Children of Paradise (1945)

Not rated, and OVERALL it's pretty tame.  That is, until I have to point out the Blackface and the infidelity. The Blackface, which doesn't excuse it, is when one of the main characters plays Othello.  The entire movie almost hinges on the infidelity in the movie.  There's also a moderate amount of violence, often involving duels.  Still, the movie feels mostly appropriate for audiences.  It's the tone versus the content, really.

DIRECTOR:  Marcel Carne

We're well into November and it is a borderline miracle that I'm still writing this blog.  The re-election of Donald Trump has full on sent me into a spiral.  For all the people who need to drink liberal tears, I have plenty more to offer.  Originally, I was going to wallow in the dumbest content that involved more thought.  But I've already gone back into self-righteous fight mode.  Part of that, as a weird form of rebellion, is to live my life even harder.  Does that mean watching intellectual stuff with the reminder that I'm always trying to better myself?  In the weirdest, most skewed logic sort of way, I suppose it does.

I am still not quite sure how to post this as a movie.  It's technically two movies, right?  Like, with The Lord of the Rings, I separated those into three respectable films. But IMdB listed this as one movie.  Even the DVD I watched it on treated it only as Children of Paradise.  Still, there are two openings and two closing credits.  I had to switch discs to watch the whole thing.  That seems like it's two movies, right?  Either way, I'm treating it as one film because it is one story.  The only thing that makes the split semi-natural is that there is a time jump between the two parts of the story.  But the first part of the movie doesn't really make sense without the second part of the movie.  So, for all of our sakes and for the sake of just knocking this movie out, let's call it one movie.

There were a few minutes where I was not on board this movie.  Maybe some of that came from the Terry Gilliam introduction who kind of put my brain into a place where we ended up watching the movie differently.  It starts off incredibly French.  There is a type of French movie that no other culture could have made it.  Yes, these films have a universal appeal.  After the first few minutes, when I started to understand character goals and motivations, I got kind of excited about it.  But I want to talk about what it means to be a performer in Paris versus what it means to be an American performer.  We have stories about passion in America.  But there's something almost savant-y when it comes to stories about French artists.  This kind of comes into play when the entire movie becomes about large personalities that we don't necessarily have in terms of artistic success.  American art stories are tragic in the fact that artists tend to lose their passions in exchange for the commercial success.  Children of Paradise tells the story of how people lose their souls for artistic success.  As much as Frederick is the most lauded artist in Paris after the break, he's still financially in the same dire straits.  People who know Frederick can't stand him.  That is because he's convinced of his own artistic superiority.  It isn't because he's slumming.  It's because he's the complete opposite of the washed up American performer.  He's so convinced of his choices that he will burn down every bridge to do whatever he wants.  The same is true about Baptiste, who goes from being a completely lovable character to having emotions too big for the normies around him.

I have to say, there would have been a time in my life where I would have completely sympathized with Baptiste.  Appropriately enough, that time of my life was colored by performance.  That's in the height of my theatre degree, when I was wrapped up in my own ego.  I fell hard for a girl whom I treated wonderfully.  She started dating one of my best friends.  Listen, I've grown.  This ultimately ended up being a bullet dodged.  (With the slim chance that this person is reading this, sorry for the bullet dodged comment.  I just really love my wife.)   The thing that I want to scream at the screen for the entire first half of the movie is that Frederick and Garante are completely allowed to be romantically involved.  That is something that I wished that I knew at the time.  Don't get me wrong.  It sucks that they don't consider Baptiste's feelings when pursuing a relationship.  They are both incredibly selfish, but Garante owes Baptiste nothing.  That's something that the narrative never really fleshes out as  much as it should.  But the second half of the movie is incredibly frustrating to me because it didn't make the same logical shift that I did.  

In the time jump, Baptiste marries Natalie and has a child.  Even by his own admission, he's super happy with his life.  In fact, his life has never been better.  Natalie, despite probably marrying damaged goods (she is rejected by him for Garance in the first half, but he settles for Natalie for the sake of storytelling), is aware of Baptiste's genuine love for her and their son.  She is also aware of how toxic of a personality that Garance is for Baptiste to be around.  She, in a shrewd move, uses their child to drive Garance away.  But this is where Baptiste and I completely differ.  For the sake of storytelling, we need to have Baptiste be this personality that somehow has larger emotions than your average bear.  The fact that he doesn't view Garance with a degree of scorn or apathy rings a bit false.  Again, the point of the story is the obsessive love that Baptiste holds for Garance.  It's not remotely healthy, but it is there.  It's just that...as I said, "Bullet dodged."  First of all, I don't understand the obsession with Garance beyond the fact that she is unobtainable.  That's gotta be 99% of it, right?  She is aloof and the focus of every male's gaze.  She's vapid and, honestly, far less pretty than Nathalie.  (I really hope her name is Nathalie because I don't want to come across as a complete rube in this one.) 

But we're supposed to be angry at Baptiste at the end, right?  Carne ends the film with Baptiste chasing the fleeing Garance through the crowd, implying that he will never be able to obtain someone who is not willing to stay back.  The issue that I have with that conclusion is that Garance is a tortured character in the second half of the movie.  Out of all the characters that make grand changes, Garance is the one who has shifted perspectives the most.  She traditionally plays with men like cats and mice.  She knows that this innocent Baptiste, whom she acknowledges is more than she estimated after he is able to defend himself from an attacker, has a stupid schoolboy crush.  She offers herself to him not because she is desirous of him, but because she uses sex as currency.  But because she is under the thumb of a ruthless aristocrat, she sees how irresponsible she was when toying with Baptiste all those years ago.  I do think that Carne is leaving us with a mildly ambiguous take on the whole affair.  Because Garance is somehow imprisoned (despite being free from her newly extinguished protector) , Baptiste is incapable of seeing his son as he chases his mistress. Lord knows I hate Baptiste at the end of this movie.

The funny thing is that I find Frederick a far more interesting and frustrating study.  But Carne also spells out Frederick as far as his character can be taken.   He's the lovable scoundrel.  Lord knows if I ever had to work with Frederick, I would want to punch him in the throat.  I'm way more sympathetic to those authors than I am to Frederick.  That being said, it's  a fun movie when he completely derails the play for the sake of improving it from its mediocre nature.  Regardless, as fun as he is to watch, he is completely insufferable and I would go crazy if he wasn't fictional.

I keep seeing stills from Children of Paradise, which I now kind of get.  For being over three hours, it's a really simple premise.  Yet, the way it is presented is gorgeous.  I once, on a paper for a theater class, dogged on mime.  The professor got really angry at me, claiming that mime is a valued and respectable institution.  I get that now.  I'm significantly older and I try to be less clever by half.  But if you were ever to look at a movie for the aesthetics of the types of performances, Children of Paradise has the visual glory that it needs while bowing at the skill of the true artist.