Children of Paradise(Les Enfants du Paradis)

Time Out by

Carné’s camera records rather than amplifies the emotions: you can’t help but wonder what magic a René Clair, a Max Ophüls or a Jean Renoir would have found in this material. Its clamorous closing shot – which suggests, but doesn’t show, tragedy – is one of the greatest in all cinema.

The New York Times by Bosley Crowther

M. Carne has created a frequently captivating film which has moments of great beauty in it and some performances of exquisite note.

Washington Post by Desson Thomson

To TV-raised minds, Paradise spends more time than it needs to get where it's going. But in its own terms, the movie has flashes of oldtime magic. It's a precious piece of time past -- and time kept.

Slant Magazine by Ed Gonzalez

Carné’s France, unlike the fiddle-dee-dee of Victor Fleming’s cotton pickin’ South, is a poetic realist’s wonderland, a gateway to a dreamworld where human laws are mere judicial errors and love is so painful to hold onto it can only be savored in the moment.

Time Out by Joshua Rothkopf

Carné's film has never looked more lush.

Village Voice by Melissa Anderson

What's left to be said about Marcel Carné's towering intimate epic of early 19th-century love and the lives of performers, often heralded as the greatest French film of all time?

Miami Herald by Rene Rodriguez

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

Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert

Few achievements in the world of cinema can equal it.