Set in the theatrical world of 1830s Paris, it tells the story of a courtesan and four men—a mime, an actor, a criminal and an aristocrat—who love her in entirely different ways.

"I would give up all my films to have directed Les Enfants du Paradis", said nouvelle vague director François Truffaut.

[2][3] Its original American trailer positioned it as the French answer to Gone With the Wind (1939),[4] an opinion shared by critic David Shipman.

[citation needed] As noted by one critic, "in French, 'paradis' is also the colloquial name for the gallery or second balcony in a theatre, where common people sat and viewed a play, responding to it honestly and boisterously.

Four men – the mime Baptiste Deburau (Jean-Louis Barrault), the actor Frédérick Lemaître (Pierre Brasseur), the thief Pierre François Lacenaire (Marcel Herrand), and the aristocrat Édouard de Montray (Louis Salou) – are in love with Garance, and their intrigues drive the story forward.

Baptiste Deburau was a famous mime and Frédérick Lemaître was an acclaimed actor on the "Boulevard of Crime" depicted in the film.

He meets and flirts with Garance, a beautiful woman who earns her living by modestly exhibiting her physical charms in a carnival show.

Garance staves off Frédérick's advances and goes to visit one of her acquaintances, Pierre-François Lacenaire, a rebel in revolt against society.

He reveals a great talent, a veritable vocation for pantomime, but falls immediately and irremediably in love with Garance, saving a flower she thanked him with.

When a fight breaks out that evening between two rival clans of actors, Baptiste and Frédérick manage to calm the crowd down by improvising a mime act, thus saving the day's receipts.

After declaring his love, Baptiste flees Garance's room when she says she doesn't feel the same way, despite her clear invitation to stay.

Baptiste becomes the star of the Funambules; fuelled by his passion, he writes several very popular pantomimes, performing with Garance and Frédérick, who have become lovers.

Garance is visited in her dressing room by the Count Édouard de Montray, a wealthy and cynical dandy who offers her his fortune if she will agree to become his mistress.

Lacenaire takes revenge by calling him a cuckold and, dramatically pulling back a curtain, reveals Garance in Baptiste's embrace on the balcony.

Garance is in a hurry to exit in order to prevent the duel between Frédérick and the Count, who she is unaware has been murdered, but Nathalie blocks her way, insisting that leaving is easy, while to stay and share someone's everyday life, as she has for the past six years with Baptiste, is much more difficult.

Baptiste pushes past her and is soon lost in the frantic Carnival crowd amid a sea of bobbing masks and unheeding, white Pierrots.

External sets in Nice were badly damaged by natural causes, exacerbated and compounded by the theatrical constraints during the German occupation of France during World War II.

[14] Film critic Pauline Kael wrote that, allegedly, "the starving extras made away with some of the banquets before they could be photographed".

[15] Many of the 1,800 extras were Resistance agents using the film as daytime cover, who, until the liberation, had to mingle with some collaborators or Vichy sympathisers who were imposed on the production by the authorities.

[16] Alexandre Trauner, who designed the sets, and Joseph Kosma, who composed the music, were Jewish and had to work in secrecy throughout the production.

Music was provided by the Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire under the direction of renowned conductor, Charles Münch, who personally contributed part of his income to the French Resistance.

Around this time, the Nazis forbade the producer, André Paulvé, from working on the film because of his remote Jewish ancestry, and the production had to be suspended for three months.

The quarter-mile long main set, the "Boulevard du Temple", was severely damaged by a storm and had to be rebuilt.

The materials, provided by Jeanne Lanvin, allowed work on the costumes to be done in very favourable conditions given the difficult period of the French occupation.

When Paris was liberated in August 1944, the actor Robert Le Vigan, cast in the role of informer-thief Jéricho, was sentenced to death by the Resistance for collaborating with the Nazis, and had to flee, along with author Céline, to Sigmaringen.

The site's consensus reads: "Strong performances abound, and Carne's wit and grace are evident in this masterful (if long) French epic.

This involved scanning the badly damaged original camera negative, and other early sources, using a high-resolution 4K digital process to produce a new master print.