It is perhaps unfortunate for any of the films that Marcel Carnes Les Enfants du Paradis is revived, since it personifies in it’s admittedly theatrical form (but extraordinarily wide-ranging content) almost everything the cinema seems to have lost over the last quarter of a century or so.
Carne and Jacques Prevert’s film isn’t cinematic in the way even the second-rate often manages to be nowadays. But it’s ability to make it’s characters live through other means, and to represent so much more than the sum of their parts. Still has the undeniable air of classic evocation not only of an era but the emotional complexitites of its Characters.
Set on the theatrical boulevards of the 19th century Paris of Louis Philippe (the children of paradise are those who inhabit the cheaper balconies of the theatres), the filmis at once intimate and epic. It is almost accurate to callit the French Gone With The Wind, equipped with wonderful performances and an eye for detail superbly embellished by Alexander Trauner’s art direction.