The best-loved French film ever made? Not quite, but Marcel Carne’s evergreen masterpiece about love and art on the Boulevard du Crime is the most complete expression of French classical cinema and its very production, in a time of great penury, remains something of a miracle. All the elements that made inter-war French films great are gathered in this one work: a supremely witty script by Jacques Prevert, epic sets by Alexandre Trauner and a glorious cast headed by Jean-Louis Barrault, Pierre Brasseur and Arletty