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41 out of 48 people found the following review useful: Paris is the star of this film, not the "stars", 4 January 2004 Author: Paul F. Wilson (pwilson3@nc.rr.com) from Fayetteville, NC
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
22 out of 24 people found the following review useful: Pretty Epic French WWII Film with Shaky Narrative, 5 April 2005 Author: SgtSlaughter from St. Davids, Pennsylvania, USA
Director Rene Clement brings together the finest French, American and German actors of the 1960s for a rather muddled historical epic. Released in 1966, "Is Paris Burning?" is a rather mixed bag of historical drama and confusion.In August, 1944, the Allies are closing in on Paris. Hitler (Billy Frick) orders General von Cholitz (Gert Frobe, "The Longest Day") to take command and burn the city to the ground to prevent its capture. French resistance forces within the city won't permit this to happen, and Swedish consul Nordling (Orson Welles, "The Battle of Austerlitz") convinces Choltitz to make multiple concessions, allowing the resistance to make significant gains and hold on until the armed forces arrive.The all-star cast is uniformly good, although many of the American stars have little to do. Gert Frobe is the real star of the piece. As Cholitz, he makes a strong and sympathetic character. Cholitz has to make important, difficult decisions – on one hand, he's concerned about his men's safety; on the other, he is trying to follow orders. Welles is somewhat engaging, but he disappears partway through the film without leaving a lasting impression. The script, by Francis Ford Coppola and Gore Vidal, combines several stories, allowing the host of characters little time to do much of anything. Gallois (Pierre Vaneck) and Dr. Monod (Charles Boyer) try to break out of Paris and reach the Allies; Colonel Rol (Bruno Cremer) and Chaban (Alain Delon) organize the resistance forces; Nordling and tries to free Francoise Labe's (Leslie Caron, "Father Goose") husband from a POW camp. It's hard for any of these subplots to make much on an impact, but like "The Longest Day" and "Battle of Britain", the characters are kept distinct enough that they are easy to follow, despite major time lapses between appearances.The German characters are portrayed by a host of familiar character-actors. Helmuth Schneider ("The Dirty Heroes") plays a Sergeant who throws a pessimistic Corporal (Otto Stern, "Commandos") into a detention cell; Gunter Meisner ("The Bridge at Remagen") is his usual, evil self as an SS Officer in charge of a prison train; Joachim Hansen ("The Eagle has Landed") is a moral officer who tries to help Nordling gain concessions; Wolfgang Preiss ("Von Ryan's Express") has little to do as the commander of a demolition squad; and Karl-Otto Alberty ("Battle of the Bulge") is an SS officer. The American actors tend to have clunky cameos: Kirk Douglas ("In Harm's Way"); Glenn Ford ("Casablanca Express"); Robert Stack and E.G. Marshall are all limited to one or two scenes. Anthony Perkins ("Catch-22") and Skip Ward make more of an impression as infantrymen waiting to liberate Paris.Clement handles every shot brilliantly. There are several standout scenes. One sequence has partisans ambush a German armored car. One soldier escapes, still smoldering from burns from an exploded Molotov cocktail. He proceeds to hijack a passing French car and make the driver take him to HQ, where his gruesome burns alert the neat-and-clean officers that something is not right in the city. The scene in which Francoise Labe searches for her husband amongst a throng of prisoners in especially moving, and the conclusion is brilliant and unexpected. In another scene, a French squad occupied an old woman's apartment to fire on a German barricade, as the old woman watches while preparing herself a cup of tea. In another scene SS officers arrive to secure a painting for Hitler's birthday from the Louvre, before Frobe burns down the city. Frobe informs them that the Louvre is in French hands, and they reply "But it's right across the street!" Without missing a beat, Frobe tells them to take a white flag over and see if the French will let them in. This grim humor and wit add to the human story within the big picture.A lot of attention to historical accuracy and detail went into the film's production. Costumes, from French civilian dress to military uniforms are all accurate. The exteriors are beautifully shot in and around Paris, often with excellently staged wide shots showing off the narrow streets and just how vast and battleground was. The scenes of the French resistance gathering in the streets to march on the Police Station, set to Maurice Jarre's thundering, jovial score, are most memorable. The spirit of revolution and joy of liberation is so well-portrayed that you can feel it with the characters on screen."Is Paris Burning?" suffers from annoyingly bad dubbing, overlength and a lack of focus, but these are nicks in any epic film, and cannot be avoided in order to tell such a vast story. As its heart, "Is Paris Burning?" is a fine movie about human freedom, told with brilliance and gusto.
19 out of 20 people found the following review useful: A good movie, if you have read the book, 21 August 1999 Author: Jim Corkrum from Ephrata, WA
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.
21 out of 26 people found the following review useful: Vive la Resistence, 27 March 2003 Author: Cuitlahuac (a_pleno_sol@yahoo.es) from Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain
"¿Is Paris burning?" Hitler asked this when the war was finished...A french and american co-production, it's a long movie about the french resistence. The excellent direction by Rene Clement shows one of the more importants battles in the History of war. I would like to see the director's cut version of this film. Many international stars appear in this movie like Glenn Ford, Kirk Douglas, George Chakiris, Gert Froebe, Anthony Perkins, Robert Stack, Orson Welles... but the french actors are the greats players here: Charles Boyer, Leslie Caron, Pierre Vaneck, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Simone Signoret, Claude Rich... The best of this film is Alain Delon, a wonderful actor as resistance member Chaban-Delmas, fighting for the liberty of his country. I love "Paris brûle-t-il?" because is a strong story that damns the war and tells between us a battle for the Liberty.
13 out of 14 people found the following review useful: Worth Seeing for World War II Buffs and Visitors to Paris, 23 April 2005 Author: jbetke-1 from United States
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.
9 out of 10 people found the following review useful: Exciting chronicle about Paris liberation with extraordinary plethora of famous actors, 31 January 2008 Author: ma-cortes from Santander Spain
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.
6 out of 6 people found the following review useful: What is France Without Paris?, 1 June 2006 Author: bkoganbing from Buffalo, New York
About 350 years earlier Henry of Navarre had captured just about all of France, but Paris and had been ruling as Henry IV for about five years but he decided he wasn't really king without his capital. He converted to the Catholic religion and Paris became united with the rest of the country. Henry decided that Paris was indeed worth a mass.Fast forward to 1944. Maybe militarily Paris wasn't worth that much in defeating Hitler, but for the morale of a people being liberated from a brutal conqueror it was invaluable. When the forces of the Resistance in its many branches could no longer be contained with Allied armies only days from Paris, battle plans got changed and a Free French Division under General Phillippe Leclerc went in and helped the Resistance take the city.Paris brule-t-il is the French cinema's answer to The Longest Day. It is dotted with cameos from French, German, and American film players and makes very effective use of newsreel footage blended into the finished product. You really do think you are watching an actual filmed record of the events as they happened.The lead in this film is German actor Gert Frobe, better known to audiences as James Bond nemesis Goldfinger. The film opens with him being given command of the city by Hitler himself and given very specific orders to destroy the city before it was recaptured.Frobe knows it and finally admits that the war is lost. He's concerned about what history will think of him should he do this terrible thing. He gets a direct order from Hannes Messemer playing Alfred Jodl and a reminder of what Hitler does to those who disobey him. Frobe's character General Von Choltitz died shortly after this film debuted and Jodl was executed after being tried at Nuremberg. Jean-Paul Belmondo, Alain Delon, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Yves Montand are all playing roles of Resistance members. Leslie Caron has a poignant small part as a woman trying unsuccessfully to get her husband freed before the Nazis ship him off to Germany before retreating. Americans in this film are Kirk Douglas as General Patton, Glenn Ford, as General Bradley and Robert Stack as General Siebert. Those three were put in briefly to insure some American box office in a French story. Funny no one thought of Douglas for the Patton biographical film classic four years later.Orson Welles has a much bigger part as the Swedish consul general in Paris who negotiates between the Nazis and the Resistance before the Free French Division arrives. Another one of those brilliantly executed parts by Welles he did to get money for his own projects.Director Rene Clement really made the people of Paris the star of this film. It is their tribute picture and a terrible reminder to people in every nation what it is like to live under a tyranny.
11 out of 16 people found the following review useful: A fair war picture, 10 February 2004 Author: perfectbond
Before I comment I should note that I haven't read the book nor am I that familiar with figures in the French Resistance. One thing that I did notice was that the portrayal of the Nazis in this film wasn't quite as stereotypical as in most World War II movies. Of course Hitler has to be a rug chewing psychotic but many of the other Germans were actually depicted quite humanly. Gert Frobe (Goldfinger) is very believeable even sympathetic as the General in charge of Paris. On another note the star casting works in the case of Welles (Nordling) and is pointless in the case of Kirk Douglas and Anthony Perkins. All in all a fair war picture, 6/10.
9 out of 13 people found the following review useful: A rarely portrayed WW2 account.Well done!, 15 August 1999 Author: Doug Edmond from Melbourne, Australia
This film is a very well done dramatisation of the account of the liberation of Paris in August of 1944.History buffs take note;notice the mascot names of the tanks in General Leclerc's Free French armoured division.Many had Spanish names such as "Madrid" "Teruel" & "Zaragosa" as these vehicles were manned by anti-Fascist Spanish refugee fighters who played a largely important yet mostly un-acknowledged part largely ignored by mainstream historians about the WW2 period.
3 out of 3 people found the following review useful: A city on the edge of destruction, 16 July 2007 Author: TrevorAclea from London, England
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 and others in a spectacular retelling of the Liberation of Paris. Even that was not enough for Paramount, who wanted another Longest Day and padded out the American roles with largely blink-and-you'll-miss-'em cameos by Kirk Douglas, Glenn Ford and Robert Stack. Of the non-French top-liners, only Orson Welles as the Swedish consul frantically trying to avoid unnecessary bloodshed, and Gert Frobe as the general tasked with defending or destroying the city, 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.Most of the heavyweight French cast are not much more than cameos either, with the bulk of the film falling on lesser-billed Bruno Cremer and Peter Vaneck's shoulders, although both characters highlight the fact that somewhere along the way the film got somewhat depoliticised from Collins and 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 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. 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.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 while the little old lady who lives there excitedly watches as she drinks 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 (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. 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-criticised 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, La Bataille du Rail 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.
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