Is Paris Burning? (1966)

This big-budget, star-studded epic 1966 French film features well-known actors from both Europe and America in the story of the final battles over the liberation of Paris at the end of the Second World War. Is Paris Burning? tells the story from all perspectives, from the Nazis to the French resistance, allowing for star turns and cameos from an illustrious group of actors, including Jean-Paul Belmondo (Breathless), Kirk Douglas (Spartacus), Orson Welles (The Third Man), Leslie Caron, Glenn Ford, Charles Boyer, Anthony Perkins, and many others. As the members of the resistance fight for control of the city, the Nazis order the commander in Paris (Gert Fröbe) to burn the city if the resistance gains the upper hand. Written for the screen by author Gore Vidal and filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, director René Clément's film hearkens back to the star-filled epics of America's heyday while retaining a modern French sensibility. --Robert Lane Amazon.com

Did it really happen??

Remember this movie from years ago(60) Still worth seeing Paris as it was in 1944. Should serve as a reminder that these things are still going on today. August 28, 2008

The Liberation of Paris...

1966's "Is Paris Burning?" was one of several ensemble 1960's movie epics commemorating the Allied victory in World War II. It was based on the historical account by Larry Collins and Dominique LaPierre of the liberation of Paris from Nazi occupation in 1944.

This is a French production and its cast and point of view are largely French. At the start of the film, Hitler appoints a new German commander in Paris (Gert Frobe, Goldfinger from the James Bond movie) who is directed to burn the city if Allied liberation is likely. The French resistance, with the Allies ashore in Normandy, debate among its factions about when to rise up and seize the City. In the event, several factions start on their own; the result is fighting over control of the public buildings in the center of Paris. The Swedish diplomatic representative (Orson Welles in an extended cameo) arranges a temporary ceasefire while the resistance seeks an assurance of Allied military help.

The Allies had planned to bypass Paris in pursuit of retreating German Armies, but the uprising forces their hand. General Omar Bradley (Glenn Ford in a cameo) releases the French 2nd Armored Division and U.S. 4th Infantry Division to go to Paris. The stage is set for a race to the finish, as the Germans methodically lay demolitions charges around Paris while trying to hold off the resistance and the Allies.

The cinematography is crisp black and white, intercut with actual combat footage from the war. The movie is a virtual tour of Paris. The cast must have included every prominent French actor of the time, whose lines are (mostly) seamlessly dubbed into English. The joyous hysteria that accompanied the liberation is nicely captured, with scenes of French soldiers slipping off tanks to call ahead to parents they have not seen since 1940. Maurice Jarre's distinctive musical score helps carry the storyline.

This movie has rather been forgotten over the years. It certainly deserves another look; this movie is highly recommended to fans of the World War II genre. March 3, 2008

For WWII History Buffs

The quality of the production isn't the best, but if you are a World War II history buff, you will love this DVD. December 12, 2007

Despite Its Flaws

And it has many...it is star gazing on a grand scale. Only the Hubble or The Longest Day can show you more. September 12, 2007

A city on the edge of destruction

If the tagline for It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World was `Everyone whose ever been funny is in it,' then Rene Clement's epic could almost lay claim that `Anyone who's ever been French is in it,' assembling Alain Delon, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Charles Boyer, Leslie Caron, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Yves Montand, Simone Signoret, Michel Piccoli, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Claude Rich and others (Paul Crauchet, Bernard Fresson, Michel Lonsdale, Patrick Dewaere and Albert Remy can also be spotted if you look hard enough) in a spectacular retelling of the Liberation of Paris. While the French producers intended a great patriotic celebration of the deliverance of the capitol under the threat of total destruction after Hitler ordered nothing be left of the city but ruins, Paramount, who picked up the bulk of the tab, saw it as another Longest Day and padded out the American roles with largely blink-and-you'll-miss-`em cameos by Kirk Douglas, Glenn Ford, Anthony Perkins and Robert Stack. Of the non-French top-liners it's only Orson Welles as the Swedish consul Nordling, frantically trying to avoid unnecessary bloodshed through negotiation, and Gert Frobe as General Von Choltitz, the general tasked with defending or destroying the city, who play a major role in the film. Their scenes easily the best in the somewhat disjointed picture, never lapsing into simple stereotyping and giving a credible face to history.

To be fair, most of the heavyweight French cast are not much more than slightly larger cameos, with the bulk of the film falling on lesser-billed Bruno Cremer and Peter Vaneck's shoulders, although both characters do bring to light the fact that somewhere along the way the film got somewhat depoliticised from Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre's superb book - both Colonel Rol-Tanguy and Major Gallois/Cocteau were key figures in the communist resistance, though you'd never know it from the film. Although the involvement of communists in the Liberation of the city is briefly acknowledged and the De Gaullist figures often identified as such, the left don't fare so well: ironic considering one of the strengths of the book was in showing the political infighting and jockeying for position between the De Gaullists and the communist resistance, with the armed rising a consequence of each side ignoring the Allies' strategy so that they could claim they led the Liberation in an escalating game of oneupmanship. Collaboration barely gets a mention either: this is predominantly triumphalist in tone, and as such its often very effective, with several sections carrying a real surge of jubilation as the people take their city back. (However, the involvement of black troops and resistance fighters on the French side is very briefly acknowledged.)

Although primarily credited to Gore Vidal and Francis Ford Coppola, the script was the result of several writers - alongside Marcel Moussy and Beate von Molo, Jean Aurenche, Pierre Bost and Claude Brulé also contributed - and there are a few somewhat jarring shifts in style as a result. Despite the political dilution that one suspects was a consequence of getting both the essential co-operation from de Gaulle's government and the equally essential dollars from Paramount, it does a good job of making the constantly shifting strategies and increasingly chaotic events accessible while keeping the momentum up, but as with most spot-the-star WW2 epics, it's the vignettes that stick most firmly in the mind: a German soldier, his uniform still smouldering, staggering away from a blown-up truck only to be ignored by a businessman blithely going to work as if nothing were happening; a female resistance worker delivering instructions for the uprising being offered a lift by an unsuspecting German officer after her bike gets a puncture; French soldiers picking off Germans from an apartment whole the little old lady who lives there excitedly watches while drinking her tea; Jean-Paul Belmondo and Marie Versini crawling across a road with their bikes to avoid snipers while a gay man walking his dog watches, before going on to liberate the seat of government without a shot being fired because the civil servants there habitually do what they're told by anyone in authority; an armoured unit getting a dozen different directions to their destination by Parisians; SS men casually looking through Von Choltitz's papers out of force of habit; and the general suddenly finding himself alone in a restaurant as the bells of Paris ring out for the first time in four years to proclaim the Allies' arrival.

The Americans don't fare as well, all-too obviously being there simply for marquee value (the prominently billed George Chakhiris is in it for less than 30 seconds!), although Anthony Perkins' soldier acting more like a tourist is at least memorable, while most of the German regulars - Gunther Meisner, Karl-Otto Alberty, Wolfgang Preiss, Hannes Messemer - are pretty much stuck in their usual bad/good German roles from every other war movie they ever made (that said, it's a surprise Anton Diffring didn't get an invite as well!). In many ways the two real stars of the film are the city of Paris and Maurice Jarre's excellent score, the film's only real constant factors as the stars come and go and events move forward. For the most part the film avoids the tourist shots with a great use of locations, giving a sense of a place where people actually live and die, while Jarre's score manages to counterpoint a militant piano-led theme for the Nazi Occupation with an increasingly stirring resistance theme that constantly runs underneath it, gradually working its way out of hiding and constantly gaining ascendancy before finally flowering into a vivid and triumphant waltz for the Liberation.

A somewhat ill-fated production - producer Paul Graetz died of a heart attack during filming - it was a huge but much-criticized success in France but a conspicuous box-office failure everywhere else, with Paramount swearing off the epic genre for decades to come and Rene Clement's career never really recovering: his last major film, he wouldn't work again for another three years and only made four more films. Best remembered today for Plein Soleil/Purple Noon, Clement was a logical choice for the film, having had earlier had much success with previous WW2 films La Bataille du Rail, about the French resistance on the railway network, and the Oscar-winning Jeux Interdit/Forbidden Games, and his direction is for the most part superb, be it the control of a chillingly formal tracking shot along a railway platform casually revealing and passing a dead body or the edgy hand-held work during some of the makeshift street fights. Although the decision to film in black and white which would hurt the film so much at the box-office and on television was reputedly forced on the film by the French government's refusal to allow the film to fly red and black Nazi flags over the city (grey and black, however, were permitted), it works to the film's advantage, not only allowing it to incorporate genuine archive footage a little more skilfully than is the norm but also gives it a more verite feel thanks to Marcel Grignon's naturalistic photography. If at times this feels less like the classic it could have been and more like the best film that could be made under the political and financial circumstances, it's still an impressive and occasionally compelling recreation of a unique moment in history that deserves to be at least a little better known and better regarded than it is.

Unfortunately Paramount's DVD is a bit ill-starred itself. Although several behind the scenes documentaries and trailers exist, the fact that the DVD is extras-free is less problematic than the soundtrack. If you choose the English soundtrack, you have some highly variable dubbing of most of the French and German cast (although Frobe is well-dubbed here by Michael Collins, his `voice' from Goldfinger), but if you opt for the French soundtrack you have the equally variable dubbing of the German and American actors (though Georges Aminel does a strikingly good job of dubbing Welles on the French version). Just to add to the confusion, Hitler's dialogue is all in subtitled German, although in all the other scenes the Germans all speak English! Switching between the languages is a solution of sorts, but an irritating one. Still, at least the DVD preserves the widescreen format and the overture and intermission. August 19, 2007

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