Prévert Reads Shakespeare: Lacenaire as Iago in Les Enfants du Paradis

Abstract

First impressions seem to suggest little more than a casual link between Othello and the film Les Enfants du Paradis despite multiple refer' ences to Shakespeare's tragedy in Jacques Prevert's screenplay.1 Many glaring differences present themselves with respect to both works. The Elizabethan drama appears to have little in common with a film made and released in France during the Occupation that focuses on a troupe of actors, a petty criminal, and an aristocrat in early nineteenth-century Paris. Yet, Prevert's numerous appropriations of Shakespeare are crucial to the film's meaning. Edward Baron Turk, who mentions the film's allusions to Shakespeare, argues that parallels between the two narratives are recognizable, and briefly outlines these similarities with respect to character.2 Turk rightly contends that variants (230) of Othello are to be found in Les Enfants du Paradis, but it is not his aim to analyze them at any great length. By contrast, my goal is to examine why Prevert chose to place such emphasis on Othello, and to probe the ways in which Prevert and director Marcel Carne both imitate and deviate from Shakespeare in order to explore issues such as character motivation, plot adaptation, and the aesthetic and historical contexts in which the film is situated. The incorporation of Othello into the movie's structural and thematic framework allows Prevert and Carne to extend and deepen the dramatic import of Les Enfants du Paradis, as it is through Shakespeare that the picture goes beyond its primary schema as an imitation of the Harlequinade and defines itself as an exploration of pathological jealousy and obsession that culminates in fatalistic expressions of despair and destruction.3 Space will not allow a full discussion of how Prevert's