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Salient: An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 12, No. 3, April 6th, 1949.

Eulogy — Les Enfants

Eulogy

Les Enfants

To write at all about "Les Enfants du Paradis" is difficult: to sum it up adequately is impossible, at any rate For this pen. Any attempt to do justice in words to such a film makes the brightest achievements of the English cinema pale, can only be like the bobby-soxers attempt to describe Frank Sinatra's singing. The film has a sweep and scope and an epic momentum astonishing to those" who regard French films as chamber music rather than as symphony. And as in the great symphonies, the details are as perfect as the main outlines of the form.

Not that it's an arty film—anything hut. No one is going to rave about the music or photography or sets peruse—there are none of the extraordinary camera angles or patches of carefully contrived dramatic silence so beloved of writers on Film with a capital "F." No, it isn't like that at all. Music, photography and settings are superb, it is true, but in a lean, workmanlike way. This reviewer indeed, only began to notice them for themselves the third time he saw the film.

Made of Gold . . .

The true greatness of "Les Enfants" lies firstly in its convincing reconstruction of a fascinating place and time-Paris in the 1840's. The Parisian mob of the time is given a personality, naive, lovable, excitable fickle. "They are poor but they are made of gold" says the manager of the Funambules. They crowd the boulevards, dance halls and theatres: they are real, not as individuals but collectly, and they not only form a background but they are also important actors in the drama. They are the children of the Gods after whom the film is named.

The main actors move among the crowd—Garance, a woman of most fascinating Florentine .beauty, French cousin of Carmen without the Spanish woman's passionate gypsy nature, and the four men who love her and whose lives She transforms.

Bravo Baptiste

Jean-Louis Barrault, who plays Baptiste, the mime, must surely be considered one of the great actors of our own time. His miming is almost ballet, yet surpassing anything in the ballet in its depth and direct human appeal. Baptiste moves the audience at the Funambules to laugh and cry and very nearly moved some members of more sophisticated Wellington audiences in the same way. Lncenaire, the frustrated writer turned criminal who contrives the final disastrous situation and his own death purely for dramatic effect ; the actor Frederic Lemaitre, whose Othello was perfected by his love for Garance and his somewhat theatrical jealousy of Baptiste-these and a dozen others are played by a cast of the utmost brilliance. To the director. Marcel Carne, must go the final credit of welding all these fine performances and the whole heroic situation into a great film.

And if all this reads like a publicity puff your reviewer is very sorry. As was said at the beginning, any review of this film is in danger of becoming that way. All the reviewer can do is to hope that the reader will take it literally, though not uncritically, and in any case will go and see the film for himself.

K.I.P.