Celebrating a French Classic: \'The Children of Paradise\'

Pathe CinemaPierre Brasseur, left, and Arletty in “The Children of Paradise,” the subject of a new exhibition.

PARIS â€" It has been called the best French film of all time and declared a national treasure by the United Nations.

Now Marcel Carné's 1945 masterpiece, “Les Enfants du Paradis” (The Children of Paradise), is being celebrated at an exhibition here at the Cinémathèque Française, the center devoted to the preservation, restoration and showing of films.

The exhibition brings together 300 photos, costumes, paintings, posters, musical scores, letters and other documents that capture the history of what was until then Fran ce's most expensive film (and at more than three hours, long as well).

Based on a real-life killing by the 19th-century mime Baptiste Debureau, who accidentally struck a drunk with his cane, the film is a series of interlocking stories of love and betrayal set in the Paris theater world of that time. Scenes from the film are projected on screens mounted throughout the exhibition.

At the entrance is a life-size façade modeled on Paris's Théâtre des Funambules on the “boulevard du Crime,” the nickname for the Boulevard du Temple.

Among the other highlights are a copy of the original script by Jacques Prévert, a poet as well as a screenwriter, and Carné's creative partner; a 1956 portrait in charcoal of Prévert by Picasso; maquettes by the designer Alexandre Trauner, who did most of Carné films; and Carné's folding director's chair.

There is a section explaining how Carné managed to make the film during the Nazi occupation (although it wa s released only after the liberation). He shot most of the picture in southern France, recreating the “Boulevard du Crime with a vast set of 50 facades at the Victorine studios in Nice.

The exhibition captures Carné's belief that keeping French film alive was a personal act of patriotism. “After Pétain signed the provisional armistice there were two possible postures to assume: either go into exile or work in my own country and try to show that France was not entirely vanquished,” he said in 1981. “I chose the second.”

The exhibition continues at the Cinémathèque Française until Jan. 27.