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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?...

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.

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...