Les enfants du Paradis 3: “L’amour est simple” September 18, 2006

After escaping the Rouge Gorge, Baptiste (Jean-Louis Barrault) and Garance (Arletty) muse on their lives and love:

Arletty (1898-1992), who plays Garance, worked in a factory as a child before becoming a model. On the third day of World War I her lover was killed, and the future actress swore she’d never get married “nor to become a war widow or, what would be worse, the mother of a soldier.”

Her career suffered a severe setback owing to a liaison with a German officer during the Occupation. For liberated France, she became the symbol of treason or what was called “horizontal collaboration,” and for that she had to pay. She was arrested and sent to prison where she spent 120 days.

In December 1944 she was put under house arrest for another two years and condemned to three years’ work suspension. She was not invited to the premiere of Les enfants du paradis in March 1945, which led Jean Sadoul to write: “Arletty bid farewell to the screen with the best role of her career.” Once her work restriction lifted, however, she did return to the screen, and also acted on stage before blindness forced her to retire in the early 1960s.

More of Les Enfants du Paradis.

Technorati tags: Les Enfants du Paradis, Children of Paradise, French cinema, Marcel Carné, Jacques Prévert, Arletty, Jean-Louis Barrault.