FILM

Children of Paradise. Marcel Carné’s exquisite 1945 backstage romance about the world of nineteenth-century French theater, one of the few movies that aspires to the richness of a great novel, is now available from the Criterion Collection in a two-disc set larded with bonus features. The film itself, which is presented in a freshly struck, meticulously restored print, has never looked better. Says David Thomson: “It is the simple truth that Renoir or Ophüls would have been proud to sign this film.” See it now (TT).