Is Paris Burning?

August 1944, Paris. Hitler has ordered the city burned, the resistance has begun its uprising, and the Allies do not consider Paris a priority. The film runs all three strands at once and describes how the city survived. The production is enormous. Kirk Douglas, Orson Welles, Anthony Perkins, Yves Montand, Alain Delon, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Simone Signoret and Leslie Caron pass through in short sections. Gore Vidal and Francis Ford Coppola wrote the screenplay. Shooting in black and white was a method rather than a constraint. René Clément blends real newsreel footage from 1944 with his own staged material, and in most places the join does not show. It set off a political argument in France, attacked from both left and right for presenting de Gaulle as a unifying figure. Its flaw is structural. Across nearly three hours you never attach to anyone, stars come and go, and events are listed where characters should be. Who it is for: viewers who love Second World War history. Who it is not for: anyone looking for dramatic focus.