Quartile rating: 8.5/10 · 1 rating
In a chaotic 19th-century Paris teeming with aristocrats, thieves, psychics, and courtesans, theater mime Baptiste is in love with the mysterious actress Garance. But Garance, in turn, is loved by three other men: pretentious actor Frederick, conniving thief Lacenaire, and Count Edouard of Montray.
Children of Paradise is among the greatest films ever made, a sweeping romantic epic shot under Nazi occupation that feels impossibly grand in scope and intimacy. The plot weaves four suitors and a elusive muse through Parisian theater life with extraordinary richness. The acting, particularly Jean-Louis Barrault as Baptiste and Arletty as Garance, is legendary. The cinematography recreates the Boulevard du Crime with stunning period verisimilitude. Its novelty is unmatched — no film before or since has so perfectly fused theatrical artifice (pantomime, melodrama) with cinematic naturalism in service of such an achingly human story. The ending, while emotionally devastating and thematically resonant, is the one element that feels slightly more conventional in its tragic separation — powerful, but not quite as transcendent as the film's extraordinary middle passages.