96
Metascore
20 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100Time OutJoshua RothkopfTime OutJoshua RothkopfCarné's film has never looked more lush.
- 100Miami HeraldRene RodriguezMiami HeraldRene RodriguezSeydoux says that when the film was completed and released shortly after the end of the war, it became a symbol of freedom.
- A breathtaking study of the relationships between life and theater, mime and tragedy, the real and the imagined, sound and silence. It runs 187 minutes, and it's worth every one of them.
- 100Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertChicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertFew achievements in the world of cinema can equal it.
- 90Village VoiceMelissa AndersonVillage VoiceMelissa AndersonWhat's left to be said about Marcel Carné's towering intimate epic of early 19th-century love and the lives of performers, often heralded as the greatest French film of all time?
- The movie's final parting sequence, where Arletty rides away in a coach and Barrault is inexorably swept in the opposite direction by a swirling crowd, is among the peaks of romantic cinema.
- 88Slant MagazineEd GonzalezSlant MagazineEd GonzalezCarné’s France, unlike the fiddle-dee-dee of Victor Fleming’s cotton pickin’ South, is a poetic realist’s wonderland, a gateway to a dreamworld where human laws are mere judicial errors and love is so painful to hold onto it can only be savored in the moment.
- 80Time OutTime OutCarné’s camera records rather than amplifies the emotions: you can’t help but wonder what magic a René Clair, a Max Ophüls or a Jean Renoir would have found in this material. Its clamorous closing shot – which suggests, but doesn’t show, tragedy – is one of the greatest in all cinema.
- 75Washington PostDesson ThomsonWashington PostDesson ThomsonTo TV-raised minds, Paradise spends more time than it needs to get where it's going. But in its own terms, the movie has flashes of oldtime magic. It's a precious piece of time past -- and time kept.
- 70The New York TimesBosley CrowtherThe New York TimesBosley CrowtherM. Carne has created a frequently captivating film which has moments of great beauty in it and some performances of exquisite note.