ABSTRACT
L’Air de Paris is a film with a strong pedigree: directed by Marcel Carné, starring Jean Gabin and Arletty, with a title song sung by Yves Montand. Yet although a moderate commercial and critical success in the period (with Gabin winning the best actor award at the Venice Film Festival), it is a largely forgotten film. Even Edward Baron Turk in Child of Paradise (Turk 1989), his fine rescue of Carné from critical neglect, has little to say for, or indeed about, L’Air de Paris; it does not figure among those films that have made Gabin and Arletty icons and its song did not become a fixture of Montand’s repertoire.
