Marcel Carné was a celebrity of his age, ranking with his predecessor Jean Renoir as amongst France’s finest. Now, here on our hostile little island, he is practically unheard of. The reason for his status, and the reason he is still fondly remembered by the French, is down to one film: Les Enfants du paradis (1945), an epic film produced amazingly whilst under the Nazi occupation. His success in working around the fascist oppression earned him eternal brownie-points with the public and this film concluded the ‘poetic realist’ cinematic movement that had been drifting idly around France leading up to the war. The movement was gritty but fantastical and after the Nazis had been quashed, Carné began to depart from its lofty poetry. Moving through the 50s and 60s, as the French New Wave was having its high-and-mighty way with French cinema, his films became noticeably more grounded. Unfortunately, just about the time the French were ready for fantasy. Carné made several films during this time, which were mainly poorly received but are now beginning to be rediscovered in a new historical light. Two of these works are set for released for the first time on DVD in March by Optimum, finally giving us islanders a first look.

The first is Thérèse Raquin (1953), a noir-ish thriller about a bored housewife whose trucker boyfriend (note: a foreigner) kills her disabled husband in a moment of lust-driven rage. As implied, comedy does not ensue and instead Carné gives us a bitter tale of love in all the wrong places. It is less social or existential than some of his New Wave neighbour’s films, focusing on the suspense as the driving force of the story (much like the work of contemporary Henri Georges Clouzot). Perhaps the key to the film’s charisma (as with much of his work) is the casting, particularly in the supporting roles. Two forgotten legends give stirring performances from the sidelines: Sylvie as the classic mother-in-law bitch and Roland LeSaffre as the shell-shocked veteran. LeSaffre especially gives immense life to the picture, and featuring also in the second of Carné’s late releases, is desperately in need of becoming a poster boy.

L’Air de Paris (1954), in which LeSaffre returns as a poor boxer struggling to make his way under the wing of Jean Gabin (the acting patriarch of poetic realism), is another flick in which he makes his sinewy blond masculinity clear. The film is a simple rags-to-riches tale with a couple of dizzy dames and training montages thrown in but still has that postwar feel. Carné represents Paris as a place suffocating under the pomp of the bourgeois, where the hope of real achievement lies at the margins. The film is much more Hollywood than his prewar ramblings but still retains a bravado which is strictly Parisian. Unsuccessful in France, we wait to see how it will be received by us Anglo-kids, raised on Rocky Balbao, finding it for the first time.

Marcel Carné will by no means be remembered as being the same kind of prolific genius as Renoir, but he is a key contributor to France’s Golden Age of cinema. Whilst Les Enfants du paradis is still being venerated, there is a hope that his later works will be rediscovered, or rather discovered, today. In the meantime though, watching a film that still does not have a Wikipedia page can definitely be harnessed to impress your mates.

Words > Joe Bedford