Is Paris Burning?

Part The Longest Day, part Battle of Algiers, Is Paris Burning? (1966) is a muddled attempt at a cinema verite epic. The interesting story, well-shot action scenes and surprisingly brisk pace keep it from being a chore, but its convoluted plot, nonexistent characters and overwritten script prevent it from achieving full potential.

August, 1944. Allied armies tear through exhausted German armies in France, but the Allies seem to neglect Paris. General Dietrich Von Choltitz (Gert Frobe) is appointed to defend Paris, and is personally ordered by Adolf Hitler (Billy Frick) to destroy the city if its fall becomes imminent. While Choltitz equivocates, the French Resistance's disparate factions debate how to handle the situation. The situation comes to a head when the impetuous FFI starts seizing government buildings, initating vicious streetfighting with the Germans. All the while, Choltitz prepares to destroy the city, while the Resistance desperately tries to convince the Americans under General Omar Bradley (Glenn Ford) to liberate Paris.

Is Paris Burning? is ambitious but frustrating. The overwritten script - credited to Francis Ford Coppola and Gore Vidal, but also doctored by French and German writers - has little sense of scope or dramatic economy. It's not that the film is long or slow - for a 173-minute feature, it's surprisingly fast-moving - but it is clogged, confused and only sporadically gripping. The relationships between the disparate Resistance factions are poorly defined, and the poorly-drawn characters don't help. Instead of being complex, the film is convoluted and often dramatically inert, with an occasional brilliant set-piece or inspired detail bringing it alive.

The cast consists of more or less every French actor working in 1966. Like most Hollywood "all-star" epics, however, the sheer number of stars prevents them from registering as characters. I spotted Alain Delon (The Leopard), Leslie Caron (Gigi), Jean-Louis Trintigant (Z) and Jean-Paul Belmondo (Breathless), but the rest - even favorites like Michel Piccoli and Michel Lonsdale - are virtually invisible. Few of these actors make an impression, save Pierre Vaneck's Major who convinces the Allies to liberate Paris, and their inclusion is of value only to star spotters.

The Americans are even worse off: Orson Welles is good as a Swedish diplomat caught between the two sides, and Anthony Perkins (The Tin Star) has a decent bit, but Kirk Douglas, Glenn Ford and Robert Stack are poorly cast and badly used. Their inclusion seems a cynical grab at American box office, but one wonders if any Kirk Douglas fan would want to watch him putter around in a nightshirt for two minutes.

The one actor who comes off perfectly is Gert Frobe (Goldfinger). He's given a difficult role, a dedicated career soldier who chafes at the needless destruction of Paris. The 20 July plot is alluded to a few times - in the opening, Choltitz visits the headquarters where Hitler narrowly survived - highlighting the General's dilemna: by 1944 the Wehrmacht high command recognized Hitler as insane, and were torn between their duty as soldiers and revulsion at obeying a lunatic. Frobe gives a performance of unusual subtlety, making Choltitz a sympathetic, complex and ultimately tragic character.

Fortunately, Is Paris Burning? does have its share of virtues. Rene Clement's direction is straightforward yet striking, with heavy use of Paris locations and deep focus photography. Archival footage is often overused, but the actual battle scenes are intense and gripping. Maurice Jarre's jaunty, celebratory score is among his very best. A number of individual set-pieces - a night-time massacre of French students, Resistance fighters humorlessly interrupting a wedding, Jean-Paul Belmondo and girlfriend using their bicycles as cover against German snipers - are quite striking. And despite the problematic road getting there, the incredibly joyous, exuberant ending, with all of Paris celebrating the end of the nightmarish occupation, is a wonderful conclusion.

Is Paris Burning? is a mixed bag, a fairly middling historical epic. Perhaps a TV miniseries would have given the story a proper depth and scope; perhaps a better-drawn script would have helped with the convoluted-plot and poorly-rendered characters. Still, it has enough high points to make it worth a look.