Enfants du paradis, Les (1945)

Director:

Marcel Carné

Writer:

Jacques Prévert (writer)

Release Date:

15 November 1946 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Romance

Plot:

This tragic tale centers around the ill-fated love between Baptiste, a theater mime, and Claire Reine...

Plot Keywords:

Romantic Rivalry | Love | Mime | Pantomime | Theater

Awards:

Nominated for Oscar.

Cast

Arletty	...	Garance (Claire Reine)
Jean-Louis Barrault	...	Baptiste Debureau
Pierre Brasseur	...	Frédérick Lemaître
Pierre Renoir	...	Jéricho
María Casares	...	Nathalie (as María Casarès)
Gaston Modot	...	Fil de Soie
Fabien Loris	...	Avril
Marcel Pérès	...	Director of the Funambules
Palau	...	Stage manager of the Funambules (as Pierre Palau)
Etienne Decroux	...	Anselme Debureau (as Étienne Decroux)
Jane Marken	...	Mme. Hermine (as Jeanne Marken)
Marcelle Monthil	...	Marie
Louis Florencie	...	Policeman
Habib Benglia	...	Turkish Bath Attendant
Rognoni	...	Director, 'Grand Theatre'

Also Known As:

Boulevard du crime, Le (France) (first part title)
Children of Paradise (USA)
Homme blanc, L' (France) (second part title)

Runtime:

190 min | USA:163 min

Country:

France

Language:

French

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Brazil:18 | Australia:PG | Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15 | Sweden:7 (1986) | UK:PG | USA:Approved | Germany:12

Filming Locations:

Nice, Alpes-Maritimes, France

Company:

Pathé Cinéma

Trivia:

This involved building the largest studio set in the then history of French cinema - the quarter mile of street frontage, reproduced in scrupulous detail, representing the Boulevard du Crime, the theater district of Paris in the 1830s and 40s. This would have been a daunting prospect at the best of times but in Vichy France, when all artisans, transport, materials, costumes and film stock were all in short supply, it was a miraculous achievement.

Quotes:

Pierre-François Lacenaire: The mere thought of them killing each other, over a woman, because of me, comforts me.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Fantôme d'Henri Langlois, Le (2004)

The Paramount Best Movie Ever Produced as a 'Gesamtkunstwerk'

1995 was the centennial of the invention of movies. In Stockholm the event was celebrated, inter alia, by showing 'Les enfants du paradis' free of charge on the French National Day. It was presented as the best French movie ever made. Perhaps it was felt not to be polite toward other countries to talk of the best movie made in any countries. But many (not all) experts agree that it is indeed so. And so do I. I saw the film for the first time in 1954, and have never changed my mind about its paramount position. But whatever you may think in this respect, one of the most prominent features is that the movie is a 'GESAMTKUNSTWERK'. This word was invented by Richard Wagner to indicate a work in which music, text, and visual arts fuse or amalgamate into a unity. Concerning the movie at hand, the word is of course taken in a different sense. The movie contains all kinds of cinematic categories: mass scenes perhaps with 10'000 extras, chamber play with close-up photos of emotional faces, deep and genuine love, superficial sex, friendship, comic pantomime, tragic pantomime, comic theatre (that is, both the theatre scene and the public on the screen), tragic theatre, murder, hand-to-hand-fighting, pocket-picking, etc. And everything put together into one single film. Even more, whenever a section is comic, it rests so completely in the comic mood that the spectator cannot imagine that the entire movie was not comic from the first beginning, and will not remain so to the last end. Whenever it is tragic, it rests equally completely in the tragic mood, as if it had never been anything else than tragic and would never leave the tragic mood. Despite this heterogeneity, the movie does not split up in disparate fragments, but forms a genuine whole. The writer was the really great poet Jacques Prévert, and it tells much about his unusual competence that, on the one hand, each scene is superb when seen in isolation and, on the other hand, each scene does not therefore fit less perfectly in the film as a whole. - - - To some people it may be interesting to know that four of the roles are real historical persons: the actor Frederick Lemaître, the pantomimic performer Baptiste Debureau, the mediocre gangster Jean-François Lacenaire, and the latter's assistant Avril. Lacenaire was executed in 1836. His memoirs, which were written while he awaited execution, are published in English translation.