Les Enfants du Paradis (1945)

This reflection, largely focusing on the second of half of the film and its famous ending, was written after watching the film during the summer between my junior and senior years of college. My overall rating for the film was 4 stars out of a possible 4. It was the 248th feature-length film to receive my highest rating distinction.

I was troubled by the third quarter of this film. The first part of the second part, if you will. It does not flow like the rest of the film. The first half is magical, and the conclusion to the second half, albeit quite unsatisfying, is magnificent. But the tricky section in question, which would be the rising action in any other story, is really a second exposition. It is the end of the plot's time lapse from where the first part ended and this second part begins. The audience is plucked from one moment and sat in front of another with no montage to signify the extensive passing of time. All that exists to show you the passage of time are the context clues of where Garance's (Arletty) lovers are now.

And this is why I ultimately believe that it does not harm the film. It shows the power that Garance has had on Baptiste (Jean-Louis Barrault), Frédérick (Pierre Brasseur), Pierre-François (Marcel Herrand), and Édouard (Louis Salou). Pierre-François was the only one to know her when the film began, and her departure had begun his spiral downwards into squalor. Baptiste and Frédérick both became acquainted in the beginning stages of the film with her, but her departure only led to them pressing on and achieving fame and fortune that they may not have thought possible before. But Édouard is a different tale. He and Garance have been together the whole time, and he has remained exactly as he was because she has never left his side. When we reach the conclusion, all four men are not only in love with her, but within several feet of each other for the first and only time during the film. Through this troublesome start to the second act, you can see the number that she has done on them and their bliss at her being in their lives again, rather than anger as one would expect after years apart.

What I want to talk about now and lastly is the conclusion. Not simply to the film, but to each character’s storyline. We first meet Garance in a packed street surrounded by a few admirers and many people who are more interested in their own lives and unaware of her presence, and she leaves under the same circumstances. Édouard is an aristocrat when we meet him and an aristocrat when the camera pans over him for the last time. Pierre-François is a criminal at the beginning but hiding under a “respectable” profession and appearance. At the end, Pierre-François is perhaps even more of a criminal, but he has lost the guise of a “respectable” profession and still kept the appearance. Frédérick is a swindler, yes, but he is more than that: he is an actor who never breaks. He is acting when he tries to get in through the stage door, and he is acting when he bids farewell to audience members now at a post-performance gala, still in full makeup and costume. And Baptiste, too, is the same at the beginning and the end. He has the undying love of Nathalie (María Casares), but is captivated by Garance. At the beginning, he is a mime, he proclaims a brief sentence or two, and goes on performing. At the end, he is a mime, having called out to Garance and performed his way through the crowded streets of the masses celebrating Carnival. His words are lost, but in a change, his heart is not there to be given, for it has been found and kept.