I had a crush on this film before I even saw it...
Les Enfants du Paradis (1945) d. Marcel Carné
I'm going to see the restoration tonight. It will be my 15th or 16th time seeing it--I've lost count. I would always cry at the end. I saw it once at the theater in Paris that plays it continuously. But I stopped seeing it long before it became available generally on DVD. Before I had heard of a dvd. I've never watched a videotape of it. I may have watched it on TV once. You went to see it--if it was playing somewhere...like France. I had a book of the film. The cover is tattered and that's how I "saw" the film in between it's rare outings. But some time after college I saw l'Atalante by Vigo and fell in love with it instead. I would cry at the end but with delight. Still, I can recite whole scenes of Paradis in english and in french (well, at least the men's roles). Baptiste (Jean-Louis Barrault) was my obessesion. I tried to turn innocent young guys attempting to be my boyfriend into him--rather like crazed surgeon, Pierre Brasseur, in Eyes Without a Face. Speaking of Pierre, I find him, as Frédérick Lemaître, much more alluring now than pining, pale, white-faced Baptiste. Black-faced-Othello, agressive, Frédérick!
Brasseur...
who always reminded me of...
Le Pew!
Anyway, can't say more now--I have to go and fight for a premium seat not in the "paradis" of Walter Reade--and take a trip down the "Boulevard du Crime" to my old days.
And cry?
It's a big movie at 3 hours+ but with a passion like ours...
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