Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.
If any film ever deserved a fifteen star rating, this would be the one: five stars just for being conceived and produced under extraordinary circumstances, five more for great production values, and the last five for a script so penetrating that it can be plumbed to any depth that your line can reach. In the 1970's, Children of Paradise (Les Enfants du Paradis) was selected by the Cannes Festival for a Cesar of Cesars and was officially designated as the greatest French film of all time.
Historical Context: It is miraculous that this film got made at all. It was shot in France between 1943 and 1945, under the iron heel of Nazi occupation, during a time when Art had become a crime and Crime had become an art. It had to be filmed largely under the radar screen of Nazi control. The composer of the music and the designer of the sets were both Jews being sought by the Nazis and had to work from hiding places. The elaborate sets had to be moved several times between Paris and Nice to avoid detection. The films required so many extras that Nazi collaborators had to be hired to work alongside resistance fighters without their realizing it. The lead actress, Arletty, had even had a notorious affair with a Nazi officer. Since the Nazis had banned all films longer than ninety minutes, Children of Paradise had to be filmed in two parts. Far from being a low budget production, Children of Paradise was the most expensive French film ever made up to that time – and it was a time of national shortages. The production had to work around shortages in film stock, funding problems, and power outages. That a film as spirited and fabulous as this could have been even conceived under such circumstances is amazing enough, but the logistical difficulties of producing it during occupation make its very existence akin to a flight of fantasy. It was magnificently appropriate that this testament to the freedom and spirit of the French people opened immediately after liberation in 1945 and ran continuously for 54 weeks. This majestic film was born out of reckless courage.
The director, Marcel Carné, was a leading film-maker of the time. He belonged to the school of French film artists now referred to as "poetic realism" that flourished in the late 1930's and early 1940's. Children of Paradise is considered the crown jewel in this style, which treats realistic subject matter and a wide cross-section of character types in a lyrically poetic manner. The result is a mesmerizing mixture of dream-like states and reality. This mannered style was later pointedly rejected by new-wave filmmakers like Truffaut and Godard who opted for a harsher, more lucid style of realism. During the reign of poetic realism, the role of the script writer was as important as that of the director. The script writer for Children of Paradise, Jacques Prévert, provided Carné with one of the finest scripts ever written for a film. It was the sixth of seven collaborations between the two men.
Production values: In reviewing films, I usually discuss production values after discussing a film’s story and themes, but, for this film, production values are as much a part of its success as its script and typically get the lion's share of attention from critics. Children of Paradise thrusts us immediately into a flamboyantly lively, humorous, and wicked world of actors and mimes, pickpockets and swindlers, murderers and thugs, flirts and prostitutes, ragmen and beggars, impresarios and the decadent wealthy. Set in the vibrant atmosphere of 1828 Paris, it is the time of Balzac, whose works emphasized people from all walks of life, from the lowliest to the loftiest, and Children of Paradise is true to his style. The settings include theaters, a mansion, crowded streets, a rooming house, a nightclub, and a fog-laden dueling ground. Countless extras are decked out in magnificent period costumes, some riding in horse-drawn carriages and buggies. All of this is presented with intoxicating detail. Children of Paradise is both grand and intimate.
Children of Paradise also subtly betokens its own time. With its incredible mix of realism with poetry and fantasy, it yields a farce about crime. Crime transformed into comedy in 1945 became a hearty laugh at the expense of the Nazi regime.
The pace of the film is measured and has the feel of a polished theatrical performance. That's apropos, because much of the action is set in the world of theatrical performances, both drama and mime. The performances within the performance are remarkable pieces of entertainment in their own right – not mere filling. We see not only the performances from the audience's vantage point, but the work of the actors behind stage. We also observe the intersection between the lives of the performers and their art. The mime on-stage, for example, observes his love flirting with another performer in the wings. The Shakespearean actor playing Othello looks out at the woman in the audience who has taught him the experience of jealousy that he then turns into drama. As we watch this film, we exist simultaneously on three levels: behind the curtain, in the theatrical productions, and in the story of the film itself. We are shown the role of art in life as well as the role of life in art.
The Story and Characters:Children of Paradise, like most great French films, is a story about love – but not at all the usual kind of story. It is mainly a story about unrequited love and the hopeless search for romantic ideals. The title of the film derives from the cheap seats of a theatre, which are known as "paradise" in French or, in English translation, the "gods." Thus, the audience in the cheap seats are the "children of paradise." In the end, it is their whims that will determine success or failure, which shows go on and which performers become stars. More broadly, it is the whims of the "gods" that dictate who loves whom in life. The vagaries of the gods produce unrequited love and, hence, we are all children of paradise.
Part I of the film is entitled "The Boulevard of Crime" ("Le Boulevard du Crime"). It opens onto a street scene that is bursting with activity in a carnival-like atmosphere. There are dwarves, mimes, jugglers, tightrope walkers, clowns, freaks, animal acts, and dancers. Outside the various theaters, barkers rouse the interest of the crowd while dancers and mimes provide what amounts to previews. In the crowd, dandies in ruffled shirts and low-life ragamuffins mix together and pickpockets operate fearlessly. The set for this opening scene, a marvel in itself, uses countless extras and was designed by art director Alexander Trauner from his place in hiding from the Nazis. In the credits, he is acknowledged simply as "clandestine."
It is here that we first meet Garance (Arletty [1898-1992], real name, Arlette-Léonie Marie Julie Bathiat). She works in a sideshow where the barker invites customers to come in and meet the Naked Truth. "She will fill your thoughts, invade your dreams", we are told. Inside the tent, Garance sits in a slowly revolving tub of water regarding herself naked in a mirror. The water largely conceals her body so that, as she says, she offers "truth, but only from the neck up." Garance revolves in the tub but is also the hub around which the entire story of Children of Paradise revolves. Understanding Garance and what she represents is the key to understanding the film.
Who is Garance? Garance is the embodiment of truth and beauty – not absolute truth and beauty but truth and beauty as each man perceives it. She stares at her reflection in the mirror but is herself a mirror that reflects back to each man his own romantic ideals. Garance has this special quality because her face is a blank canvas, immutable in its impassive grace. Men gaze at her and project onto her sphinx-like countenance their own desires and meanings. Most of the time, Garance wears a bemused variation of the Mona Lisa half-smile. By this artful lack of expression, she becomes an enigma. Later in the story, she plays a statue in the pantomimes at the Funambules theater, again emphasizing her expressionless countenance. Garance says, "I'm simple, I am what I am." In actuality, she is what each man believes her to be!
Though the four principal male characters in this film all appear to fall madly in love with Garance, none actually knows who or what she is; each is only truly in love with his own ideals of romantic love. For her part, Garance is also incapable of attachment. Her love belongs to no one. She is not choosing between many men; she chooses no man. If, in the end, she appears to love Baptiste more than the others, it is only that his romantic ideal is the one that most flatters her vanity. Some critics complain that Arletty was too old to play the part of a sexual temptress, but they are missing the point entirely. Garance’s appeal is not about sex or lust. She is a metaphor for men’s romantic ideals, which are as old as time itself. Like Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo, Arletty is archetypal woman, not sex-goddess. In Children of Paradise, she is the calm epicenter around which the vortex of men’s minds spin.
We next meet Frédérick LeMaître (Pierre Brasseur). He is an aspiring actor. He loves Shakespeare and dreams of bringing Shakespeare to the masses. He spots Garance walking down the boulevard and tries to pick her up, “Life is beautiful, and you’re just as beautiful.” With Frédérick, there is no line between life and acting; he is always acting. He tries to charm women by entertaining them, but can no longer reach to the truth of his own being. He is incapable of genuine communication. When Garance brushes him off on the boulevard, he asks, “But where shall we meet again?” She replies, mocking his flamboyant manner of speaking, “Paris is small for those who share so great a passion as ours.” Frédérick’s life revolves around his audience and, hence, the romantic ideal he sees in Garance is a woman to be his perpetual audience. Even when his life is later threatened by the scoundrel, Lacenaire, he treats it as a theatrical event. Garance provides Frédérick his first experience of jealousy by her preference for Baptiste’s performances to his own, all the more so because Baptiste is gaining more general notoriety as well.
When Garance brushes off Frédérick, she is on her way to meet the villainous Lacenaire (Marcel Herrand). Lacenaire has declared war on humankind. He is a calculating, conscienceless man, sinister even in appearance, with a curling mustache, spit curls pasted to his forehead, a ruffled shirt, and sardonically cold, contemptuous speech. He struts about like a king of evil, twirling a cane, thriving off his reputation as a ruthless killer. He fancies himself an evil genius and dreams of committing heroic crimes. In the meantime, he writes plays and love letters for hire. He claims to believe that “Freedom is to never love or be loved”, yet he too sees in Garance his romantic ideal: a “guardian angel”, which in Lacenaire’s twisted world could only be a queen of evil. “You are the only woman for whom I do not have comtempt”, he says to her. He wants someone who will admire his criminal masterpieces. He tells her, “I’d spill torrents of blood to give you rivers of diamonds”, to which she calmly replies, “I’d settle for less.” She dismisses his attentions, commenting, “All this talk; it’s like a play.” Life and theater intermixing again. Later, when Lacenaire tracks down Garance in her new life as wife of Count Edouard, planning to intimidate her into giving him money, she listens until he has bored her and then merely walks away from him. On the way out of the mansion, Lacenaire encounters her husband, Count Edouard, and warns ominously, “I am not a man to be thrown out” – but the damage has already been done. Garance has already thrown him out, in effect. In the end, Lacenaire chooses for his “grand crime” one that Garance will not be able to ignore and ensures that when his own execution results, it will take place where Garance will have to notice. She will “appreciate” his evil masterpiece one way or another. Lacenaire is also the character who later draws open the curtain between disguise (the play) and reality at the most climactic moment in the film.
Another who falls under Garance’s spell is Baptiste (Jean-Louis Barrault [1910-1994]). Baptiste is a wide-eyed mime and the principal male character of the film. When we first encounter Baptiste, he is in mime make-up, sitting motionlessly in front of the Funambules theater along the boulevard, while his father promotes the up-coming show. He sees Garance in the crowd and, like the others, is immediately infatuated. After a few minutes, Garance is falsely accused of picking a watch from the pocket of a by-stander (it was actually Lacenaire’s deed). Garance is about to be carted off by a policeman, when Baptiste breaks his stony silence and announces that he saw the crime. He then acts it out in pantomime, much to the crowd’s amusement, as well as the policeman’s satisfaction. Garance is released and repays Baptiste with a flower that she removes from her breast. Baptiste is now thoroughly love struck, seeing in Garance his romantic ideal of pure, idyllic love, as represented by the flower. The flower symbolizes Garance, is a sense, since the name “Garance” means a flower. Yet, Baptiste’s “love” for Garance, like that of her other suitors, is based on his own romantic ideal and has nothing to do with anything that Garance actually is. He knows nothing about her in truth and, like the others, simply projects onto her what he desires.
Baptiste wears his heart on his sleeve and a sparkle in his eye. For him, dreams and life are all the same. Later, he meets Garance again in a nightclub and asks her to dance. Lacenaire’s henchman takes exception, since Garance was in their company, but Baptiste ultimately triumphs in the ensuing brawl. He offers to walk Garance home and when it starts to rain, gets her a room in his boarding house. She is ready and willing to repay his kindness in the only way she knows how, but the idealistic Baptiste refuses. He wants her to love him before they make love. When Baptiste retires, Frédérick, who lives in the same boarding house, hears Garance singing, and, sharing none of Baptiste’s compunctions, is soon in her room for the night. Later, at the Funambules, Baptiste sees Garance with Frédérick in the wings as he is performing, and is crushed.
Meanwhile, Baptiste is the object of love for Nathalie (Maria Casares), the impresario’s daughter. She has utter faith that she and Baptiste were meant to be together. She knows that he does not love her but wants him anyway. Baptiste marries Nathalie and has a son. Nathalie represents the reality of love – not the abstract ideal but what’s available and at-hand. She tolerates what sometimes amounts to an emotionally abusive relationship to hold her family together. This is love based on loyalty without romantic idealism.
Garance’s fourth suitor enters the story near the end of Part I. He is Count Edouard (Louis Salou), who has fallen madly in love with Garance during her performances at the Funambules. The Count’s romantic ideal that he projects onto Garance is that of a beautiful ornament – a possession to grace his mansion and hang on his arm as he struts through his upper class society. Garance, however, is disinterested in this imperious, stiff nobleman. Later, however, when Garance finds herself in a difficult pickle, accused of contributing to one of Lacenaire’s crimes, she is compelled to act on the Count’s offer of marriage as a way out. Though the Count believes he has bought Garance, he has actually only rented her. Though he is devoted to her, he is incapable of inspiring her affection. The Count is insanely jealous and kills one young man in a duel simply because Garance had smiled at him.
Part II of Children of Paradise is entitled “The Man in White” (“L’Homme Blanc”). It picks up six years later. All of the principle male characters have achieved a degree of success, each in his own way, but love eludes all. LeMaître has become “Frederick The Great”, a renowned Shakespearean actor. Baptiste is at new heights of popularity and threatens to eclipse even Frédérick. Lacenaire has gained notoriety as a criminal to the point of being written up in the newspaper. The Count is at the pinnacle of social standing, admired by all. Yet love remains unattainable to all alike.
Some critics claim that Garance loves Baptiste, in the end, but I think not – not beyond merely preferring the romantic ideal that he has projected onto her to the others. And it’s really not much of a choice: Frédérick wants an eternal audience, Lacenaire wants an admirer for his tapestries of evil, and Count Edouard wants an ornament. Baptiste, at least, wants a simple, idyllic flower, and if that is no more what Garance is than are the other projections, at least it is an appealing image. Yet, romantic ideals are inherently unattainable, so, in the end, Baptiste must struggle desperately through the confetti-throwing carnival mob trying to reach Garance as her carriage departs. Although it might seem like too little resolution, it is an ending that is true to the theatrical world in which these characters reside. The curtain falls at the end of a performance but will rise again.
Bottom-Line:Children of Paradise is one of the greatest French films ever made. It remains a delicacy today and all the more so now that it has been restored, first by Pathe in 1991 for VHS release and, more recently, by Criterion in 1996 for DVD. The DVD also offers some splendid extras that include (a) the original trailer, touting Children of Paradise as the French answer to Gone With the Wind; (b) two audio commentaries by film scholars providing historical context as well as thematic and aesthetic insights; and (c) a segment on how the film was painstakingly restored.
The casting of the film was superlative all the way through from Jean-Louis Barrault and Arletty to a highly superior supporting cast. The multi-layered script offers hidden truths dancing among the shadows as evasive as Garance’s reflection in the mirror. The characters are so richly drawn as to rise like archetypal specters from the modest confines of individuality. Without resorting to melodrama, Children of Paradise transports us into a world of passion and remorse with all the mysterious eloquence of pantomime.
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