3/5 Definitely French
  by Kevin R. Austra (Delaware Valley, USA)
IS PARIS BURNING? is the theatrical movie version of the best selling book of the same name. It was released in the United States in late autumn 1966 at, what was then, the peak years of war films. Many have seen IS PARIS BURNING? as the natural follow on to THE LONGEST DAY. A long film in summary: Historically accurate, closely follows the book, filmed throughout Paris, dubbed French and German dialogue is sometimes annoying.

The setting is August 1944. Paris has been occupied by the Germans for more than four years. The Allied ground forces are close enough to the city to encourage various French resistance groups to join in an insurrection against the German garrison. On the eve of the uprising German General Dietrich von Choltitz (Gert Frobe) is appointed by Hitler to command Fortress Paris. His orders are to maintain order and destroy the city if the Allies break through. Choltitz arrives in Paris and realizes his job is a hopeless one. With resistance units in control of key points and facilities throughout the city, Choltitz can only play for time. Meanwhile, Free French forces ambush German trucks and battle German tanks with Molotov cocktails. The irony is that both von Choltitz and the Free French depend on the rapid arrival of the Allies in order to save the city. Until that time Choltitz, whose forces are not sufficient to pacify the city, is limited to isolated shows of strength, while at the same time giving the appearance of fully supporting demolition operations. French representatives finally make it through German lines and meet with a string of American Generals, as well as French General Leclerc, and obtain a commitment from the Americans. Both French and US Army troops enter the city and overcome sporadic German resistance. Choltitz is finally taken prisoner and Paris is spared the horrific fate suffered by Warsaw.

Several things surprised me about this film. Despite that fact that it was released by Paramount, was based on a book co-written by American Larry Collins, had a screenplay written by Gore Vidal and Francis Ford Coppola, and included big name American movie stars the film was produced with a French audience in mind. Directed by French director Rene Clement, who at one time was an acclaimed director of documentaries, IS PARIS BURNING? was sometimes filmed in documentary fashion. Indeed, many of the linking scenes consisted of actual wartime footage. Much like THE LONGEST DAY, IS PARIS BURNING? is filmed in black and white with the exception of the end credits appearing over aerial views of the city.

The music was composed and arranged by Maurice Jarre. Recall the Maurice Jarre was made forever famous by his score for LAWRENCE OF ARABIA. Most of 1960s scores sound like a variation of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA. His music for THE TRAIN also contained many familiar cues from LAWRENCE OF ARABIA. Although his IS PARIS BURNING? music is not one of those soundtracks that will ever reach the fame and popularity of classic war films such as PATTON, I must admit that it appropriate for IS PARIS BURNING? It simply sounds like what I would expect for a film centered in and around Paris.

There are two reasons I gave IS PARIS BURNING? only three stars. First is that the English dubbing leaves something to be desired. The original American actor voices are retained. Unfortunately the German and French dialogue is dubbed poorly. The second reason I did not give the movie a higher rating is that the movie faithfully follows the book. In most cases this is a good thing. In this film adhering to the book sometimes becomes confusing as there are too many locations and personalities. There is also a loss of continuity between activities because it is difficult to portray concurrent events in any sort of order. Unless you have read the book you are likely to miss the importance of many of the events.

A lot of effort went into the making of this film. Filming on location in a major European city is no easy feat. This is a credit to the production crew. Also note that they configured ex-U.S. Army M-24 Chaffee tanks as German Mark V Panthers. Not a bad job at all.

Paramount was less than thrilled at the response for IS PARIS BURNING? Despite two academy award nominations the film bombed at American box offices. Audiences are picky when it comes to docudramas. TORA, TORA, TORA would years later suffer a similar response. What it really got down to was the question as to why anyone in the United States would care about what happened in August 1944 Paris. Despite boasting such American stars such as Glenn Ford, Kirk Douglas, Anthony Perkins, E.G. Marshall, Orson Welles and Robert Stack, none of these fine actors has a singularly pivotal role in the film. None of the Americans has a presence throughout the film. German actor Gert Frobe (most audiences know him best as James Bond's Goldfinger) is really the only personality in the move from beginning to end.

The movie has a 175 minute running time. This might be a little lengthy for those more familiar with more traditional 90 to 120 minute films. For history buffs it is likely just the right length.


5/5 Is Paris Burning?
  by Bruce A. Ingebo (Lacey, WA USA)
Excellent WWII movie. A bit lengthy but interesting enough so you do not notice it much.

3/5 Feel-good film for the French
  by Bradley F. Smith (Miami Beach, FL)
At almost three hours, this is too long by half. Padded with many battles scenes interspersed with actual WW2 footage, the movie tells the tale of French resistance in Paris in the last days of WW2 when the Nazis almost destroyed the city out of spite. It's a miracle they didn't. The Gore Vidal script is above average, but some of the acting, especially by the Americans like Kirk Douglas is a bit lame. Orson Wells comes off OK as the Swiss ambassador who tries to talk sense into the Nazi general in charge of Paris. This actually includes a 5 minute intermission. They don't do those anymore.

3/5 WWII and Paris buffs will enjoy this
  by Fred Nietzsche (San Francisco)
When I read about this DVD my first thought was "why haven't I already seen this?" I'm a big WWII buff and on paper this movie sounds amazing. Orson Wells, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Kirk Douglas, and many other big name stars plus a script by Gore Vidal and Francess Ford Copola. If only they could have got Copola to direct. I suspect that unlike the actual director he would have had the french speaking french, the english english, and the germans german. Instead the movie was directed with dubbing in mind so no matter how you manipulate the language options you can never hear the germans speaking german (from what I can tell I think they are actually speaking french most of the time). I toggled back and forth between French with English subtitles (most of the movie) and English (scenes with Wells, Douglas, Stack, Glen Ford, and Tony Perkins) using the "Setup" option on the DVD.

Another problem is this movie is just too long. Especially at the beginning there are too many scenes of people going back and forth between different french organizations and talking and also some melodramatic scenes of Nazis acting like the cliche Nazis in an American B movie.

However, once the movie gets going its actually quite compelling. The story is the very interesting true story of how Paris was liberated. Hitler wanted to see Paris completely obliterated before the Nazis left. The allies on the other hand are torn between several different factions of the french resistance and General Patton who despite his love of French culture was more interested in getting to Berlin ASAP and for him that meant bypassing Paris. I saw that one reviewer said that the Nazis never really had the capability to completely destroy Paris. I suppose that depends on what you mean by destroy but there was a similar situation on the Eastern front where insurgents rose up against the Nazis as the Russians were advancing and parts of Warsaw were completely obliterated and thousands of people were masacred. The same could easily have happened but didn't thanks to the perseverence of the French resistance and the fact that the commanding general of the Germans behaved like a human not a war criminal.

What I loved about this movie were the shots of battles and troops liberating Paris. People who are familiar with WWII history will appreciate the battle scenes which for a change are quite realistic (minor exception, the insurgents deal with German tanks far too easily). The Americans actually have Sherman tanks and the Germans Panzers, unlike some movies such as Patton where they took 50's era war surplus tanks and passed them off. And the liberation scenes, the cooperation of the Americans and French were quite moving to me. I think this movie would make a nice companion to Casablanca.

4/5 Great movie, lousy DVD
  by George D. Kenney (Washington, DC United States)
The movie is a classic, no doubt about that.

While the film's visual transfer to DVD is fine, even excellent, the audio and subtitles are horrible.

This is one of those unusual films which includes dialogue in both English and French. One wants, for example, to hear Glenn Ford speaking English. But the DVD offers *only* all English or all French, in other words, no original soundtrack.

Compounding the problem, the English subtitles were evidently written by someone who isn't a native speaker of either English or French, and who may not have even been watching the movie. Every other sentence is mistranslated. Times are altered. Names are altered. Odd sentences are added that aren't in the dialogue. It's just bizarre -- I've never seen anything like it.

So four and a half stars for the movie, but only two stars for the DVD transfer.