The 1945 movie scene that left a lasting mark on Stellan Skarsgård: “What happens behind the makeup”
Depending on your cinematic tastes, you might have completely differing perceptions of Stellan Skarsgård. One moment he’s in The Avengers, the next he’s in Nymphomaniac, and then, before you know it, he’s up for an Oscar, sadly losing out on the ‘Best Supporting Actor’ prize for Sentimental Value.
His career is varied, to say the least, where you never know what you’re going to get with him, but if one thing’s for certain, it’s the depth of his love and passion for cinema, having started his career back in the 1960s with an appearance in several episodes of the show Bombi Bitt och jag.
He’s come a long way since then, spanning Swedish films and Hollywood blockbusters, making it clear that he has a rich enjoyment of all kinds of movies. In fact, just get him talking about cinema, and he’ll wax lyrical about his favourites, which is exactly what he did when he entered the Criterion Closet.
Picking out classics like Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights and Mike Leigh’s Naked, he then took the time to discuss a specific movie scene that has long stuck with him since he first saw it, recounting, “One of my favourite French films from the wartime is Les enfants du paradis, Children of Paradise, with Jean-Louis Barrault and Marcel Herrand.”
Skarsgård then explained: “There’s a scene in this film where Jean-Louis Barrault, he’s in love with Arletty, who’s this wonderful actress playing a girl in this, and she has an affair with Pierre Brasseur, and Jean-Louis Barrault, he’s a mime, he’s on stage and he’s doing his mime thing, very funny, and everyone’s laughing. And then he looks to the left, he’s all white, in white paint, and he looks to the left side of the stage […] and in the wing, he sees Arletty and Pierre Brasseur, and he understands immediately. They have an affair.”
“And he’s still performing, and he’s got a smile on his face, but it cracks, his white makeup cracks in that moment,” he outlined the emotional gutpunch of the scene, appreciating how subtly it was expressed, “And in a way, it’s a good image of acting for me, because it’s always about showing the crack, and what happens behind the makeup.”
Clocking in at over three hours, Marcel Carné’s two-part film, Children of Paradise, sees Arletty play a courtesan adored by four different men, but its length has never hindered its acclaim.
Often classified as one of the greatest movies ever made, and you only need to look at a gorgeously shadowy still from the film to understand why, it was made when France was under occupation. The film is a feat of French cinema, remaining Carné’s crowning achievement, the ultimate embodiment of the era’s championing of poetic realism.
It proved to be incredibly influential, and Skarsgård finds Barrault’s performance in particular to be a monumental example of the art of subtly, revealing so much with so little.
