Children of Paradise - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

• In the Centre Pompidou in Paris, there is a theater named after Arletty's character, the Salle Garance (Garance's Room).
• A copy of the film plays a significant part in the plot of Flicker, a cult novel by Theodore Roszak.
• The Japanese theater troupe Tenjō Sajiki (天井桟敷?) took its name from the Japanese title, Tenjō Sajiki no Hitobito (天井桟敷の人々?).
• In the Tom Robbins novel Still Life with Woodpecker, the protagonist, an outlaw bomber nicknamed "The Woodpecker" (hence the title), cites the film - and its successful underground production in Nazi-occupied France - as a justification of his claim that even in the event of a global catastrophe, people can always find freedom and beauty.
• British musician Marianne Faithfull has written lyrics based on the story.
• Singer Bob Dylan has said that this film was a large influence on his 1975 surreal film Renaldo and Clara.
• In James A. Michener`s novel The Drifters, the narrator mentions in a digression that he learns foreign languages by listening to lectures by tutors. The "aha" moment for French was when the tutor, lecturing on French actresses, mentions Arletty. This starts another digression, that the narrator knew a psychiatrist who made every new patient go see Children of Paradise, and would then quiz the patient about which character they identify with.
• Filmmaker Terry Gilliam did a five minute video presentation for the Criterion release, in which he saluted Children of Paradise as one of his favorites and a source of inspiration, because of its dreamlike quality.
• Simon Callow directed a stage adaptation for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1996. It was a notorious flop.
• In 2006 the London-based theatre company Simple8 adapted the film for the stage.
• Le Ballet des coeurs, a work based on Les Enfants du Paradis, choreographed by Michael Smuin, and featuring songs from the Edith Piaf repertoire performed by Raquel Bitton, has been performed by the San Francisco Ballet and the Washington Ballet.