Is Paris Burning? (1966)
(Paris brûle-t-il?)
Country: FR/US
Technical: bw/col/2.35:1 175m
Director: René Clément
Cast: Gert Fröbe, Bruno Cremer, Claude Dauphin, Leslie Caron, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Orson Welles, Alain Delon, Daniel Gélin, Yves Montand, Simone Signoret, Kirk Douglas (as Patton), Glenn Ford (as Bradley), Anthony Perkins, Jean-Pierre Cassel
Synopsis:
With the Allies bypassing Paris, and the Resistance increasingly factionalized within it, Hitler sends a new Commander to oversee its defence and potential destruction.
Review:
Anchored by Fröbe's outstanding performance as the reasonable German General, this international Paramount production (scripted by Coppola and Gore Vidal, no less) drew much critical contempt at the time. Shot in black and white, presumably the better to integrate its archive footage, it seems to be aping the format of Fox's The Longest Day while lurches of tone and throwaway lines at times take it closer to Autant-Lara's La traversée de Paris. So while we might wince at Perkins's G.I. cum tourist, firing one bazooka shell at a Panzer before retiring to a bar without securing the area, there are occasional plums to be had from this oversized pudding: Welles as the soft-spoken Swedish consul, Caron's distraught wife of condemned résistant, Pierre Vaneck's tense crossing of the Allied lines, even Jarre's marvellously pastiche score.
(Paris brûle-t-il?)
Country: FR/US
Technical: bw/col/2.35:1 175m
Director: René Clément
Cast: Gert Fröbe, Bruno Cremer, Claude Dauphin, Leslie Caron, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Orson Welles, Alain Delon, Daniel Gélin, Yves Montand, Simone Signoret, Kirk Douglas (as Patton), Glenn Ford (as Bradley), Anthony Perkins, Jean-Pierre Cassel
Synopsis:
With the Allies bypassing Paris, and the Resistance increasingly factionalized within it, Hitler sends a new Commander to oversee its defence and potential destruction.
Review:
Anchored by Fröbe's outstanding performance as the reasonable German General, this international Paramount production (scripted by Coppola and Gore Vidal, no less) drew much critical contempt at the time. Shot in black and white, presumably the better to integrate its archive footage, it seems to be aping the format of Fox's The Longest Day while lurches of tone and throwaway lines at times take it closer to Autant-Lara's La traversée de Paris. So while we might wince at Perkins's G.I. cum tourist, firing one bazooka shell at a Panzer before retiring to a bar without securing the area, there are occasional plums to be had from this oversized pudding: Welles as the soft-spoken Swedish consul, Caron's distraught wife of condemned résistant, Pierre Vaneck's tense crossing of the Allied lines, even Jarre's marvellously pastiche score.
(Paris brûle-t-il?)
Country: FR/US
Technical: bw/col/2.35:1 175m
Director: René Clément
Cast: Gert Fröbe, Bruno Cremer, Claude Dauphin, Leslie Caron, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Orson Welles, Alain Delon, Daniel Gélin, Yves Montand, Simone Signoret, Kirk Douglas (as Patton), Glenn Ford (as Bradley), Anthony Perkins, Jean-Pierre Cassel
Synopsis:
With the Allies bypassing Paris, and the Resistance increasingly factionalized within it, Hitler sends a new Commander to oversee its defence and potential destruction.
Review:
Anchored by Fröbe's outstanding performance as the reasonable German General, this international Paramount production (scripted by Coppola and Gore Vidal, no less) drew much critical contempt at the time. Shot in black and white, presumably the better to integrate its archive footage, it seems to be aping the format of Fox's The Longest Day while lurches of tone and throwaway lines at times take it closer to Autant-Lara's La traversée de Paris. So while we might wince at Perkins's G.I. cum tourist, firing one bazooka shell at a Panzer before retiring to a bar without securing the area, there are occasional plums to be had from this oversized pudding: Welles as the soft-spoken Swedish consul, Caron's distraught wife of condemned résistant, Pierre Vaneck's tense crossing of the Allied lines, even Jarre's marvellously pastiche score.