Although it introduces no fresh mutation of cinema techniques, Marcel Carne’s film is expressively superb, conceived symbolically and acted with histrionic elegance and feeling -- a rich parable of the uses of love.

| Jan 18, 2024

It became the nation's first celluloid triumph after liberation, even if initially released to some territories in a substantially cut form.

| Oct 3, 2022

Few films are as grandly romantic as Marcel Carne's 1945 picture, a rich melodrama released at the height of French cinema's Golden Age.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 23, 2022

'Children of Paradise' is a complete fresco from a time in the Gallic country, in which beat mixed feelings, eternal passions, and above all, the joy of those children in the title beat. [Full Review in Spanish]

| Apr 17, 2020

If acting and directing awards were given but once in a century, Carne, Barrault and Brasseur would still be nominees.

| Jan 24, 2020

Don't skip this one if you can. I saw it in Paris and it remains one of the most memorable pictures I've seen.

| Oct 30, 2019

Prevert's script is simply a miracle... The photography is dramatic yet harmonious, the sound-track is subtle. Like the deacon's wonderful one-hoss shay, it is all of a piece and every piece of it is of the best workmanship.

| Jul 12, 2019

A classic, a museum piece to the young, and to others inextricably linked with a particular time and atmosphere, barnacled with too many memories to be objectively assessed.

| Jan 29, 2019

This tragic romance is about the love of art and theater as much as human love. Forget that it is three hours long; every moment bursts with love and passion...

| Jan 26, 2017

Even to call "Les Enfants du Paradis" a mere masterpiece, seems a slight.

| Original Score: A+ | Jun 29, 2016

The movie isn't necessarily realistic-it's about the theater after all-but its unusually cynical center keeps it from becoming so much sentimental mush, while delivering the heartbreak that audiences so crave.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 9, 2012

It's almost flawlessly filmed, though it at times lacks warmth.

| Original Score: A | Aug 20, 2012

To luxuriate in the film's 3-hour, 10-minute length is to experience this masterpiece as it hasn't been experienced since the day it opened.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 31, 2012

Shot in 1943 during World War II, Children of Paradise overcame so many seemingly impossible obstacles that today the film seems enchanted.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | May 17, 2012

If you give this movie time to work on you, the elements that seem overly artificial or impossibly distant from our own time fade into insignificance, and you're left with a complicated and wonderful romantic drama that's full of surprises.

| Mar 8, 2012

Before French cinema reinvented itself with jump cuts and cool bobs, Marcel Carné's 19th-century backstage drama was the epitome of good taste: a sumptuous spread of genteel sparring and epic heartache.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 6, 2012

Marcel Carné's towering intimate epic of early 19th-century love and the lives of performers, often heralded as the greatest French film of all time.

| Mar 6, 2012

Poetry with a capital "P," sprinkled with fairy dust.

| Mar 5, 2012

Among the peaks of romantic cinema.

| Nov 13, 2011

Even if the style is from another age, once seen it lives in the imagination for ever.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 11, 2011