Anecdotes for
Enfants du paradis, Les (1945) More at IMDb Pro »

• Pierre Renoir took over the role of Jéricho (an informer) after the actor Robert Le Vigan was arrested for being a Nazi collaborator. One of his scenes survives late in the film.
  
  
• A large number of members of the French Resistance worked on this film's crew, as Nazi power was at its peak in France and these fighters needed concealing.
  
  
• The name of the female lead, Garance, is the French word for the flowering plant known as madder in English, from which comes the scarlet pigment.
  
  

• The name of the theatre, Funambules, translates to Tightrope in English.
  
  
• Screenwriter Jacques Prévert wrote the character of Nathalie (originally called Thérèse) for actress Marie Déa.
  
  
• 18 months in production.
  
  
• This involved building the largest studio set in the then history of French cinema - the quarter mile of street frontage, reproduced in scrupulous detail, representing the Boulevard du Crime, the theater district of Paris in the 1830s and 40s. This would have been a daunting prospect at the best of times but in Vichy France, when all artisans, transport, materials, costumes and film stock were all in short supply, it was a miraculous achievement.
  
  
• When Italy fell to the Nazis, the Italian co-producers left the project, causing a financial vacuum.
  
  
• The original French producer had to withdraw when he came under investigation from the Nazis.
  
  
• Production designer Alexandre Trauner and composer Joseph Kosma -- both Jews -- had to work in hiding and submit their ideas via intermediaries.
  
  
• Turning was ended a short time before the D-Day and the director, having planned to distribute the film after the liberation of France, had three copies printed and concealed in three different places: a cellar of the Banque de France, a strongbox of Pathé and a Provence country house.
  
  
• Distributed in USA as a sort of French made "Gone with the wind".
  
  

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