Paradis Perdu is delightful and a bit mad - its story of a young artist who falls in love with a dress-maker's assistant continues through so many years of narrative ritual (courtship, marriage, war, birth, death-in-childbirth, second generation, and spiritual regneration), it reminds one of Lubitsch's similarly mad Heaven Can Wait. But the comparison stops there. For Paradis Perdu is moving in an intimate, lyrical - ultimately sincere - way. Not as astounding a work as Gance's more famous Napoleon or La Roue, it is rather characterized throughout by the delicate and subtle humor that appears in parts of Napoleon.
Though it received mixed reviews from critics, Richard Roud, writing for the film's revival at a New York Film Festival, called it “A charming comedy, and Gance's most entertaining film....” As a reflection of the spirit of the time it is without equal. Released in 1939, its theme of love interrupted by war exactly paralleled the current experience of the French population. François Truffaut relates this account of a 1939 Paris screening of Paradis Perdu: “The theater was full of uniformed soldiers on leave accompanied by their young wives or girlfriends.... (T)he entire audience wept, hundreds of handkerchiefs piercing the darkness with little points of white. Never again was I to feel such an emotional unanimity in response to a film.”
Micheline Presle and Fernand Gravey, who teamed for La Nuit Fantastique years later, here star, with Presle given two roles (mother and daughter). At age 17, she proved herself a mature and versatile performer - and an immediate star.