Children of Paradise • 1945 • Directed by Marcel Carné

Children of Paradise, that deservedly perennial entry in innumerable 10 Best Films of all time lists, takes place on the mean streets of Paris, 1828, at the tail end of the unpopular reign of Charles X, in a world of carnival, street performers, prostitutes, petty criminals and slumming aristocracy. As Part One, The Boulevard of Crime, opens, its justifiably famous, expansive and richly detailed opening shot introduces us to that turbulent setting; at its center, the geographical and spiritual heart of the film, the pantomime theater “Les Funambules”. The theater’s name means ‘The Tightrope’, and the film’s title refers to the cheap seats in its highest reaches: so far up in the balcony that they might as well be in heaven; and both are apt metaphors for a cast of characters constantly caught in a perilous balancing act between their desires and reality, and always seeming to fall just short of the respective “paradises” they seek.

Baptiste (Jean-Louis Barrault), a mime under the thumb of his hack father, is relegated to entertaining those outside the theater too poor to pay for a ticket. He sees Garance (Arletty), a radiantly beautiful courtesan who has just quit her job in a peep show, being falsely accused of picking Bourgeois pockets, and explains in mime to the police, (in the film’s most celebrated sequence), that the real culprit is Lacenaire (Marcel Herrand), a fiercely brilliant criminal sociopath and friend of Garance. The grateful Garance gives a rose to Baptiste, who is instantly transfixed. Fledgling actor Frederick (Pierre Brasseur), is applying for a job with Nathalie (Maria Casarès), daughter of the theater’s manager, who is hopelessly, against all reason, in love with Baptiste. All of their lives change forever that evening, as two warring families of performers bring the show to a halt in mid-play. Baptiste and Frederick are recruited to save the day, and are an overnight success. Baptiste gets Garance a job in the show, and a tangled series of mixed signals and missed

 opportunities ensnare all three men, Garance, and Nathalie in a passionate but unresolved minuet of frustrated passion. Part Two, The Man in White, opens as six years have passed. Baptiste and Frederick have become stars, Garance, deeply in love with Baptiste but unwilling to disrupt his ill-advised marriage to Nathalie, has become the mistress of the powerful Count de Montray, and this second half, despite everyone’s enviable successes, is suffused with a deep melancholy, as they face the consequences of the decisions they have made.

While a movie of such depth, sweeping majesty and scope as Children of Paradise would be a remarkable accomplishment in any time and place, the most extraordinary fact about this film is that it got made at all. Filmed over a period of two years during the French Occupation, Paradise was made with the Gestapo breathing down Carné’s neck, eager to find some excuse to shut the production down.

Marcel Carné leads one of the bravest crews in history, filming Les Enfants du Paradis in 1944

Carné hired Nazi sympathizers as extras to keep them off his back, and it is interesting to speculate what the fate of this film might have been had they known that their fellow extras were composed largely of moonlighting (daylighting?) French Resistance fighters. After the war, Arletty herself was accused of “horizontal collaboration” with her lover, a German officer, and with the self-assurance only the grandest French actress of her era could muster, she replied simply that her private parts had no political affiliation.

She of the politically unaffiliated private parts, the iconic, mesmerizing Arletty, as the immortal courtesan Garance

Jacques Prévert

Directed by Marcel Carné, and written by poet/screenwriter/lyricist Jacques Prévert, whose fame and reputation gave him a Mamet-like equal billing with his directors, CoP takes place in the late 1820’s, a time of great upheaval, discontent, and re-evaluation, with France still reeling from its  dashed expectations in the wake of the rise and fall of Napoleon, and the discontent of a failed return to monarchy under King Charles, (who is about to be overthrown as the film opens). This setting of turmoil and dissatisfaction has a very meaningful connection to the spiritual mood and artistic inclinations of the Europe of 1943, ravaged by two World Wars and still swept up in the artistic, sexual, social and political liberations of the early 1900’s, and it is not a stretch to see these undercurrents playing out in the actions and impassioned words of CoP’s colourful cast of characters, with the safe historical setting serving as cover from Nazi censorship. We read in Garance’s honest values and defiant insistence on her own personal freedom a tribute to French culture and resistance (ironic, given Arletty’s own reckless “collaboration”), and Lacenaire’s  acidly wise observations on the hypocrisies and strictures of society as a reflection of the cynicism and disillusionment of Europe, and particularly France, with the emptiness and failure of its leaders and social structures. The character of the informant  ragpicker Jericho might well have been a very real admonishment to the film crew’s  volatile mixture of partisans and collaborators, as  production designer Alexander Trauner and composer Joseph Kosma, both Jews, worked in stealth and at their peril, under pseudonyms. Adding to the strength and resonance of these characters is the fact that three of them are based on actual historical personalities, and CoP is surprisingly faithful to what we know about them: The mime Baptiste is based on Jean-Gaspard DeBurau, who transformed Pantomime into the sophisticated art form of Mime we know today.

Marcel Herrand as one of the greatest (and most complex)
villains in movie history, the brilliant, tormented Lacenaire

Frederick, the womanizing charmer who only feels truly ‘real’ when he is on stage, was Frederick Lemaitre, the most celebrated actor of his time, who triumphed in vehicles tailored  by Hugo and Dumas especially for him; and Lacenaire, the thief whose brilliant intellect both tempers and fuels his hatred and deep contempt for the world and for himself, was Pierre-Francois Lacenaire, one of history’s first celebrity criminals, whose elegance and eloquence at trial provoked floods of mail from female admirers and inspired Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment.

Despite its many factual and historical allusions however, it is Prevert’s timeless characters, his poetic and perceptive dialogue, and Carnés flawless direction of his peerless cast that ultimately bring a Shakespearean universality and power to CoP. whose very structure is Shakespearean: part vibrant melodrama, part wise and witty musings on enduring human truths, part flushed, breathless romance. But there is an unabashed inspiration by, and quite literal connection to, Shakespeare also at work in CoP: The plot not only goes into its final operatic high gear at a performance of Othello, but, as Russell Gamin points out in his excellent Prevert Reads Shakespeare, all of the male leads in in the film can be read as variants on Othello.

Baptiste is romantically obsessed in a way that denies him the very love he seeks (he wastes 6 years because Garance’s frank and tender desire for him doesn’t jibe with his hifalutin notion of idealized love). The count is a quietly seething stew of barely suppressed jealousy and rage. Lacenaire, roused out of his misanthropic cocoon as he violates his own code of icy disconnection with humanity by, despite his best efforts to the contrary, falling for Garance, is the only one of them who is easily disposed to, and comfortable with, violent resolutions. And Frederick finally realizes his ambition of doing Shakespeare only when he allows himself to acknowledge his jealousy for having lost Garance, and his riveting stare directly at her, (as she sits in the audience) as he prepares to kill Desdemona, frees him from his own pain, but also propels the other “Othellos” into overdrive. There is even a Desdemona-like innocence about Garance, who, with her ingenuous character and simple integrity, is the direct opposite of her male admirers’ objectification of her, rendering her the only character not overwhelmed by obsession and unfulfillable expectation.

CoP is also, like another Janus Film favourite, Kwaidan) a meditation on the creative act itself, but here, it is an open celebration, the happiest side of CoP. Everyone in the film comes into their own on stage, and reveals the best of themselves when they speak of their art. The selfish, self-centered Baptiste, who survived a cruel childhood by retreating into dreams, identifies with the ‘children of paradise’ and wants to bring them understanding and beauty: “their lives are small”, he says, “but their dreams are vast”, and he shines (Barrault is luminous in the film’s mime sequences) in the expression of a love that he is woefully unable to make work in real life.

Nathalie (Maria Casarès) hopelessly in love with Baptiste, a romantic dreamer/fool who has no idea what a gift he already has in his wife —

The bluff and facile Frederick rhapsodizes about the thrill of “feeling your heart, and the heart of the audience, beat at the same time” and takes pride in elevating humanity by portraying nobility and greatness on stage. Even Lacenaire, a frustrated writer at heart, has determined to turn his life (and the lives of the unwilling ‘actors’ around him) into a play of his own devising. In fact, a great deal of CoP’s running time is made up of performances of one sort or another, but it never feels like the movie is grinding to a halt in these passages; rather the way the film so effortlessly slides back and forth from the stage to reality and back again is part of its point. “Dreams, Life, what’s the difference?” moons Baptiste to Garance, and CoP is, above all else, about dreams; their power over us, and their potential to uplift or destroy us. Despite their skepticism about the ability of the human race to achieve happiness, or even a real understanding of itself, Carné and Prevert’s obvious love and sympathy for their characters give enormous heart and depth to this tale of yearning, loss, and the survival of the human spirit.
Children of Paradise was referred to by its original promoters as the French Gone with the Wind, and, with its epic story, which follows a group of colorful, deeply flawed characters through many years in an impeccably drawn historical setting, the comparison was certainly tempting and commercially canny. Unlike Gone With the Wind, however, a vastly entertaining film whose artistic integrity was severely compromised by a shifting parade of directors, writers, and stars, Children of Paradise was the crowning achievement of a single obsessive artistic vision, made by a director whose dogged determination saw the completion of the most expensive French film yet made, under the most difficult circumstances imaginable. Named in 1976 by the Cannes Film Festival as the ‘greatest French film of all time’, Children of Paradise was released shortly after the Liberation of Paris to universal and lasting acclaim, and remains, indisputably, one of the very greatest movies, of any period or national origin, ever committed to film.

Zombie (Zombie 2) • 1979 •  Directed by Lucio Fulci

As the crunching sound of slow, shambling footsteps and ominous musical cues are heard, he (or she) lurches onto the screen, slow, rotting, dangerous and... dead. It’s that favourite cinematic baddie of eighties film, the only movie monster that’s easier to get away from than the Mummy: the Zombie! Briefly popular in the 30’s in such films as White Zombie and Val Lewton’s I Walked with a Zombie, the zombie has made a roaring (shuffling?) comeback in such recent hommages and remakes as 28 Days Later, Shaun of the Dead, Dawn of the Dead and zombie pioneer George Romero’s long awaited sequel Land of the Dead; and while the general filmgoing public probably thinks of Romero’s Night of the Living Dead as the start of the World-wide Zombie film craze of the 80’s,  that scurrilous honor actually belongs to another film, the still-notorious Zombie, directed by the late, lamented Lucio Fulci. 

Night was big success on the drive-in circuit, but it took Romero, who personally made no money from it, ten years to produce a sequel, the hugely popular Dawn of the Dead, and it was the smash success of that preposterously gory and irreverently satirical sequel (renamed Zombi by its euro ‘producer’ Horror auteur Dario Argento), that inspired Producer Fabrizio DeAngelis to rename his nearly completed film Zombi 2, to cash in. Zombie, in turn, inspired the flood of European gut-munchers that followed, and paved the way for a second wave of American zombie cinema, including Romero’s disappointing Day of the Dead and Dan O’Bannon’s wickedly funny/scary Return of the Living Dead series.

Throughout the 50s, through the end of the 80s, the Italian film Industry rode on a series of cresting and receding waves of imitation: a film (often American) of a particular genre would hit it big, and literally hundreds of similar films, a few great, many awful, would follow in its wake, until the public grew weary, and the industry would wait for the next big thing. Lucio Fulci’s career followed a typical path in this herd-mentality industry. After being sponsored by Luchino Visconti at the prestigious Experimental Film Studio, Fulci made his directorial debut with I Ladri, a typical Commedia All’Italiana, starring legendary comedian Toto. For years, he bounced from genre to genre, directing musicals, crime dramas, westerns, spy and caper movies, even several children’s films based on Jack London’s White Fang. In 1969, Fulci directed what was arguably the first Giallo Film, One on Top of the Other, only to watch arch rival Argento blow the Giallo wide open with the international hit Bird with the Crystal Plumage two years later. 

Tisa Farrow learns not to nap for too long on the island of Matool...

Fulci then made two of his most personal films, Beatrice Cenci, based on the life of the 16th century feminist martyr, (which remained his personal favourite) and the gripping, socially critical Don’t Torture a Duckling, both of which contained the first evidences of the unflinching violence which was to become his trademark, albeit in a very different context. Duckling, a prize-winning tale of child abuse and provincial savagery was a critical and popular success, but the official ire raised by its scathing portrait of murderous, hypocritical clerics and corrupt, decadent politicians, and the unexpected international failure of The Psychic, starring Jennifer O’Neill, conspired to bring his career to a dead halt. In 1979, Lucio Fulci, rendered penniless by a rancorous divorce, and idle for the first time in his professional life, desperately needed a job.

Enter Fabrizio DeAngelis, an ex-postal official who had saved up just enough money to call himself a movie producer, and, inspired by the stir caused by the original Night, and a popular Italian comic book about zombies in a western setting, commissioned the husband and wife writing team of Dardano Sachetti and Elisa Briganti to cook up a story about zombies and... cowboys? Happily Sachetti nixed that idea, and instead pitched an old fashioned pulp-style adventure story set on a tropical island, which would build to a horrific zombie climax. Armed with his treatment, and a little seed money, DeAngelis assembled a crew of dedicated, but underemployed Italian film craftspeople, and prepared to make his zombie epic.

The great Richard Johnson, adding a near-Shakepearean gravitas to the unwholesome proceedings in Zombie

Journeyman Enzo Castellari wanted 40 million lire to direct, and when the desperate Fulci offered to work for a budget-preserving 9 million lire, the die was cast. Everyone from Fulci, to postman-turned-producer DeAngelis, to star Richard Johnson, whose career was drifting further and further from his triumphs at The Royal Shakespeare Company, needed  a hit, and his tight little family of moviemakers (who, in recent interviews for Zombie’s remastering uniformly remember the shoot, and the temperamental, but dedicated Fulci, in warm, glowing terms) set out to make the best zombie movie ever. And they did. 

Whereas the zombies of the 30’s were haunting, walking metaphors for lost love, regret and sexual submission, and Romero’s zombies were a savage instrument of expressing the social and political upheaval of the 60’s, Fulci was the first to present the zombie in its purest form; an embodiment of pure evil and the loss of all humanity - mankind turned in on, and literally, devouring itself, and, for the first time, very convincingly, putrescently, dead. Much of the credit for this harrowing presentation has to go to effects and make-up maestro Gianetto DiRossi, who, presented with the challenge of cheaply and quickly making up a constantly rotating cast of zombie extras, without the luxury of individually molded appliances, came up with a solution that was as artistically effective as it was economically ingenious. Using a combination of latex, common potter’s clay and the occasional live worm, DiRossi was able to, each morning, quickly create zombies who were palpably and graphically decomposing, and whose rotting stench seemed to spring from the screen as vividly as the spurting blood of Zombie’s notorious ‘gags’.  As well remembered as those set-pieces are (the eye-piercing and ghastly cannibalism of Olga Karlatos, and the darkly funny shark-zombie battle which temporarily saves topless skin diver Auretta Gay from a fate worse than death),

the real power of Fulci’s film is in its somber atmosphere of decay, relentless menace and suffocating, melancholy doom. From the first chilling scenes of a rudderless deserted sailboat quietly bringing its deadly cargo down the Harlem river, to the last, justifiably famous crane shot of a silent army of zombies crossing the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan, it is the quiet moments that linger from Zombie: The sudden underwater appearance of the zombie’s hand on Gay’s shoulder; a wide pan across a dust covered and deserted village street, its only inhabitants a huge skittering crab and a barely glimpsed zombie slowly advancing in the distance; the rows of anonymous corpses swaddled in bloodstained shrouds, awaiting 

burial; the soulless, uncaring march of the zombies as implacable engines of judgement. At the heart of Fulci’s relentless parable is the sorrowful, almost tragic performance of the great Richard Johnson as Dr. Menard, the idealistic doctor whose unspecified overreaching has somehow (it is never explained exactly how) precipitated this untoward resurrection of the dead. Johnson could well have regarded Zombie as a significant career letdown, yet, like Peter Cushing, he was incapable of giving a bad performance, and here he gives his all. Alternately pathetic, as he tries to drown his guilt in denial and booze, and tragic, as he is forced to execute, one after the other, his friends and neighbors, to prevent them from becoming the living

dead, his rich, Shakespearean voice and haunted eyes give a resonance to the proceedings not found in the dialogue, suggesting somehow that mankind is suffering a well deserved, and apparently final, reckoning. Propelled by composer Fabio Frizzi’s simple, mournful score, and enhanced by Sergio Salavti’s gorgeous, budget-belying photography, Zombie was the first full expression of the horror aesthetic for which Fulci is remembered by a legion of devoted fans, and the little zombie movie made by a tight-knit band of professionals with something to prove went on to be an international smash. 

Fulci went on to make three more great, blood-soaked horror hits, the epic L’Aldila/The Beyond, generally considered to be his horror masterpiece, The Gates of Hell, and the mini-budgeted but highly atmospheric Lovecraftian tale House by the Cemetery. These three classics were followed by the film that essentially killed his career, The New York Ripper, wherein, in a sad reversal of Zombi’s good fortune, Fulci’s patented murder setpieces were so outrageous and brutal that they overwhelmed what was otherwise a controlled, well acted and strongly directed Hitchcockian murder thriller, which repelled its targeted mainstream audience and caused it to be banned in so many markets that it turned into a financial disaster. 

After this, in failing health, embittered by painful personal relationships and feelings of underappreciation, and haunted by the unrealized potential first seen in Beatrice Cenci and 

Don’t Torture a Duckling, Fulci produced a stream of for-hire hack jobs quickies and forgettable TV movies (broken only by The Devil’s Honey, a gripping little melodrama of sexual obsession starring American expatriate and ex-teen idol Brett Halsey)  before stoppng work altogether. Fulci had acquired a reputation as a bitter, irascible misogynist, but this is contradicted by the feminism of Cenci, the fond remembrances of his colleagues of him as a dedicated, humor-filled and caring professional, and by the fact that, near the end of his life, long-time rival Dario Argento befriended the luckless Fulci, proposing to give him the largest budget of his life, at the helm of a lush remake of House of Wax. One evening, during pre-production, lifelong diabetic Fulci forgot to (or decided not to) take his insulin, ate a large piece of cake, and died in his sleep. It was, sadly, not unexpected.

(The Zombies) are alienated creatures who live on the fringes of society… the revenge of those defeated in life.” — Lucio Fulci

King of Kings • MGM / 1962  Directed by Nicholas Ray

When originally Released in 1962, King of Kings was almost universally reviled, seen by a critical community newly revved up on, simultaneously, the European New Wave, and an Andrew Sarris-fueled rediscovery of the glories of Hollywood’s Classic Past, as a mawkish, Sunday School-flavored, filmed religious comic book. This is, of course, ironic, since Director Nicholas Ray was, in his critical heyday, the very sort of auteurist director most emblematic of that Hollywood past, revered by the very European critics-turned directors who had set that new Wave in motion, as well as the rediscovery of the Hollywood greats in Europe, where, predictably, King of Kings was much more kindly received than Stateside. Now, with MGM’s Blu-Ray release, it may be time to revisit KOK, and baby boomer cinephiles who, despite its apparent unhipness, loved it at the time, may discover that it is both less, and more, than they remember.

Two things are, justifiably, most often mentioned (even by its detractors) when the subject of KOK is brought up: It is a visually awe-inspiring film, with a physically primal force about its stately compositions that carries us through even its most dubious moments; and, it contains arguably the best score (certainly the best “epic” score) ever written by old-school master composer Miklos Rosza, with a magisterial sweep that both reflects and supports the straightforward sincerity of the film itself. It is, particularly in the obligatory setpeices (the nativity, the sermon on the mount, the last supper) undeniably stilted and self-conscious, (though even in these moments it is never ickily cloying or sentimental), as if director Ray had been intimidated by the prospect of bringing to life these iconic passages so indelibly ingrained in the minds of billions of people Christian and otherwise, through lifetimes of familiarity. 

But Ray was a director who made his reputation making films that were seemingly mainstream and traditional on the surface, but were, in fact, hiding a sly and deeply subversive heart hidden at their core, and KOK truly comes alive in its most secular and earthy moments; most compelling and memorable not in the dusty streets of Jesus, but in the resplendent marble halls of the palaces of Herod and Pilate.

The story of Jesus’ divinity is most convincingly told not by the characters who unquestioningly believe in him, but rather by those who are struggling with their inability to give themselves over to that belief. KOK is full of great performances from a cast of Continental stars playing these conflicted folk: Viveca Lindfors is Claudia, Daughter of the Emperor Tiberius and Pilate's wife, tortured by an instinctive belief in Jesus’ divinity which she cannot explain, and which flies in the face of everything she has been brought up to believe; Hurd Hatfield (Portrait of Dorian Grey) gives the last great performance of his career, as a jaded and decadent Pilate who wishes the whole inconvenient and upsetting mess would just go away, and  Israeli actress Rita Gam is alternately commandingly cold and imperious and nakedly vulnerable as Herod’s wife Herodias, sneeringly dismissive of his weakness while terrified at the thought of being replaced as Queen by her wayward daughter Salome.

But the most memorable performance in the palace (indeed, in the film) comes from the great, (and today, barely remembered) Australian character actor Frank Thring, whose Herod is one of the great screen villains; brooding, corrupt and hopelessly obsessed with his beautiful but evil stepdaughter Salome, a precocious, manipulative nymphet so convincingly played by starlet Bridged Bazlen as the ultimate teenager from hell, that it is deeply puzzling that her career disappeared soon after her star turn in KOK. 

They share one of the best scenes in the film, as Herod and Salome bargain with each other for the price of her immortal dance. Thring is at once pathetic and sympathetic as he desperately offers anything and everything he can think of to avoid the one thing that Salome wants, a price Herod knows will be his undoing: the head of John the Baptist, the Prophet whom the despotic ruler has come to secretly respect. Even fellow Aussie Ron Randell, never the deepest of actors, is oddly touching and believable, as a Roman General who keeps crossing paths with Jesus, and who, despite his increasing sympathy for, and belief in, the Christ, cannot bring himself to stop following orders which he finds more and more repugnant.

Still, at the heart of the film is, unavoidably, Jeffrey Hunter, and it is evident now that the facile dismissal of his performance at the time with the phrase ”I Was a Teenage Jesus” is deeply unfair. Hunter does in fact, play Jesus as a passionate, deeply committed and often angry, young man (which of course, he must have been, and which is an interpretation supported in many passages by the Gospels themselves). As such, Hunter is convincing, believable and surprisingly unsentimental. (So much so, that it is intriguing to speculate on the basis of this performance, how different, and more complex, Star Trek might have been, had he stayed in the role of Captain Kirk as originally intended.) Indeed, Hunter, screenwriter Philip Yordan, and Ray, present a decidedly progressive Jesus, with an emphasis on a concern for the poor and tolerance for imperfection more at home with liberation theology than with the rigidly moralistic and judgmental version of Christianity proffered by many of today’s 'Christians', and which neatly parallels the intriguing, if not entirely historically accurate, subplot involving a ‘Leftist” Barabbas (Harry Guardino) and Judas (Lindfors’ future Coming Apart co-star Rip Torn) cooking up a people’s rebellion on the side.

In fact, one of the simple gifts of KOK is its respect for the basic vision of Jesus, which it re-tells in a sincere, entertaining and surprisingly compelling way. For this, for its extraordinary physical beauty, and for its first rate cast, King of Kings deserves its long overdue re-appreciation by today’s audience as one of the very best of the long string of religious epics of the 50s and 60s.