It is better to come to the classics late than not at all and this afternoon I spent three hours in an unheated cinema devouring Les Enfants du Paradis.  This wonderful movie was made under the German occupation by a number of French cultural colossi of the time and a digital restoration is currently on release in the UK.

I can tell you about it but all manner of commentators have done the job better so I'll refer you to a number.  The film is explained at length in Wikipedia and here's The Guardian's brief 5 star review.  A previous article in the same paper had rather more to say when reviewing a hundred years of film.

One of the principal characters in the film is Jean Gaspard Deburau, the great mime known on stage as Baptiste and played in the film by Jean Louis Barrault who was one of the greats of French theatre and whose Barrault-Renaud company I'm sure I saw in the Edinburgh Festival many years ago.

My enjoyment of the film was probably enhanced by the fact that I played Deburau in Paris ten years ago in an extract from Sacha Guitry's 1918 play about him in which Guitry himself played the lead.  In our little scene Deburau is testing his son's avowed desire for a life in the theatre by pointing out all its disadvantages but he can't help but be carried away by his own love of the profession.  I can almost remember some of the lines about his feelings when the curtain rises and the audience is gripped by his performance; great stuff and extremely mellifluous French as I recall.