New editions of old movies is a good excuse to rewatch movies, right? So this isn’t something I’ve thought about watching, but it popped up on one of those “new in 4K” lists, and my brain went “I wanna watch that!”
I remember being scared shitless by this back in the day (but I remember the Mad parody version of this better than the actual movie).
Oh yeah! I remember that tree coming to life!
It’s been 40 years since I saw this, but some things are etched into memory.
Arrest Uri Geller!
This is so well made. I guess jump scares are frowned on these days, but this is still scary.
Well… OK… that special effect isn’t er very impressive now.
And once the Ghostbusters arrive, it’s just a whole lot less scary.
OK, I was wrong — it’s still scary! I need more pillows to hide behind!
Finally a professional!
This is a really swell horror movie. It’s an epic oddyssey — an entire journey. And while there are bits where the movie loses its tension, it’s mostly on purpose. Oh! And I appreciate how rational everybody is about the entire thing — most movies like this would spend half the running time with the woman screaming THIS CAN”T BE HAPPENING and the man having some kind of daddy issue (for Character Development purposes, of course).
t has received universal critical acclaim. “I would give up all my films to have Les Enfants du Paradis”, said nouvelle vague director François Truffaut.
It’s coming back to me now… I read a book of articles from Cahiers du Cinéma (three-ish years ago?), and they were raving about this movie there, so I got a copy.
The “paradis” they’re referring to is this — it’s slang for the balconies, and the film is about a vaudeville theatre, apparently? So perhaps an updated English title would be like, er, “Playing for the Cheap Seats”?
And… I’m not quite sure about this movie? I mean, it does have a convincing atmosphere — it reminds me of… of… Bergman? A couple decades later? Was he a fan? I can imagine he was. But… it seems a bit coldly calculated to me. At least so far. It’s about the “magic” of the theatre, and we’re introduced to all these actors and stuff that have their dreams about doing something stupendous. So we’re in the “Oscar’s genre”, really, which I’m not really that much of a fan of.
Perhaps it’ll become more compelling; I’ve just got two hours and twenty minutes to go.
That’s some bouquet.
It’s not that I’m not enjoying this, because I am. It’s beautifully filmed, and the performances are good, and the repartee is snappy. I guess I just find it hard to care for these characters? That is, they don’t really seem to have that much character? They’re broad caricatures more than anything else, I think.
It’s just impossible to recognise her through that veil!
Many of the 1,800 extras were Resistance agents using the film as daytime cover, who, until the liberation, had to mingle with some collaborators or Vichy sympathisers who were imposed on the production by the authorities.
I totally get that this is a film you’d choose if you’re French and you have to vote for “the best French movie ever”. It’s good, of course, and it’s a great tragedy, and it’s funny, but more importantly, it’s got that grand feeling going, like (for instance) Fanny & Alexander or Gone With the Wind. And quantity does have a quality all of its own.
So people in France have presumably been sat down for decades and being told “here’s this great movie”… and it is.
But while a great movie, I think it’s more about those externalities than the film itself, because there’s a bunch of French movies that are even better.
This is unusual in that it’s about a guy that’s not a Cassavetes stand-in (apparently) — instead it’s about an insufferable guy with a handlebar stache.
And unusually for a Cassavetes film, Criterion hasn’t done a release, so I had to get a Spanish DVD of this.
Gena Rowlands!
This movie seems even more improvised than Cassavetes’ movies usually are?
The first bit was *yawn* but once the film shifted to Rowlands, I’m totally riveted.
Nice bookcase!
That’s a colour scheme…
This alternates between being fascinating and being frustrating, so it’s very this.
Oh, imdb.
Exactly. This movie just isn’t that convincing. I mean… all the drama? Rowland’s quirkiness just doesn’t make sense, and Seymour Cassel is just wrong for the part of the Love Interest. (Being wrong here is part of the plot, but he just feels wrong for being the wrong Love Interest, if that makes any sense.)
One third into this movie, I thought this was some kinda genius movie, and then it’s kept on disappointing me for an hour.
It’s… interesting, though? And Rowlands is great. But…
Katherine Cassavetes is great as Moskowitz’s mother, though. Hm… Oh! Gena Rowland’s mother plays her character’s mother here? This is very meta. So Moskowitz is a standin for John Cassavetes? He sees himself like that?
So that was Cassavetes’ mother’s advice to Gena Rowlands?
Well, that makes things a lot funnier, of course.
But… I alternated between adoring this movie and being bored by it. So, er, uhm, like, let’s throw the die this way:
