Sara Batkie
Some films are impossible to separate from their provenance. That’s especially true for those made during wartime. 1943’s The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp is now considered a classic of “Englishness,” but at the time Churchill himself tried to get the production shut down, fearing what a satire of British soldiers might do for morale. The Best Years of Our Lives, released one year after WWII ended, won non-actor and disabled veteran Harold Russell an Academy Award for his performance. Then there’s 1945’s Children of Paradise, directed by Marcel Carné. Produced while France was under Nazi occupation with both resistance fighters and regime collaborators among the cast and crew, it’s the rare romantic drama whose backstory might be even juicier than what made it on screen.
Nowadays Children of Paradise enjoys a sterling reputation as one of France’s cinematic masterpieces – François Truffaut once proclaimed that he’d “give up all my films” to have directed it. Written by famed poet Jacques Prévert, it boasts the sort of formidable three hour-plus runtime typically associated with period epics. So it might come as a bit of a surprise to a first-time viewer that it’s a work dedicated to Paris’s lowlifes and schemers rather than people making history. The first half, titled “The Boulevard of Crimes,” is set mostly in the hectic swirl surrounding the Funambules Theater in the 1830s. Here the dramas of the stage are inseparable from life, the actors constantly overplaying to the lower-class audience in the balcony section known as “the Gods.”
It’s the kind of milieu that attracts a certain sort of person, and Prévert’s script takes its time introducing us to them. There’s Frédérick Lemaître (Pierre Brasseur), an aspiring actor of Shakespearean proportions, and the dandyish thief Pierre Lacenaire (Marcel Herrand). There’s the aristocratic Édouard de Montray (Louis Salou), who’s not above offering his protection for a price. And there’s the gifted mime Baptiste Deburau (Jean-Louis Barrault); his face is often shrouded in white makeup but the sadness in his eyes tells its own story. All four men are based on real French personalities of the era; they’re also all in love with the enigmatic courtesan Garance (Arletty), whose steadfast denial of the workings of her heart and insistence on her own freedom will lead to tragic ends.
Carné’s presentation of this tale is artificial from the start: the action kicks off after a painted curtain rises on a real street scene, albeit one shot on a cannily constructed set. He often lets onstage performances play out in full, giving us the same God’s-eye view as the audience then cutting to what the actors see at dramatically opportune moments, such as when the besotted Baptiste catches sight of Garance and Frédérick canoodling backstage. It’s this deliberate, even self-conscious, marrying of the theatrical with the corporal – the belief that all the world’s a stage and all of us players – that surely appealed to French viewers at the time eager for escape, and imbues Children of Paradise with an earthy, immortal quality that continues to enchant in the modern age.
Inevitably that porous barrier between realms became part of the actual making of the film. The realities of German occupation were constantly encroaching on Carné and his crew, many of whom, including composer Joseph Kosma and set designer Alexandre Trauner, were Jewish and made their contributions secretly. Builders were often short on supplies and film stock was rationed. Teeming exterior shots required upwards of 1,800 extras, some of whom were starving. Others were members of the Resistance using their roles as cover, and were subsequently forced to work with Vichy sympathizers imposed on Carné by the authorities. Production was delayed twice – once because the Nazis demanded the resignation of producer André Paulvé and again when the Allies invaded Normandy in 1944. After France’s liberation, actor Robert Le Vigan was sentenced to death for collaboration and fled the country, requiring all of his scenes to be reshot with Pierre Renoir.
And then there’s Arletty. Initially known for her music hall and cabaret performances, she made her screen debut in 1930 and was famous for a bon vivant lifestyle not unlike the character she plays in Children of Paradise. But it was her dalliance with a Luftwaffe officer that would make her infamous and lead to her arrest in 1945. “My heart is French but my ass is international,” she allegedly said of the affair that eventually landed her an eighteen-month prison sentence for treason (she served two). It’s worth noting that the way the public reportedly salivated for her punishment has resonance with Garance’s own treatment by the men in her life. Regardless, her career never entirely recovered.
Despite, or perhaps because of, all this drama, Children of Paradise was a significant hit, playing at the Madeleine Theatre in Paris for 54 weeks. Prévert went on to earn an Oscar nomination for his screenplay. According to Roger Ebert’s Great Movies piece, it used to play every New Years Day at the Clark Theater in Chicago. And while there’s a certain creakiness to its foggy atmospherics and schematic plotting, it’s also hard not to get swept up in its romantic conviction that art can offer a respite in dark times, not just as a tool of resistance for its makers but as a communal space for its audience to dream together. It’s the place where we’re not only among the stars but the heavens too.
“Children of Paradise” is streaming on the Criterion Channel.
