This was 76-year-old director Christian-Jacque's last film before his retirement, and it is dedicated to one of his contemporaries, Marcel Carne. Carne's film history is extolled through clips from some of his award-winning or acclaimed works such as Nogent, Eldorado du Dimanche (1929), Le Jour Se Leve (1939), and Les Enfants du Paradise (1945). This last film was the first to be shown in France after World War II and marks the high point of Carne's collaboration with screenwriter and poet Jacques Prevert. Four years later they had a falling out and ended their professional association. Interviews with Carne's later associates and clips from his post-1950 films unwittingly show his career in decline, when his studio-bound style of filmmaking was outpaced by the New Wave cinema and location shooting that came into vogue at that time. Carne also briefly appears in an interview, and Yves Montand comments on the director as well.
by Eleanor Mannikka
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