Vive Le Moviemaking!

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

TITLE: CHILDREN OF PARADISE: SHOOTING A DREAM

AUTHOR: STEVEN EPP, FELICITY JONES, DOMINIQUE SERRAND AND PAUL WALSH

WHERE: THEATRE DE LA JEUNE LUNE, MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA

THE BOTTOM LINE: The story behind the making of a screen masterpiece proves poignant and gripping onstage.

When Germany invaded his country, the choices confronting French director Marcel Carne were stark: he could stay and make movies as though nothing were happening and be accused of collaborating, or he could flee to someplace where he could not speak the language well enough to create. Carne stayed. The chief result, Les Enfants du Paradis (1945), is a splendid sentimental tribute to 19th century populist theater, and to the acrobats, clowns, pantomimists and courtesans who created a street life to counter the staid classicism of the Comedie Francaise.

| The film may have looked escapist at the time. But its central themes -- the conflicting claims of loyalty, ambition and love, the psychic links between the artist-outsider and the outlaw, the irrational constraints imposed on performers by aesthetic dunces in high places -- had immediate relevance for Carne and his colleagues. Now a wonderfully imaginative troupe of French origin, settled for more than a decade in Minneapolis, has found the melodrama surrounding the making of the movie just as rich a wellspring.

Children of Paradise: Shooting the Dream is an intricately layered celebration of the street shows Carne admired, a re-enactment of much of his movie, a backstage soap opera about his colleagues, a moral assessment of the choices they faced and a paean to their enduring impact. It starts by hemming spectators into the lobby of the Theatre de la Jeune Lune's gorgeous new $3 million home, where they are jostled by pickpockets and a woman on stilts during a raucous raree, full of the horseplay and menace of Carne's "street of many murders." Once the action moves inside, there is more striking symbolism. In one nearly metaphysical moment, an actor playing part of the film's crew ponders a tiny model of the set while nearby a half-size version is used for exteriors as a full-sized one awaits interior scenes.

The initial aura of mystery fades, but the story -- of a studio abandoned as the puppet government sags toward collapse, of company members mysteriously beaten or sacked or just disappearing, of a leading lady sentenced to death for consorting with a German officer -- is fascinating and mainly factual.

It triumphs over mediocre acting. In a cast of 23, the only strong playing comes from Dominique Serrand (also the play's director and coauthor) as Carne, coauthor Felicity Jones as leading lady Arletty and set designer Vincent Gracieux as screenwriter Jacques Prevert. Their brainchild is one of the foremost efforts this year on any U.S. regional stage. By a marvel of foresight, it will live further as the first-ever "import" into Yale Repertory Theater's season just after the Minneapolis run ends on Jan. 9.