COLONIZING A COLONIZER: REPRESSION, MYTH AND MIMESIS IN MARCEL CARNÉ’S LES ENFANTS DU PARADIS

Abstract

This paper uncovers a colonial unconscious in Marcel Carné’s Les Enfants du Paradis (1943–45) as it interrogates post-structuralist theories on myth, mythologies, love and mimesis, including writings by Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida and JeanLuc Nancy. The paper argues that in Les Enfants du Paradis Marcel Carné startles his viewers with the most cinematic mode possible of a theatrical drama set in the Parisian Vaudeville of the 1840s, mixing myth with political connotations to a maximum degree, thus creating film language that works on multiple levels of signification simultaneously. Shot and produced during World War II and the infamous Vichy occupation of France, it is not farfetched to assume that Les Enfants du Paradis includes political allegories. But the film is more than just the sum of its political allusions, embodying a desire for decolonization as France disengages from World War II and involves itself deeper and deeper into the messy business of colonial violence in North Africa.