Critic Reviews

Carné's film has never looked more lush.

Seydoux says that when the film was completed and released shortly after the end of the war, it became a symbol of freedom.

A breathtaking study of the relationships between life and theater, mime and tragedy, the real and the imagined, sound and silence. It runs 187 minutes, and it's worth every one of them.

Few achievements in the world of cinema can equal it.

Deliberately theatrical but nevertheless greatly indebted to French poetic realism, Children of Paradise is lovingly handled by director Carne. The entire film is crammed with incident and an intoxicating eye for detail.

The film remains an exemplary piece of popular entertainment, full of vibrancy and wit, with unforgettable characters and a delicate, bittersweet tone that considers their emotions in balance.

An unmitigated masterpiece from start to finish, Carné’s epic love story through Parisian theatreland feels as fresh and effervescent today as it must have done on its initial release, brimming with perfectly-sculpted heroes, villains and wildly imaginative set-pieces.

This lushly romantic creation, directed by Marcel Carne and written by Jacques Prevert, is a one-of-a-kind film, a sumptuous epic about the relations between theatre and life.

As a piece of romantic/dramatic cinema, its peers are few, its superiors simply nonexistent.

The writing is utterly involving; with lines like tiny, imagist poems. A rich and delicious movie treat.