir
, older brother of French filmmaker Jean Renoir
and son of the famous painter, and most of the scenes had to be redone. Vigan was tried and convicted as a Nazi collaborator
in 1946. One scene featuring Vigan survives in the middle of the second part, when Jericho snitches to Nathalie.
Carné and Prévert hid some of the key reels of film from the occupying forces, hoping that Paris would be liberated by the time the film was completed.
Baptiste's father is played by mime
and mime theorist Etienne Decroux
, who was Jean-Louis Barrault
's teacher (as well as Marcel Marceau's). Many of his character's lines about theatre can be interpreted as ironic statements on his own work in corporeal mime
.
After the film was made, accusations of collaboration made against Arletty
were met with her classic response: "My heart is French but my ass is international."
The producers accepted Carné's demands on the condition that they be able to charge double the price of admittance. Children of Paradise became an instant and monumental success, remaining on the screen of the Madeleine Theater for 54 weeks.
There are various alternate cuts of this film; the complete version, which is available on DVD, is variously described as 190 minutes (Second Sight Films, 1991) and 195 minutes (Criterion Collection, 2002).
French Film
French Film is a 2008 British comedy film directed by Jackie Oudney and starring Anne-Marie Duff, Hugh Bonneville, Victoria Hamilton, Douglas Henshall and Eric Cantona. The film was shot in Spring 2007 at various locations around London including Waterloo station and the BFI Southbank.-Plot:Two...
by French director Marcel Carné
Marcel Carné
-Biography:Born in Paris, France, the son of a cabinet maker whose wife died when their son was five, Carné began his career as a film critic, becoming editor of the weekly publication, Hebdo-Films, and working for Cinémagazine and Cinémonde between 1929 and 1933. In the same period he worked in...
, made during the German occupation of France during World War II. Set among the Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
ian theatre
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
scene of the 1820s and 30s, it tells the story of a beautiful courtesan
Courtesan
A courtesan was originally a female courtier, which means a person who attends the court of a monarch or other powerful person.In feudal society, the court was the centre of government as well as the residence of the monarch, and social and political life were often completely mixed together...
, Garance, and the four men who love her in their own ways: a mime artist
Mime artist
A mime artist is someone who uses mime as a theatrical medium or as a performance art, involving miming, or the acting out a story through body motions, without use of speech. In earlier times, in English, such a performer was referred to as a mummer...
, an actor, a criminal and an aristocrat
Aristocracy (class)
The aristocracy are people considered to be in the highest social class in a society which has or once had a political system of Aristocracy. Aristocrats possess hereditary titles granted by a monarch, which once granted them feudal or legal privileges, or deriving, as in Ancient Greece and India,...
. A three-hour film divided into two halves, it was described in the original American trailer as the French answer to Gone with the Wind
Gone with the Wind (film)
Gone with the Wind is a 1939 American historical epic film adapted from Margaret Mitchell's Pulitzer-winning 1936 novel of the same name. It was produced by David O. Selznick and directed by Victor Fleming from a screenplay by Sidney Howard...
. The film was voted "Best Film Ever" in a poll of 600 French critics and professionals in 1995.
Title
As noted by one critic, "in French, 'paradis' is the colloquial name for the gallery or second balcony in a theater, where common people sat and viewed a play, responding to it honestly and boisterously. The actors played to these gallery gods, hoping to win their favor, the actor himself thus being elevated to an Olympian status." The film contains many shots of the audience hanging over the edge of these balconies (which are similarly known as "the gods" in the British theatre), and screenwriter Jacques PrévertJacques Prévert
Jacques Prévert was a French poet and screenwriter. His poems became and remain very popular in the French-speaking world, particularly in schools. Some of the movies he wrote are extremely well regarded, with Les Enfants du Paradis considered one of the greatest films of all time.-Life and...
stated that the title "refers to the actors [...] and the audiences too, the good-natured, working-class audience."
Précis
Children of Paradise is set in the theatrical world of Paris during the July MonarchyJuly Monarchy
The July Monarchy , officially the Kingdom of France , was a period of liberal constitutional monarchy in France under King Louis-Philippe starting with the July Revolution of 1830 and ending with the Revolution of 1848...
(1830–48), centred on the area around the "Funambules" theatre, situated on the Boulevard du Temple
Boulevard du Temple
The Boulevard du Temple is a thoroughfare in Paris that separates the 3rd arrondissement from the 11th. It runs from the Place de la République to the Place Pasdeloup, and its name refers to the nearby Knights Templars' Temple where they established their Paris priory.-History:The Boulevard du...
— pejoratively referred to as the "Boulevard du Crime
Boulevard du Crime
The Boulevard du Crime was the nickname given in the 19th century to the Boulevard du Temple in Paris because of the many crime melodramas that were shown every night in its many theaters. It is notorious in French history for having lost so many theatres during the rebuilding of Paris by Baron...
". The film revolves around a beautiful and charismatic courtesan, Garance (played by the famous Arletty
Arletty
Arletty was a French actress, singer, and fashion model.-Life and career:Arletty was born Léonie Marie Julie Bathiat in Courbevoie , to a working-class family. Her early career was dominated by the music hall, and she later appeared in plays and cabaret. Arletty was a stage performer for ten years...
). Four men — the mime Baptiste Debureau
Jean-Gaspard Deburau
Jean-Gaspard Deburau, sometimes Debureau —born Jan Kašpar Dvořák—was a celebrated Bohemian-French mime...
(Jean-Louis Barrault
Jean-Louis Barrault
Jean-Louis Barrault was a French actor, director and mime artist, training that served him well when he portrayed the 19th-century mime Jean-Gaspard Deburau in Marcel Carné's 1945 film Les Enfants du Paradis .Jean-Louis Barrault studied with Charles Dullin in whose troupe he acted...
), the actor Frédérick Lemaître
Frédérick Lemaître
Frédérick Lemaître — birth name Antoine Louis Prosper Lemaître — was a French actor and playwright, one of the most famous players on the celebrated Boulevard du Crime.-Biography:...
(Pierre Brasseur
Pierre Brasseur
Pierre Brasseur , born Pierre-Albert Espinasse, was a French actor.He was the son of actor Georges Espinasse and actress Germaine Brasseur while the latter was married to Albert Brasseur. His grandfather, Jules Brasseur, was an actor as well...
), the thief Pierre François Lacenaire
Pierre François Lacenaire
Pierre François Lacenaire was a famous French poet and murderer.-Biography:Upon finishing his education with excellent results, Lacenaire joined the army, eventually deserting in 1829 at the time of the expedition to the Morea. He became a crook and was in and out of prison, which was, as he...
(Marcel Herrand
Marcel Herrand
Marcel Herrand was a French stage and film actor best remembered for his roles in swashbuckling or historical films.He appeared in over 25 films between 1932 and 1952....
), and the aristocrat Édouard de Montray (Louis Salou) — are in love with Garance, and their intrigues drive the story forward. Garance is briefly intrigued/involved with them all, but leaves them when they attempt to force her to love on their terms, rather than her own. The mime Baptiste is the one who suffers the most in pursuit of the unattainable Garance.
Story sources
The four men courting Garance are all based on real French personalities of the 1820s and 1830s. Baptiste Debureau was a famous mime and Frédérick LemaîtreFrédérick Lemaître
Frédérick Lemaître — birth name Antoine Louis Prosper Lemaître — was a French actor and playwright, one of the most famous players on the celebrated Boulevard du Crime.-Biography:...
was an acclaimed actor on the 'Boulevard of Crime
Boulevard du Crime
The Boulevard du Crime was the nickname given in the 19th century to the Boulevard du Temple in Paris because of the many crime melodramas that were shown every night in its many theaters. It is notorious in French history for having lost so many theatres during the rebuilding of Paris by Baron...
' depicted in the film. Pierre Lacenaire
Pierre François Lacenaire
Pierre François Lacenaire was a famous French poet and murderer.-Biography:Upon finishing his education with excellent results, Lacenaire joined the army, eventually deserting in 1829 at the time of the expedition to the Morea. He became a crook and was in and out of prison, which was, as he...
was an infamous French criminal, and the fictional character of the Comte Édouard de Montray was inspired by the Duc de Morny.
The idea for making a movie based on these characters came from a chance meeting between Carné and Jean-Louis Barrault, in Nice
Nice
Nice is the fifth most populous city in France, after Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Toulouse, with a population of 348,721 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Nice extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of more than 955,000 on an area of...
, during which Barrault pitched the idea of making a movie based on Debureau and Lemaître. Carné, who at the time was hesitant about which movie to direct next, proposed this idea to his friend Jacques Prévert. Prévert was initially reluctant to write a movie about a mime, which of course would not well convey his strength in writing dialogue, but then he saw the opportunity to include the character of Lacenaire, the "Dandy of crime", who fascinated him. The Germans were then occupying the whole of France, and Prévert is rumoured to have said "They will not let me do a movie about Lacenaire, but I can put Lacenaire in a film about Debureau".
Plot summary
Children of Paradise is divided into two "epochs," Boulevard du Crime ("Boulevard of Crime") and L'Homme Blanc ("The Man in White"). The first begins around 1827, the second about seven years later. The action takes place mainly in the neighborhood of the Boulevard du TempleBoulevard du Temple
The Boulevard du Temple is a thoroughfare in Paris that separates the 3rd arrondissement from the 11th. It runs from the Place de la République to the Place Pasdeloup, and its name refers to the nearby Knights Templars' Temple where they established their Paris priory.-History:The Boulevard du...
in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, nicknamed "Boulevard of Crime" because of all the melodramas and bloody scenarios offered to the largely plebian public each evening. There are two principal theaters: the Théâtre des Funambules ("Theater of Tightrope Walkers") specializes in pantomime, since the authorities do not allow it to use spoken dialogue, which is reserved for the "official" venue, the Grand Theater.
Part I: Boulevard of Crime
A young actor and womanizer, Frédérick Lemaître, dreams of becoming a star. He meets and flirts with Garance, a beautiful woman who earns her living by exhibiting her physical charms (modestly) in a carnival show. Garance staves off Frédérick's advances and goes to visit one of her acquaintances, Pierre-François Lacenaire, a rebel in revolt against society. Lacenaire is a proud, dangerous individual who works as a scrivener
Scrivener
A scrivener was traditionally a person who could read and write. This usually indicated secretarial and administrative duties such as dictation and keeping business, judicial, and history records for kings, nobles, temples, and cities...
to cover his organized criminal enterprises. Shortly thereafter, Garance is accused of stealing a man's gold watch while she is watching a pantomime featuring Baptiste Debureau and a barker (Baptiste's father) in front of the Funambules Theater. Lacenaire is in fact the guilty party. Baptiste, dressed up as the stock character Pierrot
Pierrot
Pierrot is a stock character of pantomime and Commedia dell'Arte whose origins are in the late 17th-century Italian troupe of players performing in Paris and known as the Comédie-Italienne; the name is a hypocorism of Pierre , via the suffix -ot. His character in postmodern popular culture—in...
, saves her from the police by silently acting out the theft, which he has just witnessed. He reveals a great talent, a veritable vocation for pantomime, but falls immediately and irremediably in love with Garance, saving a flower she thanked him with.
The gods
The gods , or sometimes paradise, is a theatrical term, referring to the highest areas of a theatre such as the upper balconies. These are generally the cheapest seats...
" ("paradis", paradise, in the French theatre), that is, on the top floor of the balcony where the cheapest seats are located.
Later that night, Baptiste catches sight of Garance with Lacenaire and his accomplices in a seedy restaurant/dancehall, "Le Rouge Gorge" (a pun: this means "The Robin" or "The Red Breast", but literally translates as "The Red Throat," a reference to the previous owner's throat having been slit). When he invites Garance to dance, he is thrown out of the restaurant by Avril, one of Lacenaire's thugs. He turns the situation around and leaves with Garance, for whom he finds a room at the same boarding house where he and Frédérick live. After declaring his love, Baptiste flees Garance's room when she says she doesn't return his love in the same way, despite her clear invitation to stay. When Frédérick hears Garance singing in her room, which is next to his, he quickly joins her.
Baptiste becomes the star of the Funambules; fueled by his passion, he writes several very popular pantomimes, performing with Garance and Frédérick, who have become lovers. Baptiste is tormented by their affair, while Nathalie, who is convinced that she and Baptiste are "made for each other," suffers from his lack of love for her.
Garance is visited in her dressing room by the Count Édouard de Montray, a wealthy and cynical dandy who offers her his fortune if she will agree to become his mistress. Garance is repelled by him and mockingly rejects his proposition. The count nonetheless offers her his protection if the need were to arise. She is later unjustly suspected of complicity in an abortive robbery and murder attempt by Lacenaire and Avril. To avoid arrest she is forced to appeal to Count Édouard for protection. The first part of the film comes to an end with this development.
Part II: The Man in White
Several years later, Frédérick has become famous as the star of the Grand Theater. A man about town and a spendthrift, he is covered with debts - which doesn't prevent him from devastating the mediocre play in which he currently has the main role by exposing it to ridicule in rehearsal and then playing it for laughs, rather than straight melodrama, on opening night. Despite achieving a smashing success, the play's three fussy authors are still outraged and challenge him to a duel. He accepts and when he returns to his dressing room, Frédérick is confronted by Lacenaire, who apparently intends to rob and kill him. However, the criminal is an amateur playwright and strikes up a friendship with the actor instead. He and Avril serve as Frédérick's seconds the next morning, when the actor arrives at the duel dead drunk.
Baptiste is enjoying even greater success as a mime at the Funambules. When Frédérick goes to a performance the day after surviving the duel, he is surprised to find himself in the same box as Garance. His old flame has returned to Paris after having traveled throughout the world with the Count de Montray, who has kept her these several years. She has been attending the Funambules every night incognito to watch Baptiste perform. She knows she has always been genuinely in love with him. Frédérick suddenly finds himself jealous for the first time in his life. While the feeling is highly unpleasant, he remarks that his jealousy will help him as an actor. He will finally be able to play the role of Othello
Othello
The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in approximately 1603, and based on the Italian short story "Un Capitano Moro" by Cinthio, a disciple of Boccaccio, first published in 1565...
, having now experienced the emotions which motivate the character. Garance asks Frédérick to tell Baptiste of her presence, but Nathalie, now Baptiste's wife, is first informed by the spiteful rag-man Jéricho. She sends their small son to Garance's box to mortify her with their family's happiness. By the time Frédérick alerts Baptiste and he rushes to find her, the box is empty.
When Garance returns to the Count's luxurious mansion, she finds Lacenaire waiting for her. Lacenaire satisfies himself that Garance has no love for him and, on his way out, encounters the Count, who is irritated to see such an individual in his home. Lacenaire reacts to the Count's challenge with threats, revealing the knife at his belt. Later, Garance declares to the Count that she will never love him since she is already in love with another man, but declares she will continue to try to please him, and offers to spread the word on the streets that she is "mad" about him, if he would like.
Frédérick has finally achieved his dream of playing the role of Othello
Othello
The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in approximately 1603, and based on the Italian short story "Un Capitano Moro" by Cinthio, a disciple of Boccaccio, first published in 1565...
. The Count, who insists on attending the performance with Garance, is convinced that the actor is the man she loves. At a break in the play, the Count coolly mocks Frédérick, trying to provoke him into a duel. Elsewhere Baptiste, who is also in the audience, encounters Garance at last. When Lacenaire takes Frédérick's side in the verbal jousting, the Count attempts to humiliate him as well. Lacenaire takes revenge by calling him a cuckold and, dramatically pulling back a curtain, reveals Garance in Baptiste's embrace on the balcony. The two lovers slip away to spend the night together in Garance's former room at The Great Post House.
The next morning, at a Turkish bath, Lacenaire assassinates the count for having had him thrown out of the theater. He then calmly sits to wait for the police and meet his "destiny", which is to die on the scaffold. At the rooming house, Nathalie finds Baptiste with Garance. With Nathalie desperate and pleading her wifely rights, Garance declares that she has "been with" Baptiste for the past six years as much as Nathalie, his wife, has. She flees, pursued by the equally desperate Baptiste, who is soon lost in the frantic Carnival crowd amid a sea of bobbing masks and unheeding, white Pierrot
Pierrot
Pierrot is a stock character of pantomime and Commedia dell'Arte whose origins are in the late 17th-century Italian troupe of players performing in Paris and known as the Comédie-Italienne; the name is a hypocorism of Pierre , via the suffix -ot. His character in postmodern popular culture—in...
s. The film ends as Baptiste is swept away and as Garance makes her escape in her carriage, still unaware that her protector, the Count, is dead.
Cast
- ArlettyArlettyArletty was a French actress, singer, and fashion model.-Life and career:Arletty was born Léonie Marie Julie Bathiat in Courbevoie , to a working-class family. Her early career was dominated by the music hall, and she later appeared in plays and cabaret. Arletty was a stage performer for ten years...
as Claire "Garance" Reine - Jean-Louis BarraultJean-Louis BarraultJean-Louis Barrault was a French actor, director and mime artist, training that served him well when he portrayed the 19th-century mime Jean-Gaspard Deburau in Marcel Carné's 1945 film Les Enfants du Paradis .Jean-Louis Barrault studied with Charles Dullin in whose troupe he acted...
as Baptiste DeburauJean-Gaspard DeburauJean-Gaspard Deburau, sometimes Debureau —born Jan Kašpar Dvořák—was a celebrated Bohemian-French mime... - Pierre BrasseurPierre BrasseurPierre Brasseur , born Pierre-Albert Espinasse, was a French actor.He was the son of actor Georges Espinasse and actress Germaine Brasseur while the latter was married to Albert Brasseur. His grandfather, Jules Brasseur, was an actor as well...
as Frédérick LemaîtreFrédérick LemaîtreFrédérick Lemaître — birth name Antoine Louis Prosper Lemaître — was a French actor and playwright, one of the most famous players on the celebrated Boulevard du Crime.-Biography:... - Marcel HerrandMarcel HerrandMarcel Herrand was a French stage and film actor best remembered for his roles in swashbuckling or historical films.He appeared in over 25 films between 1932 and 1952....
as Pierre-François Lacenaire - Pierre RenoirPierre RenoirPierre Renoir was a French stage and film actor and served briefly as the director of the Théâtre de l'Athénée in Paris, taking over after the death of Louis Jouvet in 1951....
as Jéricho - María CasaresMaría CasaresMaría Casares was a Spanish actress and one of the most distinguished stars of the French stage. She was usually credited in France as Maria Casarès.-Early life:...
as Nathalie (credited as María Casarès) - Louis Salou as Comte Édouard de Montray
- Gaston ModotGaston ModotGaston Modot was a French actor. For more than 50 years he performed for the cinema working with a number of French directors....
as Fil de Soie - Fabien Loris as Avril
- Marcel PérèsMarcel PérèsMarcel Pérès is a French musicologist, composer, choral director and singer, and the founder of the early music group Ensemble Organum. He is an authority on Gregorian and pre-Gregorian chant....
as Director of the Funambules - Pierre Palau as Stage manager of the Funambules
- Etienne DecrouxÉtienne DecrouxÉtienne Decroux studied at Jacques Copeau's Ecole du Vieux-Colombier, where he saw the beginnings of what was to become his life's obsession–Corporeal Mime...
as Anselme Debureau (credited as Étienne Decroux) - Jane MarkenJane MarkenJane Marken was a French actress. She was the first wife of the actor Jules Berry....
as Mme. Hermine (credited as Jeanne Marken) - Marcelle Monthil as Marie
- Louis FlorencieLouis FlorencieLouis Florencie was a French film actor. He appeared in 83 films between 1927 and 1951.-Selected filmography:* Lady Killer * Return to Life -External links:...
as Policeman - Habib Benglia as Turkish Bath Attendant
- Rognoni as Director, 'Grand Theatre'
- Jacques CastelotJacques CastelotJacques Castelot was a French film actor. He appeared in 86 films between 1938 and 1982. His brother was the writer André Castelot and their father was the Symbolist painter Maurice Chabas.-Selected filmography:...
as George - Paul Frankeur as Police Inspector
- Albert RémyAlbert RémyAlbert Rémy was a French actor best known for his supporting roles in François Truffaut's first two feature films. He played Antoine Doinel's father in The 400 Blows and Charlie Koller's brother in Shoot the Piano Player...
as Scarpia Barrigni - Robert Dhéry as Celestin
- Auguste Bovério as First Author (credited as Auguste Boverio)
- Paul DemangePaul DemangePaul Demange was a Minister of State for Monaco. He served between 1966 and 1969. He was born in 1906 and died in 1970. -References:...
as Second Author
Production
The film was made under extremely difficult conditions. External sets in Nice were badly damaged by natural causes, and exacerbated and compounded by the theatrical constraintsTheatrical constraints
Theatrical constraints are various rules, either of taste or of law, that govern the production, staging, and content of stage plays in the theater...
during the German occupation of France during World War II. The film was split into two parts because the Vichy administration
Vichy France
Vichy France, Vichy Regime, or Vichy Government, are common terms used to describe the government of France that collaborated with the Axis powers from July 1940 to August 1944. This government succeeded the Third Republic and preceded the Provisional Government of the French Republic...
had imposed a maximum time limit of 90 minutes for feature films.
Noted critic Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael was an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991. Earlier in her career, her work appeared in City Lights, McCall's and The New Republic....
wrote that, allegedly, "the starving extras made away with some of the banquets before they could be photographed". Many of the 1,800 extras were Resistance agents using the film as daytime cover, who, until the Liberation, had to mingle with some collaborators or Vichy sympathisers who were imposed on the production by the authorities. Alexandre Trauner
Alexandre Trauner
Alexandre Trauner was a set designer.After studying painting at l'École des beaux-arts de Budapest, he emigrated to Paris in 1929, where he became the assistant of set designer Lazare Meerson, working on such films as À nous la liberté in 1932 and La Kermesse héroïque in 1935)...
, who designed the sets, and Joseph Kosma
Joseph Kosma
Joseph Kosma was a Hungarian-French composer, of Jewish background.-Biography:Kosma was born József Kozma in Budapest, where his parents taught stenography and typing. He had a brother, Akos. A maternal relative was the photographer László Moholy-Nagy, and another relative was the conductor Georg...
, who composed the music, were Jewish and had to work in complete secrecy throughout the production and their work was attributed to others in the credits.
The set builders were short of supplies and the camera crew's film stock was rationed. The financing, originally a French-Italian production, collapsed a few weeks after production began in Nice, due to the Allied conquest of Sicily in August 1943. Around this time, the Nazis forbade the producer, André Paulvé, from working on the film because of his remote Jewish ancestry, and the production had to be suspended for three months. Pathé Cinéma took over production, whose cost was escalating wildly. The quarter-mile long main set, the "Boulevard du Temple
Boulevard du Temple
The Boulevard du Temple is a thoroughfare in Paris that separates the 3rd arrondissement from the 11th. It runs from the Place de la République to the Place Pasdeloup, and its name refers to the nearby Knights Templars' Temple where they established their Paris priory.-History:The Boulevard du...
", was severely damaged by a storm and had to be rebuilt. By the time shooting resumed in Paris in early spring of 1944, the Director of Photography, Roger Hubert, had been assigned to another production and Philippe Agostini
Philippe Agostini
Philippe Agostini is a French cinematographer, director and screenwriter born 11 August 1910 in Paris , died 20 October 2001. He was married to Odette Joyeux until the end of her life.- Biography :...
, who replaced him, had to analyze all the reels in order to match the lighting of the non-sequential shot list; all the while, electricity in the Paris Studios was intermittent.
Production was delayed again after the Allies landed in Normandy, perhaps intentionally stalled so that it would only be completed after the French Liberation. When Paris was liberated in August 1944, the actor Robert le Vigan, who was, ironically, cast in the role of informer-thief Jéricho, was sentenced to death by the Resistance for collaborating with the Nazis, and had to flee, along with the author Céline
Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Louis-Ferdinand Céline was the pen name of French writer and physician Louis-Ferdinand Destouches . Céline was chosen after his grandmother's first name. He is considered one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century, developing a new style of writing that modernized both French and...
, to Sigmaringen
Sigmaringen
Sigmaringen is a town in southern Germany, in the state of Baden-Württemberg. Situated on the upper Danube, it is the capital of the Sigmaringen district....
. He was replaced at a moment’s notice by Pierre Renoir
Pierre Renoir
Pierre Renoir was a French stage and film actor and served briefly as the director of the Théâtre de l'Athénée in Paris, taking over after the death of Louis Jouvet in 1951....
, older brother of French filmmaker Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s...
and son of the famous painter, and most of the scenes had to be redone. Vigan was tried and convicted as a Nazi collaborator
Collaboration
Collaboration is working together to achieve a goal. It is a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together to realize shared goals, — for example, an intriguing endeavor that is creative in nature—by sharing...
in 1946. One scene featuring Vigan survives in the middle of the second part, when Jericho snitches to Nathalie.
Carné and Prévert hid some of the key reels of film from the occupying forces, hoping that Paris would be liberated by the time the film was completed.
Baptiste's father is played by mime
Mime
The word mime is used to refer to a mime artist who uses a theatrical medium or performance art involving the acting out of a story through body motions without use of speech.Mime may also refer to:* Mime, an alternative word for lip sync...
and mime theorist Etienne Decroux
Étienne Decroux
Étienne Decroux studied at Jacques Copeau's Ecole du Vieux-Colombier, where he saw the beginnings of what was to become his life's obsession–Corporeal Mime...
, who was Jean-Louis Barrault
Jean-Louis Barrault
Jean-Louis Barrault was a French actor, director and mime artist, training that served him well when he portrayed the 19th-century mime Jean-Gaspard Deburau in Marcel Carné's 1945 film Les Enfants du Paradis .Jean-Louis Barrault studied with Charles Dullin in whose troupe he acted...
's teacher (as well as Marcel Marceau's). Many of his character's lines about theatre can be interpreted as ironic statements on his own work in corporeal mime
Corporeal mime
One subgroup of physical theater is corporeal mime. Its objective is to place drama inside the moving human body, rather than to substitute gesture for speech as in pantomime. In this medium, the mime must apply to physical movement those principles that are at the heart of drama: pause,...
.
After the film was made, accusations of collaboration made against Arletty
Arletty
Arletty was a French actress, singer, and fashion model.-Life and career:Arletty was born Léonie Marie Julie Bathiat in Courbevoie , to a working-class family. Her early career was dominated by the music hall, and she later appeared in plays and cabaret. Arletty was a stage performer for ten years...
were met with her classic response: "My heart is French but my ass is international."
Release versions
The film had its premiere in Paris, at the Chaillot Palace on March 9, 1945, in its entirety. Carné then had to fight with the producers to have the film shown exclusively in two theatres (Madeleine and Colisée) instead of one and in its entirety and without an intermission. He also pioneered the idea of the public being able to reserve their seats in advance.The producers accepted Carné's demands on the condition that they be able to charge double the price of admittance. Children of Paradise became an instant and monumental success, remaining on the screen of the Madeleine Theater for 54 weeks.
There are various alternate cuts of this film; the complete version, which is available on DVD, is variously described as 190 minutes (Second Sight Films, 1991) and 195 minutes (Criterion Collection, 2002).
In popular culture
- In the Centre Pompidou in Paris, there is a theater named after ArlettyArlettyArletty was a French actress, singer, and fashion model.-Life and career:Arletty was born Léonie Marie Julie Bathiat in Courbevoie , to a working-class family. Her early career was dominated by the music hall, and she later appeared in plays and cabaret. Arletty was a stage performer for ten years...
's character, the Salle Garance (Garance's Room). - A copy of the film plays a significant part in the plot of FlickerFlicker (novel)Flicker is a novel by Theodore Roszak published in 1991.The novel covers approximately 15–20 years of the life of film scholar Jonathan Gates, whose academic investigations draw him into the shadowy world of esoteric conspiracy that underlies the work of fictional B-movie director Max Castle...
, a cult novel by Theodore RoszakTheodore RoszakTheodore Roszak may refer to*Theodore Roszak , Polish-American sculptor and painter*Theodore Roszak , historian and author of The Making of a Counterculture...
. - The Japanese theater troupe took its name from the Japanese title, .
- In the Tom RobbinsTom RobbinsThomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins (born July 22, 1936 is an American author. His best-selling novels are serio-comic, often wildly poetic stories with a strong social and philosophical undercurrent, an irreverent bent, and scenes extrapolated from...
novel Still Life with WoodpeckerStill Life with WoodpeckerStill Life With Woodpecker is the third novel by Tom Robbins, concerning the love affair between an environmentalist princess and an outlaw. As with most of Robbins's books, it encompasses a broad range of topics, from aliens and redheads to consumerism, the building of bombs, romance, royalty,...
, the protagonist, an outlaw bomber nicknamed "The Woodpecker" (hence the title), cites the film - and its successful underground production in Nazi-occupied France - as a justification of his claim that even in the event of a global catastrophe, people can always find freedom and beauty. - British musician Marianne FaithfullMarianne FaithfullMarianne Evelyn Faithfull is an award-winning English singer, songwriter and actress whose career has spanned five decades....
has written lyrics based on the story. - Singer Bob DylanBob DylanBob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
has said that this film was a large influence on his 1975 surreal film Renaldo and ClaraRenaldo and ClaraRenaldo and Clara is a surrealist movie, directed by and starring Bob Dylan. Filmed in 1975, during Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue tour, it was released in 1978...
. - In James A. MichenerJames A. MichenerJames Albert Michener was an American author of more than 40 titles, the majority of which were sweeping sagas, covering the lives of many generations in particular geographic locales and incorporating historical facts into the stories...
`s novel The DriftersThe Drifters (novel)The Drifters is a novel by Pulitzer Prize-winning author James Michener, published in 1971 by Random House. The novel follows six young characters from diverse backgrounds and various countries as their paths meet and they travel together through parts of Spain, Portugal, Morocco and Mozambique...
, the narrator mentions in a digression that he learns foreign languages by listening to lectures by tutors. The "aha" moment for French was when the tutor, lecturing on French actresses, mentions ArlettyArlettyArletty was a French actress, singer, and fashion model.-Life and career:Arletty was born Léonie Marie Julie Bathiat in Courbevoie , to a working-class family. Her early career was dominated by the music hall, and she later appeared in plays and cabaret. Arletty was a stage performer for ten years...
. This starts another digression, that the narrator knew a psychiatrist who made every new patient go see Children of Paradise, and would then quiz the patient about which character they identify with. - Filmmaker Terry GilliamTerry GilliamTerrence Vance "Terry" Gilliam is an American-born British screenwriter, film director, animator, actor and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe. Gilliam is also known for directing several films, including Brazil , The Adventures of Baron Munchausen , The Fisher King , and 12 Monkeys...
did a five minute video presentation for the Criterion release, in which he saluted Children of Paradise as one of his favorites and a source of inspiration, because of its dreamlike quality. - Simon CallowSimon CallowSimon Phillip Hugh Callow, CBE is an English actor, writer and theatre director. He is also currently a judge on Popstar to Operastar.-Early years:...
directed a stage adaptation for the Royal Shakespeare CompanyRoyal Shakespeare CompanyThe Royal Shakespeare Company is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs 700 staff and produces around 20 productions a year from its home in Stratford-upon-Avon and plays regularly in London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and on tour across...
in 1996. It was a notorious flop. - In 2006 the London-based theatre company Simple8 adapted the film for the stage.
- In a DVD extra of the 2004 documentary Z Channel: A Magnificent ObsessionZ Channel: A Magnificent ObsessionZ Channel: A Magnificent Obsession is a documentary about Los Angeles pay cable channel Z Channel that accompanied the DVD release of uncut version of Heaven's Gate...
, Z Channel program director Jerry Harvey is quoted as saying that Children of Paradise is his favorite film of all time. (The quote comes from an interview originally recorded in 1985 on Santa Monica's KCRW radio station.) - Le Ballet des coeurs, a work based on Les Enfants du Paradis, choreographed by Michael SmuinMichael SmuinMichael Smuin was a ballet dancer, choreographer and theatre director. He was co-founder and director of his own dance company, the Smuin Ballet in San Francisco.-Biography:...
, and featuring songs from the Edith PiafÉdith PiafÉdith Piaf , born Édith Giovanna Gassion, was a French singer and cultural icon who became widely regarded as France's greatest popular singer. Her singing reflected her life, with her specialty being ballads...
repertoire performed by Raquel BittonRaquel Bitton (singer)Raquel Bitton is a critically acclaimed French jazz singer and interpreter of Edith Piaf's songs.-Life and career:...
, has been performed by the San Francisco Ballet and the Washington Ballet.
Other sources
- Turk, Edward Baron (1989), Child of Paradise: Marcel Carné and the Golden Age of French Cinema (Series: Harvard Film Studies), Cambridge, MassachusettsCambridge, MassachusettsCambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
: Harvard University PressHarvard University PressHarvard University Press is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. In 2005, it published 220 new titles. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. Its current director is William P...
.