Rating: 
Summary: Absolutely the best film I have ever seen
Review: Views on society...Views on Religion...Views on Relationships and Love... Views on the arts... This film made me so involved and blown away by the talent, the directing, and the sets, that I could not find my way out of the theater because I was so entranced... A+++++++
Rating:
Summary: The best movie I've ever seen
Review: I generally am someone who dislikes 'grand' style films, but this is possibly the most interesting, beautiful film ever made - it goes past genre easily. The lead female (Garance, played by Arletty) is one of my favorite female roles. I can't recommend this film enough.
Rating: 
Summary: Did We All See the Same Movie??
Review: I'm sorry, but after years of reading movie history and being told that "Children of Paradise" was a must-see; I finally rented this wretched, overrated, not to mention BORING, piece of celluloid. I read the reviews submitted by other em-mailers. You can't be serious! Barrault is a wimp, Garance is at least interesting and after a while, who cares what happens to whom? So much for the classics!
Rating:
Summary: AMAZINGLY TIMELESS
Review: All of the above reviews are correct. However, one of my favorite characters the heroine Garance's protector throughout this story is a professional assassin (not merely a murderer). He has an assistant whom he is training to become a professional. His instructions on professional conduct is typical of what makes this film such a treasure. Preceding by 40 years an analogous character played by Jack Nicholson in the movie Prizi's Honor, the assassin in 'Paradise says, "one must never kill anyone for personal reasons. That is the end of the professional's career." At some point he violates his own code. You'll have to see this incredible film to learn how he deals with the consequences. Of all the characters, the assassin is the one with most integrity. Nice, huh?
Rating:
Summary: A true masterpiece that could never be over-rated
Review: Carne's "Les Enfants du Paradis (Children of Paradise)" is worshipped in France and rather less-known in this country. A visitor to Paris will almost always find it playing. I first experienced it at the Thalia in New York, many years ago.To discuss this film with a film lover is always a wonderful experience. But its richness and complexity make it hard to describe to someone who has not seen it. Basically, it is a long and deeply absorbing love story set among actors and theater people in Paris during the last century. Beautifully written by the poet Jacques Prevert, and immaculately directed by Carne, this is one of the very few films that never disappoints. As with all great works, there is special pleasure in repeated viewings. This film is a treasure.
Rating:
Summary: The desire for real love drives all human actions
Review: This masterpiece, filmed in occupied France with a cast which included resistance workers, portrays the conflicting emotions which distract men and women from truly loving. A wonderful cast, perfectly suited to their imaginative roles, seeks happiness in the early 19th century French theater world. Through the contrasts of divergent personalities and styles, Carne strips away the superficial, yet powerful, desires and distractions of intensely individual characters to reveal the central essence and motivation at the heart of each player. Garance, the beautiful and tragic female lead, serves as the hub at the center of a grinding wheel of love and hate and jealousy. The men around her--a mime, a stage actor, a murderer, and a lonely aristocrat--fight with themselves and their worlds to discover the key which Garance holds outstretched in her delicate hand.
Rating:
Summary: A true masterpiece that could never be over-rated
Review: Carne's "Les Enfants du Paradis (Children of Paradise)" is worshipped in France and rather less-known in this country. A visitor to Paris will almost always find it playing. I first experienced it at the Thalia in New York, many years ago. To discuss this film with a film lover is always a wonderful experience. But its richness and complexity make it hard to describe to someone who has not seen it. Basically, it is a long and deeply absorbing love story set among actors and theater people in Paris during the last century. Beautifully written by the poet Jacques Prevert, and immaculately directed by Carne, this is one of the very few films that never disappoints. As with all great works, there is special pleasure in repeated viewings. This film is a treasure.
Rating: 
Summary: WARNING: It's about a mime!
Review: It's interesting how distilling a film's description to its essential description can make it sound appalling: Children of Paradise is a 3.25 hour black & white French melodrama prominently featuring a mime. Did I mention that it was French? I say these things, because it is all well and good to say this is a masterpiece, but some people will be inherently repelled by its form. Nevertheless, those that can move past the fact that the mime in question is pictured twice on the cover of the video, and thus actually place the tape in their VCR, are in for a treat. Children of Paradise is a nice juicy epic, with an amazing recreation of the mid-Nineteenth century Paris theatre district. The plot revolves around Garance, a woman surrounded by men who are drawn to her, including yes, the mime, a mockery of a performer, until he is inspired by her beauty. Other men, dastardly, flamboyant, rich, all vie for her heart, but it is the mime whose heart is true. O! Unrequited love! More mimery ensues, but the mime does have the decency to take his makeup off for some of his more complex scenes with Garance. The film neatly divides into two acts, but the consequences of a few words and gestures in the first act are devastating to the viewer when the second act rolls around. I wholeheartedly recommend this film to lovers of classic films, and, of course, to any prospective mimes.
Rating:
Summary: Five stars, each one earned.
Review: Five stars for the five leads in an amazing ensemble cast, five stars for the five plot threads that interweave nimbly and seamlessly throughout the movie, and five stars for the five-year gap between the first and second acts. This is one of the most perfect movies ever made; if the audience is willing to shelve, just for a moment, their contemporary notions of beauty and can let themselves believe that the object of all men's desire in this movie is, in fact, stunningly beautiful. That was the only hurdle I faced watching this movie on the strength of nothing but its reputation; once I allowed my factory-set notions of beauty to be swept away by the power of the film, everything fell into place. Amazingly, I had already seen a segment of the film unwittingly -- one of the pantomimes, excerpted at a National Gallery touring exhibit on clowns in art. I had been spellbound by it then, and had forgotten the name of the movie it was attached to, and was delighted to discover that the five-minute excerpt that I had found so brilliant and beautiful was accompanied by another nearly three hours (!!) of equally wonderful work. I've never had a movie of this length go by so quickly. There is no second-act lag. There is no feeling of a grind to the finish at the end, which is rare for somebody of my limited attention span. Everything fits together like clockwork -- plot, characters, direction, music, sets, costumes -- so perfectly that the thrill of seeing how the film works is as great as the narrative itself. Every once in a while you finish a movie and not only discover that you liked it, you feel compelled to make everyone you know watch it. Tally ho.
Rating:
Summary: I love the negative reviews of this film
Review: See, if you let just anyone review a film, this is what you get:
'Waaaah, it's in black and white! That's hard! Where's the Celine Deon song? Why is the director making the plot complicated by not making it a live Disney plot like Titanic.'
or
'I don't like France. They're fruity and have bad GNP because they're leftists.'
See, the problem with such reviews is that the criticism is stunted by the reviewer's own mental retardation. There are arguments to be made that this film is over-rated. I myself would not necessarily label it the 'best French film of the 20th century.' It does nevertheless present a brilliantly deep story. I know it's hard to believe that anything could be deeper than Titanic (I mean nobody even 'tragically' dies after having a quick cheap romance/fling), but this film even tops that monolith of taste and deep seated romantic emotion
Seriously though. The people who rate this film negatively have the sophistication of an oscar voter and probably have other review spread throughout this site about how Romeo and Juliette were in love, and so were the couple in Wuthering Heights. They're the type of people who thought that Gone with the Wind was a truly romantic story - ignoring the fact that Scarlett was a complete hussie.
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