PARIS BRULE-T-IL ?

Paris is the star of this film, not the "stars"

Je me souviends de ce film a cause de la voix de Mireille Mathieu, qui chante que Paris est en colere.
Je me souviends aussi de Trintignant qui fait descendre des
etudiants d'un camion pour etre assassines par la Gestapo

Pour réaliser cette adaptation du roman homonyme de Larry Collins et Dominique Lapierre, René Clément et son équipe ont bénéficié du soutien du gouvernement français. Il ont ainsi eût la possibilité de filmer la capitale déserte, mais devaient néanmoins, pour cela, commencer à tourner tous les jours dès cinq heure du matin. Au total, cent quatre-vingt lieux de tournage ont été nécessaires. En récompense de ces efforts, Paris brûle-t-il a été nominé aux Oscars 1967 dans les catégories meilleur direction artistique (Pierre Guffroy), meilleur décors (Willy Holt) et meilleur photographie (Marcel Grignon). Quant à Maurice Jarre, il a été cité pour sa composition musicale lors des "Golden Globe" la même année.  

The film is based on the best-selling book by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre and was directed by René Clément, from a screenplay by Gore Vidal and Francis Ford Coppola. The music is by Maurice Jarre. It later had words added by Maurice Vidalin and became a patriotic anthem sung by Mireille Mathieu under the title Paris en colère.

Is Paris Burning? stars Kirk Douglas, Glenn Ford, Gert Fröbe, Orson Welles, Anthony Perkins, Robert Stack, Charles Boyer, Yves Montand, Leslie Caron, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Simone Signoret, and Alain Delon. It was filmed in 180 sites. Claude Rich plays two parts: General Leclerc, with a moustache, and Lt Pierre de la Fouchardière, without a moustache. He is credited at the end only with the part of Leclerc. His role as the young lieutenant is not by chance; Claude Rich, as a teenager, was watching soldiers in the street when the real-life Pierre de la Fouchardière called him into a building to protect him.

The film is almost entirely in black and white, presumably because of the inclusion of actual footage (the film was shot in black and white mainly because, although the French authorities would allow Swastika flags to be displayed on public buildings for key shots, they would not permit those flags to be in their original red color; as a result, green Swastika flags were used, which photographed adequately in black and white but would have been entirely incorrect in color), but the closing credits feature aerial shots of Paris in color. The entire film was shot on location in Paris, France.

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?  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.

 

J'ai toujours associe la musique du film avec la voix de Mireille Mathieu, qui chante comme Piaf.

Voici la rue de Rivoli a l'epoque de l'occupation. Les batiments sur lesquels flotte la svastika, sont les offices de la Commandanture. Durant le tournage, les drapeaux seront de couleur verte a la place du rouge pour ne pas rappeler de mauvais souvenirs aux Parisiens.