Les Enfants du Paradis

Originally released in 1945 at the tail end of the Second World War whilst Paris was still burning, Marcel Carne's film Les Enfants du Paradis is considered one of the greatest if not the most notable French film of all time, in the same vein and scale as Hollywood's Gone With The Wind from six years previously.

It is a rare slice of art house cinema from the French 1940s and tells the story of Parisian courtesan Garance (Arletty) and the four men who are in love with her - an aristocrat, a thief, an actor and a mime - based upon actual larger than life people from the 1820s and 1830s, where the film is based.

Carne originally released the film into two parts - beating Harry Potter and Twilight by 70 years - Boulevard du Crime and L'Homme Blanc.  As Paris was still under Nazi occupation, Carne attempted to get past censors by splitting the film in two, and then restore the film to its original length once the war was over.

It is important to understand and appreciate the lengths Carne went to in his production.  The sheer scale of the film in terms of extras, production, costume and art direction is immense and to consider that this film was done under enormous levels of oppression is all the more staggering when you see the final results.

The script written by Carne and in collaboration with Jacques Prevert, a surrealist poet is indicative of the input.  The film feels like one long poem visually and sonically due to the sumptuous score by Joseph Korma.  Carne's vision of Paris is a romantic notion of fonder times and persuasions.  The fact that the film was made shows the defiant French backbone which withstood the Nazi invasion.

Whilst the film is at times a bum-numbing 190 minutes, it does suffer from a pacing issue after all the main male characters are introduced; but the richness of the production wins out in the end, rewarding those who do stick it out.

Carne mixes all form of cinema and artistry; great soundtrack, wonderful acting with piercing dialogue and even mime performed by Baptiste (Jean-Louis Barrault), especially in one of the opening scenes when he performs a sequence to save Garance from a wrongful accusation of theft by a buffoon.  The scene is not rushed and allowed to gestate, to the benefit of all in view. We watch the mime, the audience in the square watch him, all are transfixed.

Carne would continue directing into the 1980s absorbing the bashing of La Nouvelle Vague, yet he would never hit the same heights of Les Enfants du Paradis - a wonderful and breathless love letter to Paris and France, when it most needed it.

Les Enfants du Paradis is released on two-disc DVD or Blu-ray by Second Sight Films on Monday 17th September.
My thanks to Aim Publicity for the check disc.

Bal (Honey) - DVD review

From Drakes Avenues Pictures comes the DVD release of the 2010 Golden Bear Award winner at the Berlin Film Festival, Bal is the last in the Yusuf trilogy by Semih Kaplanoglu.  The writer-director is one of the most revered contemporary film-makers currently working in Turkey, second to Nuri Bilge Ceylan.

The film is set in the isolated part of Northeast Turkey, Yusuf has just started primary school and is learning to read and write.  His father Yakup is a honey-gatherer, a risky trade which involves climbing up ropes into the tops of trees where the beehives are.  The forests that Yusuf goes to see are full of mystery and wonder, they are shot with this wonderful feel of the light receding from the frame but you know the child is safe with his father nearby. 

Yusuf suffers from the social affliction of being tongue-tied and stammer's when at school, yet the strong bond between father and son allows Yusuf to feel at ease and communicate most easily when addressing him.

The fear and ridicule of his paralysis is only heightened when Yakup must travel faraway to a forest in a mountainous area, from which he does not return and days pass forever.  Yusuf eventually summons up the courage to go and search for his father himself.

Following in the footsteps of similar European films dealing with missing/returning fathers, The Return from Russia comes to mind, this film forms the last part (yet in reverse order) of Kaplanoglu's Yusuf trilogy serving as the grounding for the lead character as we see him in his infancy.  The lead performance from the young actor, Bora Atlas is startling in its strength.

Whilst the film is certainly meditative in its narrative progression, and shot beautifully in the wonderful rarely photographed regions, calling to mind the reflective personal projects of Andrei Tarkovsky - you do get a sense that the slowburn nature of the film did need a kick at some point. 

However, this along with this year's earlier Men on the Bridge and the forthcoming Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, from Ceylan (featuring in the 2011 LFF).

The film is released from Verve Pictures on DVD for £10.89RRP and is rated PG, the extras include a trailer.

My thanks to Rabbit Publicity for the disc.