Children
of Paradise (French: Les Enfants du Paradis, [lez‿ɑ̃fɑ̃ dy paʁadi]) is a two-part French romantic
drama film by Marcel Carné, produced under war conditions in 1943, 1944, and early
1945. Set in the theatrical world of 1830s Paris, it tells the story of a
courtesan and four men—a mime,
an actor, a criminal and an aristocrat—who love her in entirely different ways.
It has
received universal critical acclaim. "I would give up all my films to have
directed Les Enfants du Paradis", said nouvelle vague director François
Truffaut. In Truman Capote's The Duke in His Domain (1957), actor Marlon Brando
called it "maybe the best movie ever made". Its original American
trailer positioned it as the French answer to Gone With the Wind (1939), an
opinion shared by critic David Shipman. A 1995 poll of 600 French critics and
industry professionals voted it the best French film ever made.
Title
As noted
by one critic, "in French, 'paradis' is also the colloquial name for the
gallery or second balcony in a theatre, where common people sat and viewed a
play, responding to it honestly and boisterously. The actors played to these
gallery gods, hoping to win their favour, the actor himself thus being elevated
to an Olympian status." The film contains many shots of the audience
hanging over the edge of these balconies (which are similarly known as
"the gods" in the British theatre), and screenwriter Jacques Prévert
stated that the title "refers to the actors ... and the audiences too, the
good-natured, working-class audience."
Story
Précis
Children
of Paradise is set in the theatrical world of Paris during the July Monarchy
(1830–1848), centered on the area around the Funambules theatre, situated on
the Boulevard du Temple – pejoratively referred to as the "Boulevard du
Crime". The story revolves around a beautiful and charismatic courtesan,
Garance (Arletty). Four men – the mime Baptiste Deburau (Jean-Louis Barrault),
the actor Frédérick Lemaître (Pierre Brasseur), the thief Pierre François
Lacenaire (Marcel Herrand), and the aristocrat Édouard de Montray (Louis Salou)
– are in love with Garance, and their intrigues drive the story forward.
Garance is briefly intrigued/involved with them all, but leaves them when they
attempt to force her to love on their terms, rather than her own. The mime
Baptiste is the one who suffers the most in pursuit of the unattainable
Garance.
Sources
The four
men courting Garance are all based on real French personalities of the 1820s
and 1830s. Baptiste Deburau was a famous mime and Frédérick Lemaître was an
acclaimed actor on the "Boulevard of Crime" depicted in the film.
Pierre Lacenaire was an infamous French criminal, and the character of the
Comte Édouard de Montray was inspired by the Duc de Morny.
The idea
for making a movie based on these characters came from a chance meeting between
Carné and Jean-Louis Barrault, in Nice, during which Barrault pitched the idea
of making a movie based on Deburau and Lemaître. Carné, who at the time was
hesitant about which movie to direct next, proposed this idea to his friend
Jacques Prévert. Prévert was initially reluctant to write a movie about a mime,
"Jacques hated pantomime" his brother once said,[10] but Barrault
assured Prévert, that he and his teacher Étienne Decroux, who plays Baptiste's
father in the film, would take responsibility for developing the mime
sequences. According to Trauner, Prévert then saw an opportunity to include the
character of Lacenaire, the "dandy du crime", who fascinated him. The
Germans were then occupying the whole of France, and Prévert is rumoured to
have said "They will not let me do a movie about Lacenaire, but I can put
Lacenaire in a film about Deburau". The script incorporates quotations
from Lacenaire's autobiography.
Plot
summary
Children
of Paradise is divided into two parts, Boulevard du Crime ("Boulevard of
Crime") and L'Homme Blanc ("The Man in White"). The first begins
around 1827, the second about seven years later. The action takes place mainly
in the neighbourhood of the Boulevard du Temple in Paris, nicknamed
"Boulevard of Crime" because of all the melodramas and bloody
scenarios offered to the largely plebeian public each evening. There are two
principal theatres: the Théâtre des Funambules ("Theatre of Tightrope
Walkers") specializes in pantomime, since the authorities do not allow it
to use spoken dialogue, which is reserved for the "official" venue,
the Grand Theatre.
Part I:
Boulevard of Crime
A young
actor and womaniser, Frédérick Lemaître, dreams of becoming a star. He meets
and flirts with Garance, a beautiful woman who earns her living by modestly
exhibiting her physical charms in a carnival show. Garance staves off
Frédérick's advances and goes to visit one of her acquaintances,
Pierre-François Lacenaire, a rebel in revolt against society. Lacenaire is a
proud, dangerous individual who works as a scrivener to cover his organized
criminal enterprises. Shortly thereafter, Garance is accused of stealing a
man's gold watch while she is watching a pantomime featuring Baptiste Deburau
and a barker (Baptiste's father) in front of the Funambules Theatre. Lacenaire
is in fact the guilty party. Baptiste, dressed up as the stock character
Pierrot, saves her from the police by silently acting out the theft, which he
has just witnessed. He reveals a great talent, a veritable vocation for
pantomime, but falls immediately and irremediably in love with Garance, saving
a flower she thanked him with. In the background, there is a price list for
various seats, including Paradise, which is visible over the mime's shoulder.
Baptiste's
father is one of the stars at the Funambules. The daughter of the theatre
director, Nathalie, who is a mime also, is deeply in love with Baptiste. Before
the performance that evening, a used-clothes peddler named Jéricho reads in her
palm that she will marry the man she loves, as he knew her father was worried
about her mood affecting her performances. When a fight breaks out that evening
between two rival clans of actors, Baptiste and Frédérick manage to calm the
crowd down by improvising a mime act, thus saving the day's receipts. The most
enthusiastic of the spectators are those seated in "paradise"
(paradis), a term denoting in French theatrical language the top floor of the
balcony, where the cheapest seats are located.
Later
that night, Baptiste catches sight of Garance with Lacenaire and his
accomplices in a seedy restaurant/dancehall, "Le Rouge Gorge" (a pun:
this means "The Robin" or "The Red Breast", but literally
translates as "The Red Throat", a reference to the previous owner's
throat having been slit). When he invites Garance to dance, he is thrown out of
the restaurant by Avril, one of Lacenaire's thugs. He turns the situation
around and leaves with Garance, for whom he finds a room at the same boarding
house where he and Frédérick live. After declaring his love, Baptiste flees
Garance's room when she says she doesn't feel the same way, despite her clear
invitation to stay. When Frédérick hears Garance singing in her room, which is
next to his, he quickly joins her.
Baptiste
becomes the star of the Funambules; fuelled by his passion, he writes several
very popular pantomimes, performing with Garance and Frédérick, who are now
lovers. Baptiste is tormented by their affair, while Nathalie, who is convinced
that she and Baptiste are "made for each other", suffers from his
lack of love for her.
Garance
is visited in her dressing room by the Count Édouard de Montray, a wealthy and
cynical dandy who offers her his fortune if she will agree to be his mistress.
Garance is repelled by him and mockingly rejects his proposition. The Count
nonetheless offers her his protection if the need were to arise. She is later
unjustly suspected of complicity in an abortive robbery and murder attempt by
Lacenaire and Avril. To avoid arrest she is forced to appeal to Count Édouard
for protection. The first part of the film comes to an end with this
development.
Part II:
The Man in White
Several
years later, Frédérick is the star of the Grand Theatre. A man about town and a
spendthrift, he is burdened with debts – which don't prevent him from
devastating the mediocre play in which he currently has the main role by
exposing it to ridicule in rehearsal and then playing it for laughs, rather
than straight melodrama, on opening night. Despite achieving a smashing
success, the play's three fussy authors are outraged and challenge him to a
duel. He accepts and when he returns to his dressing room, Frédérick is
confronted by Lacenaire, who apparently intends to rob and kill him. However,
the criminal is an amateur playwright and strikes up a friendship with the
actor instead. He and Avril serve as Frédérick's seconds the next morning, when
the actor arrives at the duel dead drunk.
Baptiste
is enjoying even greater success as a mime at the Funambules. When Frédérick
goes to a performance the day after surviving the duel, he is surprised to find
himself in the same box as Garance. His old flame has returned to Paris after
having travelled throughout the world with the Count de Montray, who has kept
her these several years. She has been attending the Funambules every night
incognito to watch Baptiste perform. She knows she has always been genuinely in
love with him. Frédérick suddenly finds himself jealous for the first time in
his life. While the feeling is highly unpleasant, he remarks that his jealousy
will help him as an actor. He will finally be able to play the role of Othello,
having now experienced the emotions which motivate the character. Garance asks
Frédérick to tell Baptiste of her presence, but Nathalie, now Baptiste's wife,
is first informed by the spiteful rag-man Jéricho. She sends their small son to
Garance's box to mortify her with their family's happiness. By the time
Frédérick alerts Baptiste and he rushes to find her, the box is empty.
When
Garance returns to the Count's luxurious mansion, she finds Lacenaire waiting
for her. Lacenaire satisfies himself that Garance has no love for him and, on
his way out, encounters the Count, who is irritated to see such an individual
in his home. Lacenaire reacts to the Count's challenge with threats, revealing
the knife at his belt. Later, Garance declares to the Count that she will never
love him since she is already in love with another man, but declares she will
continue to try to please him, and offers to spread the word on the streets
that she is "mad" about him, if he would like.
Frédérick
has finally achieved his dream of playing the role of Othello. The Count, who
insists on attending the performance with Garance, is convinced that the actor
is the man she loves. At a break in the play, the Count coolly mocks Frédérick,
trying to provoke him into a duel. Elsewhere Baptiste, who is also in the
audience, encounters Garance at last. When Lacenaire takes Frédérick's side in
the verbal jousting, the Count attempts to humiliate him as well. Lacenaire
takes revenge by calling him a cuckold and, dramatically pulling back a
curtain, reveals Garance in Baptiste's embrace on the balcony. The two lovers
slip away to spend the night together in Garance's former room at the Great
Post House.
The next
morning, at a hammam, Lacenaire assassinates the Count. He then calmly sits to
wait for the police and meet his "destiny", which is to die on the
scaffold. At the rooming house, Nathalie walks in on Baptiste and Garance.
Garance is in a hurry to exit in order to prevent the duel between Frédérick
and the Count, who she is unaware has been murdered, but Nathalie blocks her
way, insisting that leaving is easy, while to stay and share someone's everyday
life, as she has for the past six years with Baptiste, is much more difficult.
Garance responds that she has lived with Baptiste for six years as well, that
she felt him every day and night even though she was with another. Nathalie
dismisses Garance's experience as unimportant and moves past her to Baptiste,
allowing Garance to leave. Nathalie pleads with Baptiste for reassurance as he
attempts to follow Garance. Baptiste pushes past her and is soon lost in the
frantic Carnival crowd amid a sea of bobbing masks and unheeding, white
Pierrots. The film ends as a desperate Baptiste is swept away with the crowd
and Garance leaves in her carriage, her face impassive.
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