Directed by Todd A. Kessler, the series The New Look focuses on the events during the time when the French had been colonized by the Nazis. However, the fourth episode of the series brings out the phase after the liberation of France. The spoils after the war and the psychological traumas have been depicted skillfully. The episode also portrays Coco Chanel as an ally to the Nazis. Meanwhile, Christian has left all hopes of finding his sister Catherine, thinking that she must have been dead. Will Christian give up on his profession? How will Coco manage to save herself? Let’s find out!
Spoilers Ahead
Why Was Coco Arrested?
The Allied troops finally managed to liberate Paris by 1944. Everyone in France was merrymaking and celebrating their freedom from the clutches of the Nazis. However, people who were suspected of having collaborated with the Nazis were being attacked. Arletty, a famous actress of the time,...
Spoilers Ahead
Why Was Coco Arrested?
The Allied troops finally managed to liberate Paris by 1944. Everyone in France was merrymaking and celebrating their freedom from the clutches of the Nazis. However, people who were suspected of having collaborated with the Nazis were being attacked. Arletty, a famous actress of the time,...
- 2/21/2024
- by Debjyoti Dey
- Film Fugitives
It’s hard to believe at first glance that the surreal Lovecraftian horrors of Messiah of Evil are courtesy of Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, who wrote both the warm nostalgia bath that is American Graffiti and the absurd comic book antics of Howard the Duck. But there are definite similarities between these films. American Graffiti and Messiah of Evil each capture a particular milieu at the end of an era, whether that’s provincial Modesto before the Beatles and Vietnam, or a beach town being overtaken by an evil cult. And Messiah of Evil and Howard the Duck both concern a cataclysmic threat from another realm.
Messiah of Evil focuses on Arletty (Marianna Hill), a young woman who’s come to Point Dune on the California coast looking for her famous artist father, Joseph Lang (Royal Dano). She soon makes the acquaintance of raffish Thom (Michael Greer), a nomadic...
Messiah of Evil focuses on Arletty (Marianna Hill), a young woman who’s come to Point Dune on the California coast looking for her famous artist father, Joseph Lang (Royal Dano). She soon makes the acquaintance of raffish Thom (Michael Greer), a nomadic...
- 10/27/2023
- by Budd Wilkins
- Slant Magazine
Take a refreshing plunge into classic French Poetic Realism — pre-noir drama with softer edges and a touch of romantic fatalism. A low-rent hotel on a barge canal is the gathering point for a cross-section of quasi- undesirables. Scandals and crimes aside, they’re a touching, human bunch, as performed to perfection by Louis Jouvet, Annabella, Arletty, Jane Marken, Jean-Pierre Aumont, Paulette Dubost and Bernard Blier. Marcel Carné’s show is also a beautiful production, with Alexandre Trauner designs that recreate ‘reality’ on an enormous scale.
Hôtel du Nord
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 1139
1938 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 96 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date August 23, 2022 / 39.95
Starring: Annabella, Jean-Pierre Aumont, Louis Jouvet, Arletty, Paulette Dubost, Andrex, André Brunot, Henri Bosc, Marcel André, Bernard Blier, Jane Marken, François Périer, Dora Doll, Raymone.
Cinematography: Louis Née, Armand Thirard
Production Designer and Art Director: Alexandre Trauner
Film Editor: Marthe Gottie
Original Music: Maurice Jaubert
Written by Henri Jeanson,...
Hôtel du Nord
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 1139
1938 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 96 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date August 23, 2022 / 39.95
Starring: Annabella, Jean-Pierre Aumont, Louis Jouvet, Arletty, Paulette Dubost, Andrex, André Brunot, Henri Bosc, Marcel André, Bernard Blier, Jane Marken, François Périer, Dora Doll, Raymone.
Cinematography: Louis Née, Armand Thirard
Production Designer and Art Director: Alexandre Trauner
Film Editor: Marthe Gottie
Original Music: Maurice Jaubert
Written by Henri Jeanson,...
- 8/23/2022
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Movie theaters bring entertainment and escapism. The smell of popcorn wafting through the air, the previews of coming attractions, and the communal reactions to seeing a movie on the big screen often bring a viewing experience that can’t be replicated elsewhere. It’s also a safe way to experience horror, as the terror is harmlessly confined to celluloid.
But what if it isn’t…?
This week’s streaming picks center around horror movies that feature or are set at the cinema. For the characters in these six titles, their haven becomes anything but when movie theaters turn into slaying grounds for killers and creatures alike.
Here’s where you can stream them this week.
For more Stay Home, Watch Horror picks, click here.
Messiah of Evil – Fandor, Paramount+, Pluto TV, Prime Video, Screambox, Shudder
Arletty has arrived in a Coastal Californian town to visit her father after receiving a series of worrying letters.
But what if it isn’t…?
This week’s streaming picks center around horror movies that feature or are set at the cinema. For the characters in these six titles, their haven becomes anything but when movie theaters turn into slaying grounds for killers and creatures alike.
Here’s where you can stream them this week.
For more Stay Home, Watch Horror picks, click here.
Messiah of Evil – Fandor, Paramount+, Pluto TV, Prime Video, Screambox, Shudder
Arletty has arrived in a Coastal Californian town to visit her father after receiving a series of worrying letters.
- 8/22/2022
- by Meagan Navarro
- bloody-disgusting.com
11 March 1987: The famous Hollywood chronicler and stills collector, who has interviewed everybody, meets Richard Boston
“I tend to forget what I’ve just said,” John Kobal said, and a couple of minutes later he said: “What have I just said?” It’s not surprising that he can’t always remember what he’s just said because he says so much. He talks nineteen to the dozen. He also listens.
He must do, because he’s interviewed everyone from Arletty, Tallulah Bankhead, Louise Brooks and Joan Crawford at one end of the alphabet to Mae West and Loretta Young at the other end, with Bette Davis, Marlene Dietrich, Katherine Hepburn, Anita Loos, Joel McCrea and almost every other Hollywood star you can think of in between. Somehow they all managed to get plenty of words in edgeways and the result is a whole shelf of books.
“I tend to forget what I’ve just said,” John Kobal said, and a couple of minutes later he said: “What have I just said?” It’s not surprising that he can’t always remember what he’s just said because he says so much. He talks nineteen to the dozen. He also listens.
He must do, because he’s interviewed everyone from Arletty, Tallulah Bankhead, Louise Brooks and Joan Crawford at one end of the alphabet to Mae West and Loretta Young at the other end, with Bette Davis, Marlene Dietrich, Katherine Hepburn, Anita Loos, Joel McCrea and almost every other Hollywood star you can think of in between. Somehow they all managed to get plenty of words in edgeways and the result is a whole shelf of books.
- 3/11/2020
- by Richard Boston
- The Guardian - Film News
After delivering the Netflix original series “The Spy” with Sacha Baron Cohen, Alain Goldman’s Paris-based company, Legende, is on track to produce three more premium drama series: Yehonatan Indursky’s “Shtetl,” Olivier Dahan and Frédéric Krivine’s “Les Enfants du Paradis” (working title), and “Ulysse.”
“Les Enfants du Paradis” is being developed by Krivine, the creative force behind the long-running series “Un Village Francais,” and will explore the lives of artists, including Coco Chanel, Arletty and Jean Gabin, during the Nazi occupation of France. Dahan, the director of the Marion Cotillard-starrer “La Vie en Rose,” is attached to co-write and helm the series.
“‘Les Enfants du Paradis’ will shed light on the world of artists during World War II when Paris was occupied by the Germans, and will be backed by meticulous research as we’ll aim to stick to what happened during those years and portray the artists as they were.
“Les Enfants du Paradis” is being developed by Krivine, the creative force behind the long-running series “Un Village Francais,” and will explore the lives of artists, including Coco Chanel, Arletty and Jean Gabin, during the Nazi occupation of France. Dahan, the director of the Marion Cotillard-starrer “La Vie en Rose,” is attached to co-write and helm the series.
“‘Les Enfants du Paradis’ will shed light on the world of artists during World War II when Paris was occupied by the Germans, and will be backed by meticulous research as we’ll aim to stick to what happened during those years and portray the artists as they were.
- 3/27/2019
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
Two films by Marcel Carné are playing on Mubi in the United States as part of the series Marcel Carné, Arletty, Jean Gabin: Le jour se lève (1939), from June 7 - July 7, and Air of Paris (1954), from June 8 - July 8, 2017.Marcel Carné’s 1937 film Drôle de drame (Bizarre, Bizarre) feels anomalous when placed next to his classic dramas. Unlike the sincere emotion, heartbreak, and despair which characterize his poetic realist works, Drôle de drame is a lighthearted and rather frivolous comedy of manners. The film depicts a series of absurd events caused by a need to maintain appearances, following meek botanist Irwin Molyneux (Michel Simon) as he lives a double life, writing crime novels in secret. When his cousin, the bishop Bedford (Louis Jouvet), accuses Molyneux of having killed his wife, the married couple go into hiding rather than rectify the mistake. Molyneux emerges with his novelist persona in order...
- 6/8/2017
- MUBI
Danièle Delorme: 'Gigi' 1949 actress and pioneering female film producer. Danièle Delorme: 'Gigi' 1949 actress was pioneering woman producer, politically minded 'femme engagée' Danièle Delorme, who died on Oct. 17, '15, at the age of 89 in Paris, is best remembered as the first actress to incarnate Colette's teenage courtesan-to-be Gigi and for playing Jean Rochefort's about-to-be-cuckolded wife in the international box office hit Pardon Mon Affaire. Yet few are aware that Delorme was featured in nearly 60 films – three of which, including Gigi, directed by France's sole major woman filmmaker of the '40s and '50s – in addition to more than 20 stage plays and a dozen television productions in a show business career spanning seven decades. Even fewer realize that Delorme was also a pioneering woman film producer, working in that capacity for more than half a century. Or that she was what in French is called a femme engagée...
- 12/5/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Constance Cummings: Stage and film actress ca. early 1940s. Constance Cummings on stage: From Sacha Guitry to Clifford Odets (See previous post: “Constance Cummings: Flawless 'Blithe Spirit,' Supporter of Political Refugees.”) In the post-World War II years, Constance Cummings' stage reputation continued to grow on the English stage, in plays as diverse as: Stephen Powys (pseudonym for P.G. Wodehouse) and Guy Bolton's English-language adaptation of Sacha Guitry's Don't Listen, Ladies! (1948), with Cummings as one of shop clerk Denholm Elliott's mistresses (the other one was Betty Marsden). “Miss Cummings and Miss Marsden act as fetchingly as they look,” commented The Spectator. Rodney Ackland's Before the Party (1949), delivering “a superb performance of controlled hysteria” according to theater director and Michael Redgrave biographer Alan Strachan, writing for The Independent at the time of Cummings' death. Clifford Odets' Winter Journey / The Country Girl (1952), as...
- 11/10/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Marc Allégret: From André Gide lover to Simone Simon mentor (photo: Marc Allégret) (See previous post: "Simone Simon Remembered: Sex Kitten and Femme Fatale.") Simone Simon became a film star following the international critical and financial success of the 1934 romantic drama Lac aux Dames, directed by her self-appointed mentor – and alleged lover – Marc Allégret.[1] The son of an evangelical missionary, Marc Allégret (born on December 22, 1900, in Basel, Switzerland) was to have become a lawyer. At age 16, his life took a different path as a result of his romantic involvement – and elopement to London – with his mentor and later "adoptive uncle" André Gide (1947 Nobel Prize winner in Literature), more than 30 years his senior and married to Madeleine Rondeaux for more than two decades. In various forms – including a threesome with painter Théo Van Rysselberghe's daughter Elisabeth – the Allégret-Gide relationship remained steady until the late '20s and their trip to...
- 2/28/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Simone Simon: Remembering the 'Cat People' and 'La Bête Humaine' star (photo: Simone Simon 'Cat People' publicity) Pert, pretty, pouty, and fiery-tempered Simone Simon – who died at age 94 ten years ago, on Feb. 22, 2005 – is best known for her starring role in Jacques Tourneur's cult horror movie classic Cat People (1942). Those aware of the existence of film industries outside Hollywood will also remember Simon for her button-nosed femme fatale in Jean Renoir's French film noir La Bête Humaine (1938).[1] In fact, long before Brigitte Bardot, Annette Stroyberg, Mamie Van Doren, Tuesday Weld, Ann-Margret, and Barbarella's Jane Fonda became known as cinema's Sex Kittens, Simone Simon exuded feline charm – with a tad of puppy dog wistfulness – in a film career that spanned two continents and a quarter of a century. From the early '30s to the mid-'50s, she seduced men young and old on both...
- 2/20/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Simone Simon in 'La Bête Humaine' 1938: Jean Renoir's film noir (photo: Jean Gabin and Simone Simon in 'La Bête Humaine') (See previous post: "'Cat People' 1942 Actress Simone Simon Remembered.") In the late 1930s, with her Hollywood career stalled while facing competition at 20th Century-Fox from another French import, Annabella (later Tyrone Power's wife), Simone Simon returned to France. Once there, she reestablished herself as an actress to be reckoned with in Jean Renoir's La Bête Humaine. An updated version of Émile Zola's 1890 novel, La Bête Humaine is enveloped in a dark, brooding atmosphere not uncommon in pre-World War II French films. Known for their "poetic realism," examples from that era include Renoir's own The Lower Depths (1936), Julien Duvivier's La Belle Équipe (1936) and Pépé le Moko (1937), and particularly Marcel Carné's Port of Shadows (1938) and Daybreak (1939).[11] This thematic and...
- 2/6/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Translators introduction: This article by Mireille Latil Le Dantec, the first of two parts, was originally published in issue 40 of Cinématographe, September 1978. The previous issue of the magazine had included a dossier on "La qualité française" and a book of a never-shot script by Jean Grémillon (Le Printemps de la Liberté or The Spring of Freedom) had recently been published. The time was ripe for a re-evaluation of Grémillon's films and a resuscitation of his undervalued career. As this re-evaluation appears to still be happening nearly 40 years later—Grémillon's films have only recently seen DVD releases and a 35mm retrospective begins this week at Museum of the Moving Image in Queens—this article and its follow-up gives us an important view of a French perspective on Grémillon's work by a very perceptive critic doing the initial heavy-lifting in bringing the proper attention to the filmmaker's work.
Filmmaker maudit?...
Filmmaker maudit?...
- 11/30/2014
- by Ted Fendt
- MUBI
Marcel Carné and screenwriter Jacques Prévert's Le jour se lève (1939) "tracks the inevitable unraveling of factory worker François (Jean Gabin) after he kills the absurd vaudeville entertainer Valentin (Jules Berry), his romantic rival for the affections of Françoise (Jacqueline Laurent) and Clara (Arletty)," writes Anna King for Time Out. The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw finds it "bristling with energy and shaped with incomparable artistry and flair." We're collecting reviews and the trailer for the new restoration opening at New York's Film Forum. » - David Hudson...
- 11/13/2014
- Keyframe
Marcel Carné and screenwriter Jacques Prévert's Le jour se lève (1939) "tracks the inevitable unraveling of factory worker François (Jean Gabin) after he kills the absurd vaudeville entertainer Valentin (Jules Berry), his romantic rival for the affections of Françoise (Jacqueline Laurent) and Clara (Arletty)," writes Anna King for Time Out. The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw finds it "bristling with energy and shaped with incomparable artistry and flair." We're collecting reviews and the trailer for the new restoration opening at New York's Film Forum. » - David Hudson...
- 11/13/2014
- Fandor: Keyframe
As we continue to move forward through the list, let us consider: how do you define an original screenplay? In theory, everything is based on something. Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine is basically a modern A Streetcar Named Desire. But, somehow, Jasmine is classified as an original screenplay. When a film is wholly original, nothing like it had been done before, and others have tried to copy it since. Plenty of original screenplays (some in this list) take on tired genres, but flip the script. But the ones that really catch the audience by surprise are the ones that feel imaginative, creative, and different.
40. Spirited Away (2001)
Written by Hayao Miyazaki
That’s a good start! Once you’ve met someone, you never really forget them. It just takes a while for your memories to return.
No writer/director on this list may be more fantastical than the great Hayao Miyazaki,...
40. Spirited Away (2001)
Written by Hayao Miyazaki
That’s a good start! Once you’ve met someone, you never really forget them. It just takes a while for your memories to return.
No writer/director on this list may be more fantastical than the great Hayao Miyazaki,...
- 2/24/2014
- by Joshua Gaul
- SoundOnSight
Last night I finally finished watching Marcel Carne's 1945 film Children of Paradise. At just over three hours long it took me a couple sittings, though last night I watched the bulk of it (a little over two hours) and it's one hell of a piece of cinema. Roger Ebert describes the production saying it "was shot in Paris and Nice during the Nazi occupation and released in 1945. Its sets sometimes had to be moved between the two cities. Its designer and composer, Jews sought by the Nazis, worked from hiding. Carne was forced to hire pro-Nazi collaborators as extras; they did not suspect they were working next to resistance fighters. The Nazis banned all films over about 90 minutes in length, so Carne simply made two films, confident he could show them together after the war was over." The film largely focuses on an actor -- Frederick Lema?tre played by...
- 4/25/2013
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
Les Enfants du Paradis (Children Of Paradise)
Directed by Marcel Carné
Starring Arletty, Jean-Louis Barrault, and Pierre Brasseur
France, 190 min – 1945.
Les Enfants du Paradis is a film about that class of people that hangs on the outskirts of 1820s and 30s French society, exuberantly enjoying theatre productions in the ‘Boulevard du Crime.’ It is very much a piece that celebrates the bohemian artist (of an earlier generation than the famed bohemians depicted in Moulin Rouge) and the tragedies of love. This love centers around the beautiful woman-about-town and artist, Garance (Arletty), and the four men who fall in love with her: Jean-Baptiste Debureau (Jean-Louis Barrault), a famous pantomime actor, Frédérick Lemaître (Pierre Brasseur), an aspiring, classical actor, Pierre-François Lacenaire (Marcel Herrand), a criminal, and finally, Count Édouard de Montray (Louis Salou), a rich aristocrat. Each man falls in love with Garance, but she only gives her heart to one of them.
Directed by Marcel Carné
Starring Arletty, Jean-Louis Barrault, and Pierre Brasseur
France, 190 min – 1945.
Les Enfants du Paradis is a film about that class of people that hangs on the outskirts of 1820s and 30s French society, exuberantly enjoying theatre productions in the ‘Boulevard du Crime.’ It is very much a piece that celebrates the bohemian artist (of an earlier generation than the famed bohemians depicted in Moulin Rouge) and the tragedies of love. This love centers around the beautiful woman-about-town and artist, Garance (Arletty), and the four men who fall in love with her: Jean-Baptiste Debureau (Jean-Louis Barrault), a famous pantomime actor, Frédérick Lemaître (Pierre Brasseur), an aspiring, classical actor, Pierre-François Lacenaire (Marcel Herrand), a criminal, and finally, Count Édouard de Montray (Louis Salou), a rich aristocrat. Each man falls in love with Garance, but she only gives her heart to one of them.
- 11/22/2012
- by Karen Bacellar
- SoundOnSight
In France, during the Nazi occupation of World War II, filmmakers faced the challenge of creating entertainment that might still carry with it the French perspective of the enemy occupation while still making it past Nazi censors who enforced considerably harsher penalties than the MPAA (like death, for example). This posed a challenge for filmmakers like Marcel Carné who desired to comment on the deplorable situation through his work without being penalized for political messaging. His solution: Les Visiteurs du Soir (or The Devil’s Envoys), a story set in the time of kings and traveling minstrels imbued with heavy themes of an evil working from within to destroy youth, love, and order. The classic film receives the Criterion Collection Blu-ray restoration treatment here, but it’s worth noting that the print from which it’s derived is not without its share of quality issues, but the bewitching beauty of Arletty,...
- 11/16/2012
- by Lex Walker
- JustPressPlay.net
By Allen Gardner
Prometheus (20th Century Fox) Ridley Scott’s quasi-prequel to his 1979 classic “Alien” has an intergalactic exploratory team (Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Guy Pearce, Charlize Theron, Idris Elba) arriving on a uncharted planet, where they discover what appears to be a dormant alien spacecraft and what might be the first discovery of intelligent life outside of Earth. Of course, everything goes straight to hell before you can scream “Don’t touch that egg!” Sumptuous visuals and strong performances from the cast (not to mention a nearly-perfect first half) can’t compensate for gaping plot and logic holes that nearly sink the proceedings in the film’s protracted second half. It feels as though some very crucial footage wound up on the cutting room floor. Perhaps, as with “Alien” and “Aliens” we’ll see a “Director’s Cut” of “Prometheus” arriving on DVD within the next year. In the meantime,...
Prometheus (20th Century Fox) Ridley Scott’s quasi-prequel to his 1979 classic “Alien” has an intergalactic exploratory team (Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Guy Pearce, Charlize Theron, Idris Elba) arriving on a uncharted planet, where they discover what appears to be a dormant alien spacecraft and what might be the first discovery of intelligent life outside of Earth. Of course, everything goes straight to hell before you can scream “Don’t touch that egg!” Sumptuous visuals and strong performances from the cast (not to mention a nearly-perfect first half) can’t compensate for gaping plot and logic holes that nearly sink the proceedings in the film’s protracted second half. It feels as though some very crucial footage wound up on the cutting room floor. Perhaps, as with “Alien” and “Aliens” we’ll see a “Director’s Cut” of “Prometheus” arriving on DVD within the next year. In the meantime,...
- 10/8/2012
- by The Hollywood Interview.com
- The Hollywood Interview
Known for creating some of the most important films in French history, and during Nazi Occupation, no less, Criterion issues two of Marcel Carne’s most widely acclaimed masterpieces, his crowning achievement, Children of Paradise (1945), which, if you haven’t seen, you need to, and a noteworthy work that directly precedes it, Les Visiteurs du Soir (1942), which has long since been popularly interpreted as an allegory of the hostile occupation. While this interpretation is hardly surprising and seems rather fitting, Carne’s film is much more universal than that, instead conveying the unbreakable spirit of pure love. Presented like the dark, harsh fairy tale it is, Carne managed to create a sumptuously poetic, luxurious film about how love does not indeed conquer all, but can perhaps endure.
Pages flipped by a dark gloved hand inform us that our tale is set in the Middle Ages, May of 1485. Two of the devil’s envoys,...
Pages flipped by a dark gloved hand inform us that our tale is set in the Middle Ages, May of 1485. Two of the devil’s envoys,...
- 9/25/2012
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
Chicago – Marcel Carne is one of the most important filmmakers in European history and two of his most timeless efforts, “Children of Paradise” and “Les Visiteurs du Soir,” are two of the most recent films inducted into the most important collection of Blu-rays in the history of the form — The Criterion Collection. “Children” had been a Criterion release before (it’s spine #141) but “Visiteurs” (#626) is new to the collection. Both are gloriously restored version of French classics.
“Children” is the superior of the two, a film that has often been voted the best French film of the last century. It’s often compared to “Gone with the Wind” in its epic scope (it’s 190 minutes long) or at least that’s how it was sold in some markets — “The French Gone with the Wind!” The film is actually much more ambitious thematically than the American epic as wonderfully detailed in...
“Children” is the superior of the two, a film that has often been voted the best French film of the last century. It’s often compared to “Gone with the Wind” in its epic scope (it’s 190 minutes long) or at least that’s how it was sold in some markets — “The French Gone with the Wind!” The film is actually much more ambitious thematically than the American epic as wonderfully detailed in...
- 9/25/2012
- by adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
(Marcel Carné, 1945, Second Sight, PG)
This vibrant three-hour epic was made during the German occupation by director Marcel Carné, poet Jacques Prévert and designer Alexandre Trauner, the chief creators of the so-called poetic realism that dominated French cinema in the late 1930s. The film then enjoyed a triumphant reception at its premiere in March 1945, just two months before Ve Day, when it helped assert the indomitable spirit of French culture and restore national pride.
The Nazi regime forbade direct reference to the war or any currently controversial matter, so the setting is the Parisian theatre of the 1830s, which is given a Balzacian social scope and dramatic vigour. Pierre Brasseur and Jean-Louis Barrault play rival actors, one a Shakespearean star, the other a brilliant mime, both of them in love with the cool, graceful Arletty's much-sought-after courtesan, who's also admired by a charismatic criminal and an aristocrat.
The movie...
This vibrant three-hour epic was made during the German occupation by director Marcel Carné, poet Jacques Prévert and designer Alexandre Trauner, the chief creators of the so-called poetic realism that dominated French cinema in the late 1930s. The film then enjoyed a triumphant reception at its premiere in March 1945, just two months before Ve Day, when it helped assert the indomitable spirit of French culture and restore national pride.
The Nazi regime forbade direct reference to the war or any currently controversial matter, so the setting is the Parisian theatre of the 1830s, which is given a Balzacian social scope and dramatic vigour. Pierre Brasseur and Jean-Louis Barrault play rival actors, one a Shakespearean star, the other a brilliant mime, both of them in love with the cool, graceful Arletty's much-sought-after courtesan, who's also admired by a charismatic criminal and an aristocrat.
The movie...
- 9/22/2012
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
By Raymond Benson
Children of Paradise has been called the greatest movie ever made in France, their equivalent to Gone With the Wind. Originally released in 1945 and directed by Marcel Carné, the three-hour historical epic is big in scope and ideas, and yet it is simplistic in its story about four men in love with the same woman. The excellent Criterion Collection label released the picture on DVD several years ago, but now they have given it the deluxe treatment with Pathé’s 2011 restoration and uncompressed monaural soundtrack in new Blu-ray and DVD editions. It looks and sounds amazing.
The story of the film’s production is just as fascinating as the picture itself. Made in Vichy France during the Nazi Occupation, Carné and his collaborator/writer Jacques Prévert had to work in secrecy, for the Nazis acted as “studio executives” and approved everything being made. The production designer and music composer were Jews,...
Children of Paradise has been called the greatest movie ever made in France, their equivalent to Gone With the Wind. Originally released in 1945 and directed by Marcel Carné, the three-hour historical epic is big in scope and ideas, and yet it is simplistic in its story about four men in love with the same woman. The excellent Criterion Collection label released the picture on DVD several years ago, but now they have given it the deluxe treatment with Pathé’s 2011 restoration and uncompressed monaural soundtrack in new Blu-ray and DVD editions. It looks and sounds amazing.
The story of the film’s production is just as fascinating as the picture itself. Made in Vichy France during the Nazi Occupation, Carné and his collaborator/writer Jacques Prévert had to work in secrecy, for the Nazis acted as “studio executives” and approved everything being made. The production designer and music composer were Jews,...
- 9/22/2012
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
How Les Enfants du Paradis, a French film about a theatre company, convinced the actress that a life on the stage – and in front of the cameras – was for her
I first saw Les Enfants du Paradis when I was about 16 and still at school. I was completely intoxicated by it. What I found so thrilling was the way it portrayed the world of the theatre. It made me realise that this was a place where art happened: it wasn't just a lot of nonsense. It was about the development of the soul: people spent their whole lives in the theatre and relished it and grew in it. I think that had a big effect on my decision to become an actress.
The film is set in the mid-19th century, but it was made in the early 1940s, while France was under German occupation, and what an extraordinary achievement...
I first saw Les Enfants du Paradis when I was about 16 and still at school. I was completely intoxicated by it. What I found so thrilling was the way it portrayed the world of the theatre. It made me realise that this was a place where art happened: it wasn't just a lot of nonsense. It was about the development of the soul: people spent their whole lives in the theatre and relished it and grew in it. I think that had a big effect on my decision to become an actress.
The film is set in the mid-19th century, but it was made in the early 1940s, while France was under German occupation, and what an extraordinary achievement...
- 7/28/2012
- by Killian Fox
- The Guardian - Film News
Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Sept. 18, 2012
Price: DVD $29.95, Blu-ray $39.95
Studio: Criterion
Jean-Louis Barrault stars in Marcel Carne's Children of Paradise.
Poetic realism reached sublime heights with Marcel Carné’s 1945 romantic drama Children of Paradise, which is widely considered one of the greatest French films of all time.
A classic depiction of 19th century Paris’s theatrical demimonde, Les enfants du paradis follows a mysterious woman (Arletty, The Pearls of the Crown’s) loved by four different men (all based on historical figures): an actor, a criminal, a count, and, most poignantly, a street mime (Jean-Louis Barrault, La ronde).
Directed with sensitivity and dramatic élan (during World War II, no less!) director Carné (Port of Shadows) and screenwriter Jacques Prévert (Le jour se lève) bring to life a world teeming with hucksters and aristocrats, thieves and courtesans, pimps and seers, and, of course, love and sorrow.
Released previously by Criterion in...
Price: DVD $29.95, Blu-ray $39.95
Studio: Criterion
Jean-Louis Barrault stars in Marcel Carne's Children of Paradise.
Poetic realism reached sublime heights with Marcel Carné’s 1945 romantic drama Children of Paradise, which is widely considered one of the greatest French films of all time.
A classic depiction of 19th century Paris’s theatrical demimonde, Les enfants du paradis follows a mysterious woman (Arletty, The Pearls of the Crown’s) loved by four different men (all based on historical figures): an actor, a criminal, a count, and, most poignantly, a street mime (Jean-Louis Barrault, La ronde).
Directed with sensitivity and dramatic élan (during World War II, no less!) director Carné (Port of Shadows) and screenwriter Jacques Prévert (Le jour se lève) bring to life a world teeming with hucksters and aristocrats, thieves and courtesans, pimps and seers, and, of course, love and sorrow.
Released previously by Criterion in...
- 6/25/2012
- by Laurence
- Disc Dish
Omar Sy, François Cluzet, The Intouchables Among the three dozen or so films screening at the City of Lights / City of Angels (Colcoa) French film festival currently being held in Los Angeles, you'll find a couple of restored classics, several César nominees, and one of the biggest box-office hits in French history. Georges Méliès' 1902 short Le voyage dans la lune / A Trip to the Moon, inspired by Jules Verne's novel, is one of the restored classics to be screened at Colcoa. Méliès' short will be accompanied by Serge Bromberg and Eric Lange's Le Voyage extraordinaire / The Extraordinary Voyage, about the making and the restoration of A Trip to the Moon. The festival's other classic presentation is Marcel Carné's 1938 drama Hôtel du Nord, with Arletty, Louis Jouvet, Jean-Pierre Aumont, Tyrone Power's future wife Annabella, the recently deceased Paulette Dubost, and Bernard Blier. Those ignorant about the...
- 4/17/2012
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
He thinks his own films are dreadful, Scorsese's worse, and despairs of mankind in general. Director Aki Kaurismäki on why only love, mushrooms and drinking on set keep him going
Aki Kaurismäki sits in his heavy black coat, grimacing. The miserabilist's miserabilist is looking more miserable than it is possible to imagine. I have been told it is best to interview him first thing in the morning, because he starts to drink after that. It is now four in the afternoon, and he seems to have been glugging back the white wine for a good few hours.
He is waiting for a member of staff at Soho House in London to tell him to put out his fag, and he is not disappointed. "I'm sorry, sir, we have told you, you can't smoke in here." Kaurismäki looks surprised, as if this is the first he's heard of it, apologises and...
Aki Kaurismäki sits in his heavy black coat, grimacing. The miserabilist's miserabilist is looking more miserable than it is possible to imagine. I have been told it is best to interview him first thing in the morning, because he starts to drink after that. It is now four in the afternoon, and he seems to have been glugging back the white wine for a good few hours.
He is waiting for a member of staff at Soho House in London to tell him to put out his fag, and he is not disappointed. "I'm sorry, sir, we have told you, you can't smoke in here." Kaurismäki looks surprised, as if this is the first he's heard of it, apologises and...
- 4/5/2012
- by Simon Hattenstone
- The Guardian - Film News
Les enfants du paradis (Marcel Carné, 1945)
When I was about 11 years old my father stood me in front of the television at home and said: "This is a film you have to see." It was Les enfants du paradis, directed by Marcel Carné. Shot in Paris during the Nazi occupation, it's about a troupe of mime artists and performers in the 1880s.
It's a very beautiful, epic story, but what moved me the most was the scene where Jean-Louis Barrault, who plays the mime artist Jean-Baptiste Debureau, is performing a pantomime on stage, his face painted white. He looks into the wings and sees the woman he loves with another man. You see his face crack behind the mask. For me, that moment captured what acting is all about – what is happening behind the mask.
The French actor Arletty, who played the love interest Garance, aroused me as an 11-year-old boy.
When I was about 11 years old my father stood me in front of the television at home and said: "This is a film you have to see." It was Les enfants du paradis, directed by Marcel Carné. Shot in Paris during the Nazi occupation, it's about a troupe of mime artists and performers in the 1880s.
It's a very beautiful, epic story, but what moved me the most was the scene where Jean-Louis Barrault, who plays the mime artist Jean-Baptiste Debureau, is performing a pantomime on stage, his face painted white. He looks into the wings and sees the woman he loves with another man. You see his face crack behind the mask. For me, that moment captured what acting is all about – what is happening behind the mask.
The French actor Arletty, who played the love interest Garance, aroused me as an 11-year-old boy.
- 12/18/2011
- by Gemma Kappala-Ramsamy
- The Guardian - Film News
Les Enfants du Paradis is back, now at the Ciné Lumière and BFI Southbank. David Jenkins in Time Out London: "In this crisp restoration of Marcel Carné's rich, literary romance from 1945 ('France's answer to Gone with the Wind!"), four men tussle for the affections of one woman, the conflicted, sphinx-like Garence (Carné regular Arletty), an ice maiden in the league of Marlene Dietrich who, in nearly every shot, has her eyes masked by a beam of light. Such ethereal, delicately cinematic touches are in otherwise short supply in a film which is content to let a dazzling, witty script (by Jacques Prévert), sumptuous set design and exceptional performers lend the fiction its lifeblood."
"Like all true love stories, it ends badly," writes Agnès Poirier in Guardian. "Equally important to the legend of Les Enfants du Paradis is the making of the film itself. It started shooting in Nazi-occupied France...
"Like all true love stories, it ends badly," writes Agnès Poirier in Guardian. "Equally important to the legend of Les Enfants du Paradis is the making of the film itself. It started shooting in Nazi-occupied France...
- 11/13/2011
- MUBI
Black Pond (15)
(Tom Kingsley, Will Sharpe, 2011, UK) Chris Langham, Colin Hurley, Amanda Hadingue, Will Sharpe, Simon Amstell. 82 mins
First-time films are traditionally youthful coming-of-age stories, but this delightful little oddity revolves around a miserable middle-aged couple and the deaths of first their three-legged dog, then a very strange stranger they invite to dinner. Everything about it is pretty eccentric, in fact, with surreal animated interludes, an absurd cameo from Amstell and plenty of off-balance domestic comedy, not to mention the risky return of Langham. But in its own idiosyncratic way, it all fits together perfectly.
Wuthering Heights (15)
(Andrea Arnold, 2011, UK) Kaya Scodelario, James Howson, Shannon Beer. 129 mins
Discarding the usual niceties of costume drama, Arnold rolls Brontë's saga in the muck for this provocative, sensuous interpretation. Sublime to start with, it never quite recovers from a second-half change of cast.
The Rum Diary (15)
(Bruce Robinson, 2011, Us) Johnny Depp, Aaron Eckhart,...
(Tom Kingsley, Will Sharpe, 2011, UK) Chris Langham, Colin Hurley, Amanda Hadingue, Will Sharpe, Simon Amstell. 82 mins
First-time films are traditionally youthful coming-of-age stories, but this delightful little oddity revolves around a miserable middle-aged couple and the deaths of first their three-legged dog, then a very strange stranger they invite to dinner. Everything about it is pretty eccentric, in fact, with surreal animated interludes, an absurd cameo from Amstell and plenty of off-balance domestic comedy, not to mention the risky return of Langham. But in its own idiosyncratic way, it all fits together perfectly.
Wuthering Heights (15)
(Andrea Arnold, 2011, UK) Kaya Scodelario, James Howson, Shannon Beer. 129 mins
Discarding the usual niceties of costume drama, Arnold rolls Brontë's saga in the muck for this provocative, sensuous interpretation. Sublime to start with, it never quite recovers from a second-half change of cast.
The Rum Diary (15)
(Bruce Robinson, 2011, Us) Johnny Depp, Aaron Eckhart,...
- 11/12/2011
- by Steve Rose
- The Guardian - Film News
The restoration of the French theatreland classic only improves a glorious narrative carousel, as gripping as any soap opera
This restoration of Marcel Carné's 1945 classic reignites a glorious flame: a rich Balzacian drama that bulges with life, with incident, with romantic idealism, while the screenplay by Jacques Prévert has a superb and surreally turned bon mot every few minutes. The scene is the early 19th-century Boulevard du Crime in Paris, thronged with popular theatres and showfolk. French star Arletty plays Garance, a woman who entrances four different men: suave stage actor Frédérick (Pierre Brasseur), chilly aristocrat Count Edouard (Louis Salou), mime artist Baptiste (Jean-Louis Barrault) and Lacenaire, a criminal adventurer played by Marcel Herrand. The fascination with Garance keeps the narrative carousel turning, and it's as addictive as the most gripping soap opera. The writing is utterly involving; with lines like tiny, imagist poems. A rich and delicious movie treat.
This restoration of Marcel Carné's 1945 classic reignites a glorious flame: a rich Balzacian drama that bulges with life, with incident, with romantic idealism, while the screenplay by Jacques Prévert has a superb and surreally turned bon mot every few minutes. The scene is the early 19th-century Boulevard du Crime in Paris, thronged with popular theatres and showfolk. French star Arletty plays Garance, a woman who entrances four different men: suave stage actor Frédérick (Pierre Brasseur), chilly aristocrat Count Edouard (Louis Salou), mime artist Baptiste (Jean-Louis Barrault) and Lacenaire, a criminal adventurer played by Marcel Herrand. The fascination with Garance keeps the narrative carousel turning, and it's as addictive as the most gripping soap opera. The writing is utterly involving; with lines like tiny, imagist poems. A rich and delicious movie treat.
- 11/11/2011
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Agnès Poirier's excellent account of Marcel Carne's film Les Enfants du Paradis (Garance: our last affair, 7 November) mentions that the cast included some Nazi collaborators.
However, she does not add that the most notorious of them was the film's star, Arletty, who lived with a Luftwaffe officer, hobnobbed with Hermann Goering among others at social events in Germany, dined cheerfully at the Ritz during wartime with leading Vichy antisemites implicated in sending thousands of French Jews to their deaths, and – like the appalling Coco Chanel – engaged in collaboration horizontale on the grand scale.
Her great director, Marcel Carne, declined to join the Resistance unlike many other French film-makers and had a successful war making movies. Les Enfants du Paradis, like Dw Griffith's Birth of a Nation, is a film masterpiece morally tainted.
Kenneth O Morgan
Witney, Oxfordshire
• The letter above was corrected on 9 November 2011. An editing error led to the...
However, she does not add that the most notorious of them was the film's star, Arletty, who lived with a Luftwaffe officer, hobnobbed with Hermann Goering among others at social events in Germany, dined cheerfully at the Ritz during wartime with leading Vichy antisemites implicated in sending thousands of French Jews to their deaths, and – like the appalling Coco Chanel – engaged in collaboration horizontale on the grand scale.
Her great director, Marcel Carne, declined to join the Resistance unlike many other French film-makers and had a successful war making movies. Les Enfants du Paradis, like Dw Griffith's Birth of a Nation, is a film masterpiece morally tainted.
Kenneth O Morgan
Witney, Oxfordshire
• The letter above was corrected on 9 November 2011. An editing error led to the...
- 11/9/2011
- The Guardian - Film News
As a new generation can now find, the heroine of Les Enfants du Paradis isn't one you easily forget
Is Les Enfants du Paradis the greatest film ever? A survey of film critics said so in 1996, and the British public will soon be able to decide for themselves. A digitally restored version of the film, whose prints had for two decades been too damaged to be screened, is to be released this week.
I was 12 when I first saw Les Enfants du Paradis, at the Ranelagh theatre in Paris, a stone's throw from Balzac's house. The neo-Renaissance theatre screened this story of mimes, actors, impresarios and swindlers every week-end for more than 20 years until the 35mm print became too fragile. Two generations of cinephiles did as we did, going up the little street like pilgrims on a quest. If God was a film director, he would have made this film,...
Is Les Enfants du Paradis the greatest film ever? A survey of film critics said so in 1996, and the British public will soon be able to decide for themselves. A digitally restored version of the film, whose prints had for two decades been too damaged to be screened, is to be released this week.
I was 12 when I first saw Les Enfants du Paradis, at the Ranelagh theatre in Paris, a stone's throw from Balzac's house. The neo-Renaissance theatre screened this story of mimes, actors, impresarios and swindlers every week-end for more than 20 years until the 35mm print became too fragile. Two generations of cinephiles did as we did, going up the little street like pilgrims on a quest. If God was a film director, he would have made this film,...
- 11/7/2011
- by Agnès Poirier
- The Guardian - Film News
Paulette Dubost, known as the "Dean of French Cinema," and an actress in films directed by Jean Renoir, Marcel L'Herbier, Jacques Tourneur, Julien Duvivier, Max Ophüls, Preston Sturges, François Truffaut, Louis Malle, and Marcel Carné, died of "natural causes" on Sept. 21 in the Parisian suburb of Longjumeau. The Paris-born Dubost had turned 100 years old on October 8, 2010. Dubost's show business career began at the age of seven, performing various duties at the Paris Opera. Following some stage training, her film debut took place in 1931 in Wilhelm Thiele's Le bal, which also marked the film debut of Danielle Darrieux (who's still around and still active). Ultimately, Dubost's film career was to span more than seven decades, during which time she was featured in over 140 movies. She is probably best remembered as the adulterous chambermaid Lisette in Jean Renoir's 1939 comedy-drama La règle du jeu / The Rules of the Game, considered by...
- 9/25/2011
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Jean Gabin, Simone Simon, La Bête Humaine Jean Gabin on TCM: Grand Illusion, Pepe Le Moko, Touchez Pas Au Grisbi Schedule (Et) and synopses from the TCM website: 6:00 Am Gueule D'Amour (1937) A retired cavalry officer discovers the woman who won his heart was in love with the uniform. Dir: Jean Grémillon. Cast: Jean Gabin, Mireille Balin. Bw-88 mins. 8:00 Am Remorques (1941) A married tugboat captain falls for a woman he rescues from a sinking ship. Dir: Jean Grémillon. Cast: Jean Gabin, Alain Cuny, Bw-83 mins. 9:30 Am Le Jour Se Leve (1939) A young factory worker loses the woman he loves to a vicious schemer. Dir: Marcel Carne. Cast: Jean Gabin, Jacqueline Laurent, Arletty. Bw-90 mins. 11:00 Am L'air De Paris (1954) An over-the-hill boxer stakes his fortune on training a young railroad-worker. Dir: Marcel Carne. Cast: Arletty, Jean Gabin, Roland Lesaffre. Bw-100 mins. 1:00 Pm Leur Derniere Nuit (1953) A schoolteacher...
- 8/19/2011
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Among the most fruitful collaborations between director and screenwriter in the history of cinema is the one between Marcel Carne and Jacques Prevert. Prevert’s supremely literate approach to screenwriting was summarized by critic John Simon in this way: let the camera do what it will but the literature will remain. The finest of the films in which the two collaborated may have been The Children of Paradise (1945) – which was reviewed in this column – but Le Jour Se Leve (1939) or Daybreak comes a close second. Between them, Carne and Prevert were responsible for much of the poetic realism in the French cinema of the period – films largely about the working class but giving their working-class heroes a rounded presence generally lacking in later European cinema, notably from Italy. The actor Jean Gabin contributed strongly to many of these films through his presence and the highpoint of his working-class performances is...
- 7/15/2011
- by MK Raghvendra
- DearCinema.com
From a masterpiece of film noir to classic Gene Kelly musical An American in Paris, French film critic Agnès Poirier chooses her favourite sets in the city
As featured in our Paris city guide
Les Enfants du Paradis, Marcel Carné, 1943-45
Penned by poet Jacques Prévert and featuring the enigmatic Arletty, dashing Pierre Brasseur and melancholic Jean-Louis Barrault, Les Enfants du Paradis takes place in Paris in the 1840s and tells the story of the contrarian love of Garance and Baptiste. One key scene takes place in the boulevard du Temple, known at the time as boulevard du Crime. "You smiled at me! Don't deny it, you smiled at me. Ah, life's beautiful and so are you. And now, I shall never leave your side. Where are we going? What! We've only been together for two minutes and already you want to leave me. When will I see you again?...
As featured in our Paris city guide
Les Enfants du Paradis, Marcel Carné, 1943-45
Penned by poet Jacques Prévert and featuring the enigmatic Arletty, dashing Pierre Brasseur and melancholic Jean-Louis Barrault, Les Enfants du Paradis takes place in Paris in the 1840s and tells the story of the contrarian love of Garance and Baptiste. One key scene takes place in the boulevard du Temple, known at the time as boulevard du Crime. "You smiled at me! Don't deny it, you smiled at me. Ah, life's beautiful and so are you. And now, I shall never leave your side. Where are we going? What! We've only been together for two minutes and already you want to leave me. When will I see you again?...
- 6/3/2011
- by Agnès Poirier
- The Guardian - Film News
It may not be appropriate to deal with a film widely regarded as the greatest film ever made in this column, which is dedicated to less than famous films, but Marcel Carne’s Les Enfants Du Paradis (1945) is not as well known in India where that other contender for the ‘greatest film’ – Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane (1941) – still rules, except perhaps among Francophiles. Les Enfants Du Paradis is set among actors and performers but it is different from other films generally of the category. If a comparison is to be made, a film like Joseph Manciewicz’s All About Eve (1950) deals with Broadway stars and their doings but it draws a clear dividing line between ‘world’ and ‘stage’. The stage is merely the space in which their relationships and rivalries manifest themselves and not important in itself. Carne’s film is different in as much as it is a paean to...
- 5/26/2011
- by MK Raghvendra
- DearCinema.com
Now, in the final lap of the Cannes Film Festival, is the time when we critics begin comparing notes and conjecturing meaninglessly on possible prize winners. (Analyze this: What will jury president Robert De Niro like? And have Lars von Trier’s thoughtless comments, reported at face value by disingenuous journalists with no time for context, ruined the chances for von Trier’s great movie Melancholia?) Meanwhile, as we shmooze and quantify, here’s a quiet headline: There’s not a critic I know, including me, who doesn’t put Le Havre, by the sometimes imitated but essentially inimitable Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki,...
- 5/19/2011
- by Lisa Schwarzbaum
- EW - Inside Movies
Well we all knew this would happen. Back in February, when Criterion announced their epic digital streaming partnership with Hulu, they also quietly revealed that their streaming options on Netflix would be coming to an end over the course of the next year. While I haven’t been paying close attention to the Criterion Collection films that have been expiring since that announcement was made, I thought it would be helpful to all of you loyal Netflix subscribers to know that in about twelve days, 26 titles will be expiring on the 26th of May, 2011.
I’ve gone and linked to all of the titles below, so you can click on the cover art or the text, and be taken to their corresponding Netflix pages. While this isn’t everything that Criterion has to offer on Netflix, it is a nice chunk of really important films. If you don’t currently have a Netflix subscription,...
I’ve gone and linked to all of the titles below, so you can click on the cover art or the text, and be taken to their corresponding Netflix pages. While this isn’t everything that Criterion has to offer on Netflix, it is a nice chunk of really important films. If you don’t currently have a Netflix subscription,...
- 5/15/2011
- by Ryan Gallagher
- CriterionCast
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