Brennt Paris?

Do not listen to the naysayers. There is nothing confusing about this movie, unless you got into it thinking it would be MISSING IN ACTION part 17. The cast is stellar and the performances are solid. It mixed real-life documentary footage with staged performances, giving it a very realistic feeling. If you loved THE LONGEST DAY, you will love this movie. Highly recommended.

The film concerns about the Allies advance on Paris during WWII, in a remarkable act of courage, several French Resistance groups(Bruno Cremer,Alain Delon,Jean Paul Belmondo,Georges Geret,Bernard Fresson, among others) confront to regain Paris from the Nazis, who rule tyrannically the city and detailing the last days before the liberation. The German general in charge Von Choltitz (Get Froebe) is under direct orders from Hitler to destroy Paris, rather than left to the Allied, commanded by general Omar Bradley(Glenn Ford) and general Patton(Kirk Douglas) . But the Resistance fighters eventually take over Paris and Van Choltitz decides not to burn the city but to let intact to the liberators , as he thought which destroying it no useful for the future like a mankind legacy.

This is a spectacular pseudo-documentary style developing the liberation of Paris with the Resistance factions and tryings to burn the city by Nazy hierarchy . It's a co-production French and Paramount US with a plethora of international actors, many of them playing cameos and prestigious intervention. Special mention to Bruno Cremer as Resistance chief , Orson Welles as Sweden consul and Leslie Caron as fighter wishing to free her husband. The short details-characters about Resistance leaders only for a minutes are based on the stories of real-life people. Appear historical characters well incarnated by famous players Omar Bradley(Glenn Ford),George Patton(Kirk Douglas) General Lecrec(Claude Rich), Von Choltitz(Get Froebe), among others. The title movie comes from the continuous phone calls realized by Hitler to Von Choltitz that always began with : It's Paris burning ?. The movie was filmed in atmospheric black and white which allow the edition adding actual-life footage but also the main reason was the German swastikas flags but the French Mayor rejected to let the black and red in Paris and they would agree sole to gray and black version of flag that looked real when shot.

The motion picture displays an interesting script by Gore Vidal and Francis Ford Coppola, based on Larry Collins and Dominic Pierre novel who give you a much better perspective about role each Resistance faction played in the Paris liberation. The picture was deservedly nominated to Academy Award for best Art Direction, and best cinematography by Marcel Grignon, though didn't achieve none. The movie is professionally directed by Rene Clement, though sometimes is confuse and contains some flaws.

This film was a notorious turkey in 1966, but thanks to the recent DVD release it can be re-evaluated. It still doesn't come anywhere near classic status, but now we can see it in a format at least a little closer to how it should have been seen in the first place.

First, the dubbing -- the original theatrical release, which is the version released on VHS, is the single greatest case for subtitles in the history of film. It was execrable. On DVD, in French with English subtitles, the rhythms of the language are preserved and the distraction of having lip movement and the soundtrack so totally at odds with each other is gone. Unfortunately, the French track runs through the sequences featuring American stars, and that's a little disconcerting (though the French actor who dubbed Orson Welles does a very good Orson Welles impression). The solution of switching language tracks is inelegant, but useful. And there is no German track for the sequences featuring Gert Frobe. A better solution would have been to go the route of THE LONGEST DAY and run each sequence in the appropriate language with appropriate subtitles, but this film did not have a Darryl F. Zanuck producing it, willing to make those hard choices.

Second -- the screen format. Again, the VHS release was not letterboxed, and many of the shots and sequences demand the 2.35:1 ratio, particularly in the shots when the Resistance raises the French flag over the Prefecture of Police and Notre Dame. The VHS version is like going to Paris and looking at everything you see through a cardboard toilet paper tube.

What they couldn't do anything about in the DVD release was the "all-star" American actor casting. Kirk Douglas looks nothing like George Patton, and they made no effort to even try. Glenn Ford could have looked more like Omar Bradley with a little more attention to makeup, but when you're only in a couple of shots, and maybe working a couple of days, hey, why bother, right? At least with Orson Welles as Nordling and Robert Stack as Sibert we don't have the baggage of comparing a historic image to the image of the actor.

The biggest complaint about this movie was that it was confusing -- well, yes, but they were confusing times, which this movie brings out very well. But to the French a lot of the characters like Colonel Rol and General Leclerc are legendary. No real explanation of who they were and what they did is needed, like Patton would be to an American audience. So you really do have to know some of the background already. But for an American audience it is a lot easier if you don't try to keep straight who's who among the Resistance as long as you get the point, which IS clear, that there were several groups at odds with each other in the days before the Liberation and finally they were able to force the hand of the Allied generals and get them to change their strategy.

This film is basically a victim of American ethnocentrism. As an illustration: a while back I was visiting England not long after the film version of ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN had been released, and it was shown on the flight over. At one point while I was there I was discussing the film with our English hosts, and they made the telling point that they never could understand what all the fuss about Watergate was about anyway. In Great Britain, a simple vote of no confidence would have been put to Parliament and the government would have been turned out in a Knightsbridge minute. In IS PARIS BURNING?, Americans have no idea of what Nordling (Orson Welles) is talking about when he asks the German General Choltitz (Gert Frobe) if he is prepared to take the responsibility for destroying a thousand years of culture, and mentions Notre Dame and Sainte-Chappelle. We all know Notre Dame (or think we do, hunchbacks and all that), but Sainte-Chappelle? Ay, there's the rub. Most Americans don't know that Sainte-Chappelle is the absolute jewel of High Gothic (13th century) architecture. Where Notre Dame is imposing and overwhelming, Sainte-Chappelle is elegant and delicate. And most Americans are not aware that Choltitz is one of the most interesting figures of the war. He had a reputation for being a very efficient destroyer of cities, which is why Hitler gave him the job in the first place -- Rotterdam is not mentioned in the film, though Stalingrad is -- but his face-to-face interview with Hitler when he was given the assignment for Paris convinced him that Hitler had completely lost his mind. His disobedience of the Fuhrer's order meant he was shunned by Wehrmacht veterans after the war, but he saved Paris.

But if you forget the "hey-there" stunt casting ("Hey there, it's Kirk Douglas! Hey there, it's Orson Welles!") and forget trying to identify every single character in every single plot thread, and instead view Paris itself as the central character around which everything else revolves, then IS PARIS BURNING? can be a very rewarding film.

Paul Wilson, Theatre Department, Methodist College, Fayetteville, NC

This is a good movie, but only if you have read the book. Otherwise, it would appear to be muddled and difficult to follow. There were so many different resistance factions operating in Paris at the time of the liberation it is difficult to keep them straight. The movie doesn't help you in that regard. Reading the book gives you a much better perspective on the part each faction played in the liberation.

The little vignettes you see with characters appearing in the film for only a few minutes are all true. Unfortunately, they don't always make sense to an uninformed viewer and they give the viewer the sense of a badly edited film.

The true story of the last few days before the liberation is extremely remarkable. Hitler sent a hard core general he trusted to destroy Paris. It is incredible that he disobeyed orders and saved the city.

What I really loved about the movie was the city itself. It is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. The film was shot mostly in the actual locations where the events portrayed took place. As a lover of history, I have been fortunate to have visited Paris more than once and walked these locations fully aware of what happened there. That makes this movie special for me. But, the film does have problems.

Besides being a bit disjointed, the French and German dialog were dubbed in English. It would have been better with subtitles, although many of the same actors did their own English dubbing. The film is in black and white, which doesn't bother me, but it might have been better in color. One of the main reasons for B&W was the Nazi flags. The French authorities refused to allow red and black Nazi flags to fly in Paris, even for a movie. They agreed only to have black and gray flags. But the black and white filming also allowed the blending of authentic war footage with the movie. Also remember that another similar film, The Longest Day, was shot a couple of years earlier in B&W.

The film is filled with a small army of great international actors. That was fun, although I didn't buy Kirk Douglas as General Patton. Gert Frobe (Goldfinger) was excellent as the German general in charge of Paris and Charles Boyer was also excellent in his small role. The music was composed by Maurice Jarre and is just wonderful. Whenever I am in Paris, the music continually runs through my head. As a side note, Jarre obviously borrowed much of this soundtrack for use in "Grand Prix".

In short, this is a historical movie rather than a great film. I recommend you read the book to get the full impact of the movie. But understand this remarkable story of the liberation is stranger than fiction, which makes it a good read. And, if you ever visit Paris the movie will take on a whole new perspective.

I made my first trip to Paris this past year. There are remembrances of World War Two on nearly every street corner, plaques with the names of resistance fighters who died during the war and during the Liberation. And France's military history is also on display, from monuments to Louis XIII, to Napoleon, and to their Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe. As Americans we forget sometimes that the French army lost millions during World War One, and struggled with how to fight the Second World War. Losing Paris was a humiliating defeat that the Free French army needed desperately to avenge. This film does a pretty engaging job of telling the story from a French point of view. Like many war films from the time it's a little too long, some celebrity cameos are miscast, and some facts and events are abridged. But unlike some other films from the period, it has some humor, and some great pathos. There's also great footage of the real liberation intercut with the narrative. If you've ever been to Paris, it's a beautiful travelogue of all the famous public spaces, seen through eyes from 1945 and 1966. I can only imagine seeing it in widescreen, and I hope to get a non-dubbed version soon.