Is Paris Burning?

Is Paris Burning? (Paris brûle-t-il?, 1966) is available to watch online on iFILM — a French-American war film directed by René Clément, drawn from the documentary account by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre. The cast spans both sides of the Atlantic: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Alain Delon, Yves Montand, Kirk Douglas, Glenn Ford, Anthony Perkins.

August 1944. Hitler orders Paris destroyed rather than surrendered. General Dietrich von Choltitz receives the command and the explosives. Simultaneously, General Leclerc's armoured division and scattered Resistance cells race toward the capital, each with different timelines and agendas. Von Choltitz delays. The central question — whether he will actually obey — runs beneath every scene.

Clément shot the film as a mosaic: multiple storylines, black-and-white photography, no single hero to anchor the story. War films rarely make restraint — the choice not to act — their dramatic core. This one does. Watch Is Paris Burning? (1966) online on iFILM.