This is not legend .This is fact.And anybody who would not have seen it could not claim to know the French cinema,had he even seen the whole Godard filmography.
Those were the occupation years."Les visiteurs du soir" which preceded "children of paradise" took place in the MIddle Ages ,it was an alibi .Ditto for "children" .Carné and Prévert chose the nineteenth century,and their screenplay drew its inspiration from Balzac,Hugo and Eugène Sue.They created characters (Garance,Jericho and the count Montray) and they introduced real life ones :Baptiste Debureau belongs to the legend,but he did exist ,he is often mentioned even in contemporary songs such as Charles Aznavour' s "les comedians" .He invented the Pierrot character,as dear to the French collective memory as Charlie Chaplin .Lacenaire was also a notorious criminal who died on a guillotine:recently,in the early sixties,he was devoted a whole movie,questionable though (see "Lacenaire " by Francis Girod);his partner in crime ,Avril,also appears (Fabien Loris's part).Frederic Lemaitre was a comedian who created "l'auberge des adrets" -a melodrama he turns into a farce in the movie- and other melodramas.
Prevert was at his best and most of his lines are memorable.Arletty /Garance epitomized his spirit,she WAS "je suis comme je suis" flesh on the bone.Since word plays and poetry abound,I urge non -French people to see the movie in French with subtitles.Anyway who could dub the unique Arletty?Her voice is inimitable.
Admirable sequences: the "boulevard du crime" with its crowds ,its attractions ; the sensational mime show by Jean-Louis Barrault;the perfectly captured atmosphere of the theater;Garance in the count's luxury apartment;the carnival which remains today maybe the finest final of any French movie.
Mixing real life and fiction (mime,drama) ,Marcel Carné predates Truffaut's much inferior "day for night" by thirty years ,which subject had already been treated by André Cayatte ("les amants de Verone" ,with another Prevert script).The sequences seem to follow naturally,we do not feel any gap between what is lived and what is acted .
Alexandre Trauner's -who clandestinely worked - film sets were all the more impressive as they were made at a time where the disposable funds were not that much high .
Arletty could not attend the premiere for she was in jail.Like Clouzot and so many others ,she was unfairly blacklisted for the wrong reasons (she had loved a German -whom she knew before the war;she had always said she did not want to have a child because he would become a soldier).Her career was partly broken and she never had the parts she deserved afterward.
Marcel Carné was ,along with Jean Renoir and Julien Duvivier,the best director of those somber years,that is to say one of the three best directors of the French cinema.
Those were the occupation years."Les visiteurs du soir" which preceded "children of paradise" took place in the MIddle Ages ,it was an alibi .Ditto for "children" .Carné and Prévert chose the nineteenth century,and their screenplay drew its inspiration from Balzac,Hugo and Eugène Sue.They created characters (Garance,Jericho and the count Montray) and they introduced real life ones :Baptiste Debureau belongs to the legend,but he did exist ,he is often mentioned even in contemporary songs such as Charles Aznavour' s "les comedians" .He invented the Pierrot character,as dear to the French collective memory as Charlie Chaplin .Lacenaire was also a notorious criminal who died on a guillotine:recently,in the early sixties,he was devoted a whole movie,questionable though (see "Lacenaire " by Francis Girod);his partner in crime ,Avril,also appears (Fabien Loris's part).Frederic Lemaitre was a comedian who created "l'auberge des adrets" -a melodrama he turns into a farce in the movie- and other melodramas.
Prevert was at his best and most of his lines are memorable.Arletty /Garance epitomized his spirit,she WAS "je suis comme je suis" flesh on the bone.Since word plays and poetry abound,I urge non -French people to see the movie in French with subtitles.Anyway who could dub the unique Arletty?Her voice is inimitable.
Admirable sequences: the "boulevard du crime" with its crowds ,its attractions ; the sensational mime show by Jean-Louis Barrault;the perfectly captured atmosphere of the theater;Garance in the count's luxury apartment;the carnival which remains today maybe the finest final of any French movie.
Mixing real life and fiction (mime,drama) ,Marcel Carné predates Truffaut's much inferior "day for night" by thirty years ,which subject had already been treated by André Cayatte ("les amants de Verone" ,with another Prevert script).The sequences seem to follow naturally,we do not feel any gap between what is lived and what is acted .
Alexandre Trauner's -who clandestinely worked - film sets were all the more impressive as they were made at a time where the disposable funds were not that much high .
Arletty could not attend the premiere for she was in jail.Like Clouzot and so many others ,she was unfairly blacklisted for the wrong reasons (she had loved a German -whom she knew before the war;she had always said she did not want to have a child because he would become a soldier).Her career was partly broken and she never had the parts she deserved afterward.
Marcel Carné was ,along with Jean Renoir and Julien Duvivier,the best director of those somber years,that is to say one of the three best directors of the French cinema.