Watch Children of Paradise For Free

A lot of fun.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Not living in a major city,the opportunities to watch classic films on the big screen become limited,with it being possible for a few years to go by without one getting shown. Aware of the "Cinema Time Machine" screenings held at The Electric Cinema in Birmingham, (the oldest cinema in the UK) I have sadly missed out on all the showings, due to not wanting to miss the last train home. A fan of auteur Marcel Carne,I was taken aback when looking at the Electric's listings and finding that they were screening Carne's epic (which I've never seen before) at a good time. This led to me finally meeting the children of paradise.View on the film:Raising the curtain on the 18th century, auteur director Marcel Carné takes his graceful stylisation of Film Noir's Port of Shadows and Le Jour se Leve to a vast costume Drama canvas. Sending every man to the siren-call like beauty of Claire Reine, Carné & cinematographer Roger Hubert make her stand out like a mirage in each frame,with Carné continuing to expand on his distinctive tracking shots,that run across the bustling streets of Paris, (the largest sets,and most expensive French film ever at the time)and find Reine in the middle of the crowd. Stepping out onto the stage, Carné reveals a surprisingly humorous side,where the mines at the Funambules theatre are played with a delicate touch highlighting the quirks in Baptiste's on-stage performances.Unveiled across the screen like an epic novel, the screenplay by regular Carné collaborator Jacques Prévert makes the 3 hour run time feel as light as a feather,by Prévert wisely focusing on the personal,rather than spectacle. Introducing Reine to four major lovers in her life, Prévert uses the figures to give the film four distinctive moods,as Baptiste's love twists from flirting Comedy to sweeping romance, Frédérick's jealousy spirals the title with a vengeful edge, Lacenaire's thieving glazing the brittle desire they each have for her and Count de Montray grips Reine with an unrelenting darkness. Made,but not landing until the Occupation was finally over, Prévert's poetic dialogue brilliantly goes behind the scenes of the stage,and radically connects the romantic tale with the allegorical,in each of the men having a possessive love,which surrounds Reine, until she drops each of them and gains (temporarily) liberty.Shining as the cast member whose become the most entwined in Prévert and Carné's legacy, Arletty gives a mesmerising performance as Reine,whose given a sophistication Arletty that gives her an unshakeable allure. Finding Reine held back from looking at the stage for a number of years, Arletty elegantly conveys the heaviness from the passage of time,with Reine's reunions of former lovers losing the romantic innocence they each shared. Duelling for Reine's affections with Marcel Herrand's devilish charms as Lacenaire,the stern glance Louis Salou injects Montray,and the flamboyance Pierre Brasseur dresses Lemaitre in, Jean-Louis Barrault gives a magnetic performance as Baptiste,whose mime stage shows Barrault plays with incredible ease,and expressively casts desire across Baptiste face,from seeing Reine in the crowd of the children of paradise.

That "Les enfants du paradis" (1945) exists at all is remarkable for two reasons, basically a consequence of one thing, the war. Firstly, that it exists as a film that we can still watch and enjoy, and that it was made in the first place, let alone survive, is miraculous. But secondly, and just as importantly, it's remarkable that it exists as it is, vivacious, energetic, fun, interested in the art of filmmaking. In this respect it reminds me of Vigo, who made "L'Atalante" (1934) knowing he'd die sooner rather than later. The tragedy is tragic, the comedy is comic – everything works and it's impossible to think how cohesive the film is, considering it was made over several years. In other words, how amazing to have a film made in the bleakest of circumstances that still radiates with so much life. After the curtain literally opens the viewer is treated to three hours of the most amazing drama, comedy and visual filmmaking, as well as clever storytelling. We are thrown in the middle of a street, where everyone is giving a performance: Lemaître flirts, Lacaneire gives a monologue (underlined by Garance, who says listening to him is like watching a play), and Baptiste, while acting, witnesses a crime and gives a performance of it in mime. The blind man isn't really blind but merely acting, and later on the love Baptiste and Lemaître have for Garance becomes a play not only once but twice, the latter instance written by some rather ordinary bloke called William-something.It's ironic that I have previously tried to watch the film at least twice, being unable to continue beyond the first twenty minutes (the reasons for this might not be numerous but too domestic to bother you with). But having now watched the film in its entirety, its flow and rhythm makes the time fly. In this respect it's very much like other "longer" epics ("Shichinin no samurai", "Lawrence of Arabia") that are somehow condensed into a speck of time, or should we say timelessness. I can't wait to see it again, which leads to the one teeny-weeny problem we fans have, because —Shamefully the film has been treated with a terrible high definition transfer of the film, and luckily this has been well-documented. Pathé apparently created a 4K scan of the original nitrate negative in 2011 (the work performed at L'Imagine Ritrovata in Bologna, Italy) and then reconstructed and restored in Paris by Eclair Laboratories. But what we have on the Blu-ray is far from wonderful, and only makes one wonder what the 4K scan might have looked like before the terrible digital noise reduction that's only matched by other similar disasters done in DNR to great films ("Le samouraï" and "Madame De..." come to mind, the former also a Pathé resto). The Criterion Collection disk in Region A suffers from the exact same problems as the Second Sight in Region B. I hope we won't have to wait for a long time to get an edition of this film that it greatly deserves.

From the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die this was a distinctive title for a French film, and while watching it I remembered the most memorable scene shown in the documentary The Story of Film: an Odyssey, so there was good reason to watch it. Basically actress and woman-about-town Claire Reine, who calls herself Garance (Arletty) has numerous men falling at her feet and in love with her, including the significant ill-fated relationship with theatre mime Jean-Baptiste Debureau (Jean-Louis Barrault), and also pretentious actor Frédérick Lemaîtr (Pierre Brasseur), conniving thief Pierre François Lacenaire (Marcel Herrand) and Count Eduard of Montray (Louis Salou). Baptiste has his own dilemma as well, as actress Nathalie (María Casarès) is in love with him, it was when Garance was accused of stealing a watch that she and he met, and Count Eduard protects her when she may have been arrested for the crime of Lacenaire. Years of separation for them, the real loving couple end up in relationships with the people they do not truly love, Baptiste with Nathalie who have a baby son together and goes on to become famous for his mime acting, and Garance with the Count and wants to find her true lover again. The couple do manage to spend a night together, even after Nathalie's attempt to sabotage their meeting by sending her child to foil it, while Count Eduard is discovered murdered, he was killed by Lacenaire. In the end Baptiste is separated from his love again after disappearing in the crowd who are running to escape an attack, and Garrance is forced to leave town in a carriage, completely oblivious to the fact that the Count is dead. Also starring Pierre Renoir as Jéricho the old clothes, Etienne Decroux as Anselme Debureau and Fabien Loris as Avril – Lacenaire's assistant. The acting, particularly from Arletty as the woman caught in a web of relationships and Barrault as the actor who is brilliantly expressive and funny with his silent act, I will confess that it was hard to follow all of what was going on, but that memorable scene of the comedy mime actor describing in silence the mistaken theft of the watch is fantastic, and there are other good moments, overall it is elegant classic period drama. It was nominated the Oscar for Best Writing, Original Screenplay. Very good!

When a film has a near-mythical reputation, one often fears it will not live up to its reputation. Happily, this is not the case with Les Enfants du Paradis. It most certainly lives up to its reputation as one of the greatest films ever made.Most people are aware of the stories surrounding the production of this film during the Occupation and it is extraordinary that such a work of art was completed under such trying conditions.The main theme of the film is that truly satisfying love remains just out of reach. The main characters are involved in a series of liaisons that explore their differing romantic needs. Ultimately, none of them find fulfillment.The epic scale of the film and the colourful array of characters would be worthy of Victor Hugo or Charles Dickens. The depth of the characterisation was unprecedented at the time and would saw cinematic art raised to a whole new level.The character of Baptiste is central to the story; he is a sad clown both on and off the stage as his hesitation and shyness lead to him losing his one true love. His unhappy love life ironically contrasts with his growing fame as a genius of mime. The nearest equivalent to Baptiste's plight is perhaps that of the gatekeeper's son, John Chivery, in Dicken's masterpiece, Little Dorrit.Garance is selfish in her rejection of Baptiste yet finds some small degree of redemption on seeing his child and feeling sympathy for it.The film contains many plays within plays and virtually every style of performance art is utilised, from pantomime to dance, from Shakespearian tragedy to street theatre. (As an aside, the film also covers how mime evolved from a crude form of mass entertainment to the sophisticated French cultural art it is today. Indeed, the mime performances presented in the film are sublime.) The notion of plays within plays is also reinforced by the device of the curtains raising and falling on each act of the film itself. We are aware that we are watching actors playing actors, yet we are still drawn into their world and the truths they present to us.A delightful moment in the film is when the Shakespearian actor decides he prefers realistic stories, if only two acts long, that contain the truth, perhaps an ironic reference to the two-part Les Enfants du Paradis itself which maybe the scriptwriters were realising conveyed an abundance of truth.Despite its long running time, the film maintains a good pace and never slackens into tedium. The various threads are drawn together in towards the inevitable but deeply satisfying conclusion. None of the characters will ever find happiness for true romantic love is unattainable, the stuff of plays and fictions only. Yet, their striving for it is what gives them impetus. A beautifully ironic moment is when Baptiste, the great clown, is prevented from catching up with Garance when she leaves for the last time, by a mocking array of tacky imitation carnival clowns. His own personality is mirrored back at him and it is this that prevents him ever reaching his one true love.The tone of the film mixes the serious and comic superbly as, again, a nineteenth century literary master such as Dickens or Hugo would have done as the lives of the impoverished, cunning street performers is turned into high art and film itself reaches the same height as great literature.The cinematography is subtly and neatly summarises all of the lessens learned in the half-century since the birth of the art form.To summarise, this truly is one of the greatest films ever made, both for its execution, use of literary and cinematic techniques and the depth of its themes. Essential viewing.