IS PARIS BURNING?
France, 1966, 175 minutes, Black and white.
Jean- Paul Belmondo, Charles Boyer, Leslie Caron, Jean- Pierre Cassell, George Chakiris, Bruno Cremer, Claude Dauphin, Alain Delon, Kirk Douglas, Pierre Dax, Glenn Ford, Gert Frobe, Daniel Gelin, Yves Montand, Anthony Perkins, Michel Piccoli, Claude Rich, Simone Signoret, Robert Stack, Jean- Louis Trintignant, Orson Welles.
Directed by Rene Clement.
An ambitious attempt in the sixties to remember World War II and pay tribute to the French Resistance. The film was an international co-production and the director was Rene Clement, veteran director of so many thrillers including Full Sun, Rider on the Rain. The screenplay was basically written by novelist and playwright Gore Vidal and Francis Ford Coppola before his success with The Godfather and Apocalypse Now. An international cast was assembled led by Orson Welles and Leslie Caron.
The film traces the experience of the French Resistance (using Yves Montand and Simone Signoret amongst others to highlight the patriotism and the American invasion, with Kirk Douglas, Glen Ford, Anthony Perkins and others. Gert Frobe has a good role as the German commander faced with Hitler's decision to destroy Paris. The film with so much interesting material, fails to satisfy fully because it in a vast panorama which keeps moving but does not fully engage its audience.
Photographed in black and white and Panavision (with a final coloured sequence), the film has a score by Maurice Jarre (Lawrence of Arabia, Dr Zhivago). The film, however, has the value of being an interesting re-creation of a period and an attempt to pay tribute to an important part of World War II.
1. Was this a good war film? Comment on its style: the wide sweep of its story line, its documentary style, its use of newsreels, black and white photography, the patriotic and exuberant style of music?
2. The impact of the pre-amble: Hitler and the phone call to Paris? What audience response is evoked by this call by a man intending to destroy such a capital? This was fact of the 40s, does this make its impact more pressing?
3. Audience response to the General who had the mission to destroy Paris? Could an audience identify with a man given this commission? How did he carry out his mission, his changing attitudes? Audience response to this change?
4. The significance of Paris: as a city, with its people, its beauty, its art treasures? Paris as a symbol of beauty being destroyed, Nazi mindless power struggle? The importance of the Swedish Consul in this connection? The later significance of the Bayeux tapestry as a comment on war and beauty?
5. Did the film communicate the reality of World War II in France? How? What did the film have to say about war and its being waged?
6. How did the film show the French? Sympathetically? As an occupied people, as building up a Resistance? France's place in history and its history of invasions and war? The morale of the French? The uniting of extremes in opposition to the Nazis, eg Catholics and Communists?
12. How did the film present the American Generals, Bradley? How intelligent were the American Generals? How good as soldiers? Was their importance in the war rightly presented? Comment on the presentation of General De Gaulle.
13. The impact of the American approach, the ordinary soldiers, the French jubilation, the impact of the death of the ordinary soldier played by Anthony Perkins? What comment on war, suffering, liberation did these sequences make?
14. The suspense about the destruction of Paris, the plans for its destruction, the failure to carry out the orders? The nature of the surrender by the Germans? What would have happened had Paris been destroyed? For the French? For the Germans? For the World?
15. What insight into the nature of war and destruction do the answers to these questions give?
16. What was the ultimate significance of the film? as a reminder of war, as an insight into the present century? Critics said that the film did not live up to its intentions. What was its overall impact?
