All discussions of Marcel Carne’s Children of Paradise begin with the miracle of its making. Named at Cannes as the greatest French film of all time, costing more than any French film before it, Les Enfants du Paradis was shot in Paris and Nice during the Nazi occupation and released in 1945. Its sets sometimes had to be moved between the two cities. Its designer and composer, Jews sought by the Nazis, worked from hiding. Carne was forced to hire pro-Nazi collaborators as extras; they did not suspect they were working next to resistance fighters. The Nazis banned all films over about 90 minutes in length, so Carne simply made two films, confident he could show them together after the war was over. The film opened in Paris right after the liberation, and ran for 54 weeks. It is said to play somewhere in Paris every day.
That this film, wicked, worldly, flamboyant, set in Paris in 1828, could have been imagined under those circumstances is astonishing. That the production, with all of its costumes, carriages, theaters, mansions, crowded streets and rude rooming houses, could have been mounted at that time seems logistically impossible (It is said, wrote Pauline Kael, that the starving extras made away with some of the banquets before they could be photographed). Carne was the leading French director of the decade 1935-1945, but to make this ambitious costume film during wartime required more than clout; it required reckless courage.
– Roger Ebert
The following is the second part from a 1990 audio interview that originally appeared on the Criterion Collection’s laserdisc edition of Children of Paradise. It was conducted by Brian Stonehill, who was a communications and media studies professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California, and the author of the 1998 book The Self-Conscious Novel: Artifice in Fiction from Joyce to Pynchon. Translation by Bona Flecchia and Alexandre Mabilon.
BS: Forty-five years after its original release, Children of Paradise is still playing in Paris and New York. People say the film is timeless and tireless. Why do you think this is the case?
MC: I have no idea. I can’t pretend I know. When we made the film, we thought it was an important one. It was very long, expensive, with lots of sets and characters, so we knew it would stand out that year, if only because of the production values. We looked at the rushes; we were satisfied with them. But I didn’t like to talk about my films anymore, because I’d had so much fun with Drôle de drame, but when it was released, it received a violently negative critique. People didn’t laugh, while I had enjoyed making it so much.
BS: People, both critics and general audiences, often speak of a sense of richness in Children of Paradise, and of how the film communicates an intense, complex feeling, like life itself. Could you explain how you created that feeling?
MC: First of all, it has to do with the number of characters. It’s a pretty straightforward story. Three men are in love with the same woman in different ways . . . Maybe there are four of them. Anyway, there’s the mime, Frédérick Lemaître, and the count. The important ones are three, at least. Lacenaire loves her as well, in his own way. And she loves each one of them too. I mean . . . There’s a critic who tried to explain it, created a metaphor. He said this story is like a photo developer that would react differently to four different chemicals being dropped into different baths. It’s kind of like that, and that’s what makes for its richness and length. It’s not two men loving the same woman, or two women loving the same man. It’s a lot more complicated than that. The first one, the mime, is shy. The second one is a lady-killer who can’t love and who will discover true love. Lacenaire is the intelligent one who wants to impress her. He finds her very intelligent. She’s not very well educated, but she certainly is intelligent. The count wants to appear with a beautiful lady at his side. He begins to love her when he feels her slipping away. So this plot makes for a complex film. Especially when you consider all the supporting roles. When you have to choose forty, forty-two, fifty-three, or however many people are necessary, you say to yourself, “I can’t make any mistakes.” Because you’re like the conductor—and this is the same for the crew—who has to audition everyone in order to form his orchestra.
MC: Of course. When you’re shooting, you’re a bundle of nerves. I am not the same man. I mean, I’m less nervous now because I’m older, but when you think of the amount of pressure you’re under . . . It’s not that I’m proud or cocky, but beforehand, I never fully realize what my expectations of the crew are. When I shot Drôle de drame, all I had made was a little film that was a study in style, and I wasn’t afraid of asking [Louis] Jouvet, [Françoise] Rosay, Michel Simon, Barrault. It was a fantastic crew for a quasi-beginner. I asked them to work with me without thinking about it. Port of Shadows was the same. [Jean] Gabin is the one who wanted me to make it; he wanted to do a movie with me.
BS: What has happened to French cinema since?
MC: I wouldn’t know. When I’m on a television show abroad, somebody inevitably asks me, “Marcel Carné, you belonged to the golden age of French cinema . . .” and so on. It saddens me. And unfortunately, I can’t say they’re wrong. Thanks to the war, we had a certain advantage, since the cinema industry was in full swing. So we could more readily get money to make movies. Nowadays, it’s harder. You have to be a businessman.
BS: How do you feel, from where you’re standing, about the aversion of critics in the so-called New Wave to the cinéma de qualité and the studio system?
MC: It could quite simply be called ambition. To say, “Fine, here I go.” That’s what it is. What was serious was when critics followed suit. But then they became afraid of appearing old-fashioned by defending the cinéma de papa, as we call it. And they made fun of its French quality, which is there. They didn’t do anything—nothing important, anyway. They never made a Carnival in Flanders, a Grand Illusion, or a Children of Paradise, forgive my saying so. They made “intimate” films with some kind of elevator music—like Truffaut. I’m not criticizing Truffaut, but one day we inaugurated a movie theater in the suburbs where there were two theaters: a Truffaut Theater and a Carné Theater. And we went up on the stage together. Truffaut had dragged my name through the mud, mind you, but I was very honored to have my name together with Truffaut’s. I’m not sure he felt the same way. He said so many nasty things about me . . . Anyway, he had no comment, which was easy to do after ten years. He finished his speech by saying, “I’ve made twenty-three movies, and I’d give them all up to have done Children of Paradise.” What could I say after that? Nothing. He said it in front of three or four hundred people, but it was never written down . . . I am not upset with him anymore. At that time, if I was in a studio or whatever, and Mr. Godard came in, he said nothing to me, not even hello. It’s almost as if he turned his back on me. I mean, I didn’t like many of his movies, but I found some things interesting once in a while, like in Weekend and Pierrot le fou. Those movies were quite sassy. Well, sassy may be a bit slangy, so let’s say they were bold. When they said, “At least we can shoot on location, something the old filmmakers couldn’t do”—they shot on location, fine, but they owe that to the talents of the photochemists and engineers, not to their own. Negatives now are sensitive even to the light of small fixtures. Where we needed huge ones that weighed twenty to thirty pounds, they have little ones the size of lightbulbs. The same can be said about sound. When I started, we had a truck on the set with a whole system and three technicians, including a boom guy who made shadows on the walls of the set. If they didn’t have the photosensitivity of the new negative, if they didn’t have engineers, and if they had kept the cameras and projectors we used to have, they could have never shot their films on location. It wasn’t easy. I remember I wanted to shoot I forget which film at Paul-Louis Veller’s palace in the Marais. He said, “No way. You’re a good friend, and if you want to organize a dinner for the release, I’ll be glad to help you. But I’ll never let you put your equipment on my antique wooden floor. Even if you were my own son, I would not allow it.”
BS: In Children of Paradise, which character do you identify with the most, in terms of your own sensibility; which one do you admire?
MC: You can’t admire them. They’re all different. I admire Barrault’s sensibility, Brasseur’s ease of speech, and the breeding of the count. Never has an actor seemed so noble as [Louis] Salou. He had so much class . . . I can’t say. The one I feel most akin to is Barrault/Deburau. When all is said and done, I am a big sentimentalist, even if I don’t seem that way. In terms of my private and intimate life, I’m very vulnerable.
MC: No! I don’t think so. There are . . . let me think . . . other unhappy lovers. I don’t know. They did a biography on Molière. He was unlucky in love. What’s funny is that all great men had wives who cheated on them, almost all of them. Even kings—which was dangerous for the one who cheated, but it’s a fact . . . I don’t think so. It may be that, because he communicates more, he is more expressive through his face and gestures than the others.
BS: Is that side of Deburau’s character, his using images as a means of expression, something you feel close to?
MC: Maybe, maybe. Pantomime was not my forte, at least not consciously. But there were some things I showed Jean-Louis by miming them. It wasn’t easy to shoot.
BS: We spoke about the shooting of Children as a series of successes, with very few problems. Didn’t you have any difficulties or friction during the shoot.
MC: No friction at all. When we shot the carnival scene, though, something horrible happened for which I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive myself . . . We shot the carnival scene, and the assistant director told me there were two guys asking for one of the extras in the office. “Do they look French?” I asked. “Yes, they have Nice accents. The extra’s wife is very sick, and she wants to see her husband before she dies.” You understand, we were living in fear back then, so I asked him what they looked like. “They look French. They don’t look like Gestapo . . .” We still didn’t know then. We learned all those things a little at a time. I said, “Did they look at the list of those present?” All the extras usually sign in when they get in, so if someone gets here late or goes for a walk . . . He said no. I said, “Tell them he’s not here.” We continued to shoot, and he came back, saying, “Mr. Carné, I am sorry to insist, but the wife got hit by a tram and had both her legs cut off. She’s going to die without seeing her husband unless he’s at the hospital in one hour.” I wasn’t sure what to do. I had given them an answer, so I sent the assistant director to get the extra. They went into the office, and the assistant director came back five minutes later, haggard. It was two Gestapo agents. I never forgave myself for that.
Remember I told you about a leader of the Resistance in my crew? That was him. I grabbed him and said, “How could you not tell they were Gestapo? They have suits and a certain look. Even I can recognize them. How could you, a leader of the Resistance, not be able to tell?” He told me I couldn’t have told either. They had Nice accents; they looked French. The Gestapo was very influential in Nice.
MC: We had [Alexandre] Trauner and [Joseph] Kosma . . . Trauner did the models of the sets, not the sets themselves, for Les visiteurs du soir, and I had to go and get them past Nice, in a faraway town. And there was [Georges] Wakhevitch for Les visiteurs du soir, and [Léon] Barsacq for Children, who accepted the work. It was brave because I risked going to the camps, whereas Prévert, who didn’t choose the crew, didn’t. It was my responsibility. Once, I went over there to see the models, and Trauner wanted to come to Nice to see how the set of the castle had turned out. Prévert talked him out of it and told me he’d almost decked him. After that, he hid in a cabin in the middle of the forest. Kosma was in a little hotel hidden in the trees right outside Cannes. He gave me the lyrics for two songs for Les visiteurs, and he thanked me, the guy who gave him work, by saying that he was the one who had composed the music for Les visiteurs, when it was actually Maurice Thiriet. He did the hunt, the tournament, the entire orchestration. Kosma asked for the rights to it in court and lost. They both did their part. He only gave me two pages. After that, Trauner always tried to brush me aside, almost pretending he was the filmmaker. So I let it go for a while, but finally I told everyone the truth. Furthermore, those two are far from having worked on all my movies. Same with Schüfftan, who made three films with me, out of twenty-three. It’s not many.
BS: What dedication do you want to put on the film when it goes to home video and gets viewed by the entire world?
MC: What I’d do . . . I’ll tell you what moves me the most. When they stop me in the street, if they recognize me, they never tell me I am really talented or that my films are great. They always, always say: “Thank you for the joy you have given me.” So I hope that this disc will provide them with equal joy. It doesn’t move me because I am a very sensitive person but because it makes me happy to hear it. I’ll always remember the first time I went into a theater to see people’s reactions to Hôtel du Nord. I saw them laughing—everybody was laughing. And it made me happy.
For the first part of this interview see here.
– Marcel Carné on Children of Paradise: Forty-Five Years Later. For further resources on Marcel Carné and Children of Paradise, visit www.marcel-carne.com.
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