Love is So Simple

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 506, 4 March 1949, Page 24

Love is So Simple

LES ENFANTS DU PARADIS (Pathé Cinema) LTHOUGH this picture has reputedly been described by all the best people as a masterpiece of film art it is not a highbrow picture in the commonly accepted sense of that word. Reduced to its simplest terms Les Enfants du Paradis is the story of a beautiful woman and the four men who love her, told against a crowded background of French life in the 1840's, in the age, as the introduction points out, of Hugo and Dumas, the hey-day of the romantic drama. The bulk of the action takes place in the theatrical circles of those times, but it also moves for considerable periods in the sinister underworld of low Paris night-life, and in the exalted society of its wealthy aristocracy. The film was discussed in these pages some time ago (Listener 5/12/47), but avart from a brief season in Auckland

‘it has not been generally released, and its Wellington opening is important enough not to be overlooked. The scene opens» on the crowded, bustling gaiety of a Paris street called Le Boulevard du Crime, on one side of which stand the great theatres frequented by the rich, and on the other the music-halls, pantomimes, and vaudeville houses where the poor can buy a seat in the gallery (the "gods") for four sous. At one of these theatres-the Funambules-there works a celebrated mime named Debureau, who has a freakish, dreamy, and apparently idiot son named Baptiste. One day, from his position outside the theatre, Baptiste sees a beautiful woman in the crowd. She smiles at him, throws him a flower, and passes on, but she has awakened a great | passion in his heart. Later he meets her again at a murky midnight café to which he has been taken by a blind beggar. She is with another lover, a ruthless criminal named Lacenaire, but because for this night Lacenaire bores.her, and because the boy’s naive passion attracts her, she decides to leave with him. As they walk through the dark streets: she tells him that her name is Garance, and that she lives with whichever man holds her fancy at the moment. "Love is so simple," she says to him. "I want to please whoever pleases me." Baptiste gets her a part in the pantomime, and inspired by her, creates a beautiful tableau in which they both take part. But because his love for her is never more than an ideal, she is taken from him by a third man, the actor Frederick"Lemaitre. Later, circumstances throw her into the arms of a fourth admirer, the wealthy "Comte de Monteray, with whom she goes to Scotland for several years. Time passes and Baptiste marries and has a son. becoming a great artist who packs the Funambules every night. Lemaitre too becomes famouson the other side of the street-as the greatest actor of his day. while unknown to the others Lacenaire pursues an audacious life of murder, robbery, and blackmail. The mysterious force that links them together. becomes apparent when Gar-

eee ance returns to Paris. Despite a life that seems to hold all she has ever wished for, she cannot forget Baptiste, and goes nightly to watch him play in the pantomime. And as each of the lovers discovers her presence he reacts according to his changed circumstances. Lemaitre, jealous of her love for Baptiste, makes use of this new emotion to give the finest performance of his career as Othello. Lacenaire, jealous in his turn of the Count’s wordly superiority (he thinks it has won Garance from him), accosts him and is deeply humiliated in the verbal exchanges that follow. The Count, jealous of Lamaitre’s love (discovered when they go to see Othello), challenges him to a duel and kills him. Lacenaire, in revenge for the Count’s insults, murders him at his country estate and then commits suicide.

In the meantime the two lovers come together for one night, only to be surprised in ‘the morning by Baptiste’s wife, who, ip a passionate appeal for her family rights, sends Garance back into the streets from which she originally appeared. The last scene shows Baptiste pursuing her hopelessly through dancing crowds that are celebrating carnival week, and finally losing her for ever. The film has been created on-a grand scale, with dizzying crowd scenes and the suggestion of a complete new world that makes it difficult to be taken in at a single sitting. In some ways its romantic melodrama can be compared with the sweep and splendour of Gone With the Wind, yet all the difference of the Atlantic exists between the two. There is a maturity about the conception, the dialogue, the acting, and even the sombre philosophy hinted at in Les Enfants du Paradis which stamps it as the product of a more sophisticated sensibility than ours. Two notable. points about the film are the atmosphere of. frustration that pervades it (even the successful criminal secretly wants to be a literary success), and the irony of much of its dialogue: "We don’t act," the chief mime says, "we make our entrances on our hands," Per--haps the greatest irony occurs in a dia-_ -logue between Garance and Baptiste. "Dreams, life," she says, "it’s all the same." And then she whispers, not knowing that her love will ruin half a dozen lives, "Love is so simple, . ." The director, arcel Carné, has handled his theme with great skill, and Jacques Prévert’s script is outstanding, but it is one of the few weaknesses of the film that the photography is at times rather harsh and hard on the eyes.