Les Enfants du Paradis (Restored) Blu-ray

A richly romantic masterpiece from the Golden Age of French Cinema that was voted the best French film of all time in 1995. Nothing has altered its status since, says David Parkinson.

Filmed during the Nazi Occupation and released shortly after the Liberation, this witty, thrilling and compelling evocation of 1830s Paris was an act of resistance that came to embody the spirit of France. Real-life fugitives, collaborators and resistance fighters worked alongside each other on the sets in Nice and Paris and their actor counterparts could be found in the bustle of a theatrical quarter where illusion was often as treacherous as it was enchanting.

The film's majesty is enhanced in this major new first screened at the Cannes Film Festival; its monochrome imagery shimmers with a first-seen freshness, and Joseph Kosma's unforgettable score throbs with ardour.

Jacques Prévert's scenario is epically melodramatic, inspired as much by the crimes of thief Pierre-François Lacenaire as the artistry of actor Frédérick Lemaître and mime Baptiste Deburau (Jean-Louis Barrault) - three men enamoured of carnival performer Garance (Arletty), who is protected by the arrogant aristocratic dandy De Montray. However, such is the finesse of Marcel Carné's direction and the authenticity of Alexandre Trauner's studio recreation of the teeming Boulevard du Temple that this feels like a slice of poetic reality.

The film was named after the common people who occupied the upper galleries of French theatres and Prévert and Carné packed the scenario with emotive incidents that would register with audiences keen to see their rowdy, subversive selves on the screen again after five years of witnessing Continental Films's Vichy-approved caricatures. Yet everyone watching would have been aware that Pierre Renoir took the role of Jericho the snitch after quisling Robert Le Vigan had fled to Germany and that Arletty could not attend the premiere as her romance with a Luftwaffe officer had brought about her disgrace.

Despite the spectacle, the picture also has an intimacy that is typified by Barrault's heart-breaking Pierrot act, which reinforces the key notion that life and art are inextricably linked.

Impeccable in every detail, this was voted the best French film of all time during the 1995 centenary of cinema and nothing has altered its status since.

David Parkinson on 23rd March 2012
Author of 191 reviews