Sylvain Chomet’s A Magnificent Life

It isn’t easy being a national treasure, especially if you’re France’s national treasure. For Marcel Pagnol, that meant being in the public eye during the National Socialist occupation and the post-War malaise. However, his working-class Marseilles roots largely kept him grounded. Reluctantly, Pagnol takes stock of his life and career, with the help of some ghosts from his past (including the spirit of his younger self) in director-screenwriter Sylvain Chomet’s animated film A Magnificent Life, which opens tomorrow in New York.

Thanks to Matthew Gravelle’s rich, Richard Burton-esque Welsh voice in the English dubbing, American viewers cannot appreciate Pagnol’s Marseilles accent. Evidently, the Southern dialect could be rather baffling for 1920s Parisians. That is why his early plays written in dialect were such a risk. Yet, they were surprise hits, establishing the fame of Pagnol and his featured actor, Raimu (who developed a persona as sort of a Marseilles Archie Bunker). Years later, Daniel Auteuil remade three of Pagnol’s Marseilles plays, The Well-Digger’s Daughter, Maurius, and Fanny, which all had American distribution.

Contracted to write a serialized memoir, the blocked Pagnol claims to remember little of his life, particularly his early years. However, the manifestation of childhood-self starts to pull the memories out of him. His eventual literary success represents the fulfillment of promises made to himself and his beloved mother, who tragically died during his childhood. She too often looks down on Pagnol, like a guardian angel.

The ghosts of Pagnols-past will have much to watch over. As a playwright, he enjoys great successes, as well as a few bombs. However, he shows the vision most of his theatrical colleagues lack, by embracing cinema just as sound and other technological advances were allowing a more robust dramatic experience. Rather slyly, Chomet frequently incorporates archival film clips within his animation (yet, these too, alas, were also dubbed for the theatrical release).

Chomet does not quite convey the magnitude of Pagnol’s status as an early movie mogul—one who vertically controlled the cinema process from studio to theater, even including the labs that developed the film stock. However, he partially explains how Pagnol sandbagged his own business during the occupation era, which allowed him to sell out to Gaumont rather than surrendering his company to the Vichy authorities. Yet, he still faced collaborationist charges, which were ultimately dropped. Chomet addresses these controversies, but in a rather rushed manner that clearly glosses over considerable drama and angst.

Fanny: Without Marius

For sailors, it is an age old question—which is stronger, the love of a woman or the call of the sea? It is an issue that preoccupies the first two plays of Marcel Pagnol’s Marseilles trilogy. In the opening installment, Marius has apparently answered in favor of the latter. Abandoned and secretly pregnant, the woman he once loved must now carry on in Daniel Auteuil’s adaptation of Fanny, which opens this Friday in New York.

Although they long carried torches for each other, Marius decided he had to ship out when he finally had the opportunity and Fanny believed she had to let him go. Unfortunately, her unwed pregnancy promises to ruin her standing around the Old Port of Marseilles. Marius’s gregarious father César is still under the illusion his son will soon return to marry Fanny, but the lack of letters from her former lover speaks volumes.

Much to her surprise, Fanny’s old suitor, Panisse the sail merchant renews his marriage offer, even after she fully explains her condition. Initially, César bitterly resents their union, but when they fully take the tavern-keeper into their confidence, he accepts the pragmatism of the arrangement. He will be the godfather to his absent son’s baby, while Panisse’s wealth will secure his future. Of course, the big uncertainty looming over their arrangement is Marius, should he ever return.

As both actor and director, Auteuil has an assured command of Pagnol’s work. While there are a few strikingly cinematic sequences in Fanny, he intimately focuses on the personal drama, eschewing flash and dazzle. He also delivers the most memorable performance, defining the sacrifices of parenthood in exquisitely sensitive terms. Jean-Pierre Darroussin is not far behind Auteuil, playing old Panisse with painful dignity and earnestness. Victoire Bélézy looks lovely and deeply tragic as Fanny, whereas Raphaël Personnaz largely underwhelms as the titular prodigal son.

Fanny has an evocative old world vibe, heightened by the best score over-rated film composer Alexandre Desplat has penned in years. Cinematographer Jean-François Robin gives it all a warm, nostalgic (in the best sense) look. A quality period literary adaptation, Fanny satisfactorily stands alone for viewers who have not seen the preceding Marius. Recommended for patrons of French cinema, Fanny opens this Friday (7/18) in New York at the Quad Cinema.

Auteuil Remakes Pagnol: The Well-Digger’s Daughter

Class, social convention, and World War I are powerful forces aligned against a young woman’s happiness.  Yet, she may eventually find her place in a world changing faster than she realizes in lead actor-director-screen adaptor Daniel Auteuil’s respectful remake of Marcel Pagnol’s The Well-Digger’s Daughter (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Pascal Amoretti digs and repairs wells.  It is hard but honest work, still quite necessary in the early Twentieth Century southern French provinces.  The widower was blessed and cursed with a brood of six girls.  Old Amoretti has come to rely on the eldest, Patricia, to manage his household, but she has reached marriageable age.  A match with his smitten older employee Felipe Rambert would suit the working class patriarch nicely, but Patricia’s has eyes only for Jacques Mazel, the dashing young officer son of the town’s well-to-do hardware merchant.

Despite knowing the impossibility of their affair, the young woman loses her head with the military aviator the night before he ships out to the front.  When Mazel is reported missing-in-action not long after, the pregnant Amoretti must face her shame alone.  Mazel’s parents certainly are not interested in acknowledging the girl and her traditional father is at loss, unable to see around society’s constraints.

The thing about Digger though is that the fallen Amoretti’s fortunes are not set in stone.  People will rise to the occasion and redeem themselves.  Though the village gossips would hardly put it in such terms, hers really is a story of virtue rewarded.  How she gets there will be quite the trick.  Chocked full of tearful confrontations and convenient revelations, Digger could have easily descended into sentimental treacle, but first-time helmer Auteuil keeps it all concretely grounded in the characters’ natural and social environments.

Already a favorite of the Pagnol estate after his career-making performances in Claude Berri’s Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring, Auteuil is reportedly already developing more Pagnol projects.  As the painfully dignified and conflicted father, he sets the tone for the deeply empathetic Digger.  Likewise, Kad Merad’s Rambert is more than just a likable lug, but a profoundly understanding old soul.  Astrid Berges-Frisbey is genuinely moving in her scenes with Auteuil, while also developing convincing chemistry with Nicolas Devauchelle’s not as caddish as he sounds Mazel.  An unusually forgiving film, it pardons the transgressions of everyone, even the severe Mme. Mazel.

The old-fashionedness of Digger is truly its virtue.  Perhaps, some of its rigid class-consciousness will be lost on some perpetually social-climbing Americans, but most viewers will be lulled by Jean-François Robin’s lush pastoral cinematography and Alexandre Desplat’s nostalgic score.  A handsome period production with several worthy screen turns, The Well-Digger’s Daughter is easily recommended for Francophiles and patrons of literary dramas when it opens this Friday (7/20) in New York at the Quad Cinema.