Air of Paris Reviews

1954's L'Air de Paris reunites Marcel Carné, Jean Gabin and Arletty 15 years and one World War after Le Jour se Leve and sees both stars older and, if not wiser, at least happier. He's a boxing coach who doesn't want to leave Paris because it's the only place he can breathe while she's the wife who's trying to persuade him to do just that because she's just inherited a nice cottage in Nice. But when he chances upon a youngster with a real shot at a future in the sport, a rift develops between them as she increasingly resents the newcomer. Since the boy isn't exactly big on self-confidence to begin with and falls in love with a model with her own problems (Marie Daems), Gabin's dreams of managing the kind of fighter he always wanted to be start looking increasingly tenuous.

Rather than the doomed romanticism of their previous collaboration, this is more of a crowd pleaser about ordinary people who've learned to live with their disappointments and know their hopes for a happy ending aren't very realistic. Already in the mentor phase of his career and yet to turn into the increasing monolithic presence of his later films, Gabin has probably never been so likeable on screen, and it's no surprise this was part of the one-two punch with his very different turn in Touchez Pas au Grisbi that won him the Best Actor award at the Venice Film Festival and helped put his fading post-war career back on track. Arletty gets the fuzzy end of the lollipop, yet manages to avoid turning her character into a stereotyped shrew but someone who's had a lifetime of indulging her husband's whims without question and wants him to return the compliment for once. Roland Lesaffre is the weakest link as the protégé: he gives it his all, as the trailer boasts `showing the full range of his talents,' but unfortunately that means alternating good scenes with ones where he either looks like a chipper Anton Diffring or a bit goofy when he's overdoing the (very) simple man in love bit. It's not so much that he's a bad actor (he even won an award for the film), more that his tendency to almost physically turn into a different person from scene to scene can be a bit distracting. Still, compared to Jean Paredes' very camp couturier, he's a model of restraint.

With only one prolonged bout in the middle of the film, it's more a character piece than a boxing movie. As such it tends to be damned with faint praise because it's not another classic to rival the central trio's earlier triumph, but while the absence of screenwriter Jacques Prevert means this is more populist than poetic it's still a perfectly decent star vehicle that fulfils most of its modest ambitions. There's also a beautiful score by Maurice Thiriet, though the vocal version of the main theme performed by Yves Montand that's promised on the credits is nowhere to be heard in the film itself (though part of it is used on the film's trailer, included on Optimum's UK DVD) and Roger Hubert's fine photography offers some atmospheric views of a Paris that's surprisingly multi-cultural for a 50's film. Optimum's DVD transfer has the odd rough patch but is for the most part very decent, though the original five minute French trailer is the only extra.