MovieChat Forums > Les enfants du paradis (1946) Discussion > It's got a poor average ratings because ...

It's got a poor average ratings because of the 'ones'


It's clear from the ratings breakdowns that this is a great movie. The ratings are mostly tens and the median is nine. The only reason it comes out at 7.9 (currently) is because of the inordinately high percentage of "one" votes.

I understand that not everyone will like it. But it seems to me that if someone dislikes this so much as to give it a one, did they really watch the whole thing? I mean this is over 3 hours long. If I dislike a movie that much, I quit early. And I DON'T give it a vote.

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It's a shame that movies like LOTR are in the top ten and this one isn't even in the top 250, it's definatly one of the most important film in the history of cinema and will always be.

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everybody who gives this movie a "one" demonstrates that he/she has no eyes to see and should be banned from further voting. such a vote is a bigger insult than any 4-letter-word. I would like to know which movies brucedgo rates 10 because if I don't know them I would like to see them asap.

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I would like to know which movies brucedgo rates 10 because if I don't know them I would like to see them asap.


Hi stremmel,
Thanks for the vote of confidence. I like lots of kinds of movies so I'm sure not all of them will please you. But since you asked, here is a list of my very favorite films in chronological order.

 Enfants du paradis, Les (1945)
 Psycho (1960)
 The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
 Buono, il brutto, il cattivo, Il (1966)
 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
 Patton (1970)
 Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (1972)
 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
'Breaker' Morant (1980) - - - (I especially recommend this little-known gem from Australia!)
 Blade Runner (1982)
 Goodfellas (1990)
 Unforgiven (1992)
 Pulp Fiction (1994)
 The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

If you want to, you can see my entire Vote History at http://imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=7271862

"I choose to think there is no free will..."

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The ones are from people who either dislike subtitles or need car chases and fight scenes bigger than the one little one. Besides, a median of nine out of ten is not bad at all.

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Among others, the rating for this film makes me question whether the IMDB rating system really has any validity. _Les enfants du paradis_ is a masterpiece of world cinema. It has historical significance, it is almost perfectly acted and photographed, and it has had an influence on later films that would be impossible to measure. The fact that it flouted the Nazis right under the noses of their censors during WWII gives it a historical cache impossible to duplicate, as well.

As they state, IMDB only allows 1,000 "regular voters" to select the "Top 250" films. Unfortunately, IMDB will not release their definition of a "regular voter" and so the "Top 250" films becomes an utterly spurious list, and merely an oddity, rather than a resource for readers looking for a reliable viewing guide.

Nevertheless, the bizarre nature of the list provokes discussion of its arbitrary lack of some of the world's greatest films, I suppose. If people discuss _Children of Paradise_ because of its weird omission, at least they are discussing it. Not much consolation, I know.

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Well written post, geoffreycrayon!

"I choose to think there is no free will..."

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Thanks, brucedgo. This is my wife's favorite movie, which means I have seen it plenty of times.

"Don't overcook the steak--it defeats its own purpose!"

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Among others, the rating for this film makes me question whether the IMDB rating system really has any validity.
Well, it more or less tells you what various people have voted for a film . . . not all of them are "honest" votes (including not all of the 10s), people can have sock puppets, etc., but probably most of them are honest for the people who voted.
_Les enfants du paradis_ is a masterpiece of world cinema.
I sure didn't think that.
It has historical significance . . . and it has had an influence on later films that would be impossible to measure.
I don't think that either of those facts--both of which are often cited for Citizen Kane, another film that I'm not very thrilled with--should have any bearing on what one rates a film. The historical significance and the consequent influence have absolutely nothing to do with the film's aesthetic qualities as it's playing.
it is almost perfectly acted and photographed
Just like with Citizen Kane, I do not see anything very unusual on that end here. It's not poorly photographed or acted, but it's just okay. Not crappy, not exceptional in my view.

I almost gave the film a 5. What saved it from that (or even a lower score) from me was primarily that I enjoyed the way the story was constructed--that it's basically a bunch of people "floating around" Garance, who to me functions a bit like a mirror in the film (she's kinda "blank" or empty herself, and people see more of themselves in her than what is really there), and the fact that I found parts of it a bit funny; I especially enjoyed the beginning of part two through at least the duel. A more tightly-constructed comedy about Frédérick Lemaître as a loose-cannon drunk of an actor would have probably received a much higher score from me.

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The fact that it flouted the Nazis right under the noses of their censors during WWII...


Could you give some examples of this subversive flouting? I didn't find much of it in the film, other than Garance saying that her heart belongs to France and one or two characters expressing their dislike for snitches. But these two notions are so commonplace and innocent within the film's non-war setting that they become fairly trivial.

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I find it difficult to believe that anyone could seriously give this a "one."

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I believe that there are people who do not like this film. I even believe that people do not need to be stupid or anything like that not to like it. It just happens, everything is well done in a film, but you simply can't connect to it... Maybe someone doesn't really care about the subjects portrayed in the film, but still, anyone giving this a rating of "ONE" is beyond me. It's to me like giving Casablanca a "ONE" rating, or Citizen Kane... I really can't imagine who would do a thing like that. I gave it a rating of "TEN", since it is one of the greatest films I have seen (and I have seen thousands), and probably one of the 3 best European films ever.

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I agree. There are plenty of movies I haven't liked, but I don't throw around many "one" ratings. I would think that anyone who took just a few minutes to look at this film would see that it isn't some run of the mill production. I wonder how many people are aware that this was done while the Nazis occupied Paris. At some point, Arletty was accused of collaborating with them.

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Maybe the "one" voters are all high-school french students who were forced to watch it. If you took a random bunch of high-school students and forced them to watch "Greed" you would probably get a similar reaction.

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I predict it will be the same results with my french class. About 80% of them act ignorant enough.

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Also, people will often vote "1" when they don't like a film very much, they look at the average score on IMDb, and they think it's very overrated.

From the score on the main page, this film appears to have a rating almost high enough to get it into the Top 250. (It's actually not even in the Top 500 here (you can check if you have IMDbPro), because of the weighting system IMDb uses). So someone who didn't think it was so great might vote a "1" to "counterbalance" what they see as overrating, and help make sure that it doesn't get into the Top 250.

I didn't like the film so much, either, but I always vote honestly . . . which was a 6 for this film, but just barely.

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Again, I have to keep re-posting this because the original thread seems to have dropped off, but a couple of years ago a group of Johnny Depp fangirls decided en masse that the best way to get whatever lame Pirates movie Depp was doing at the time onto the imdb top 250 was to vote a "1" for other movies that were on the list with a relatively small number of votes. That way they made it so "Les Enfants" dropped off the list, even though the stupid Pirate movie never lasted past the initial hype. These things will even out. And we shouldn't take imdb voting too seriously anyway, this is just one example of where the final results are easily skewed.

Did I not love him, Cooch? MY OWN FLESH I DIDN'T LOVE BETTER!!! But he had to say 'Nooooooooo'

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Hi Funky,
Wow! That's an interesting theory. Low-vote-count movies are indeed more easily manipulated. And Children is certainly that.

Take care,
Bruce

"The more you drive, the less intelligent you are"
-- Repo Man

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