La Femme du boulanger (1938) - film review

A middle-aged man Aimable and his young wife Aurélie decide to settle in a Provençal village, running the local baker’s shop.  A short while later Aurélie runs of with a young shepherd, leaving her husband broken hearted. Aimable refuses to make any more bread and the villagers are forced to separate Aurélie from her new lover and return her to her husband...

La Femme du boulanger is widely considered to be Marcel Pagnol’s best film, not least because of the unforgettable acting performances from Raimu and Ginette Leclerc.  Based on a novel by Jean Giono, the film is ideal material for Pagnol’s romantic vision of Provence, with its tightly-knit little communities living in the remote unspoiled countryside.

Although resorting to caricature in a few places (indeed most of the film’s characters are obvious caricatures), this does not undermine the film’s dramatic thrust.  Only a writer of Pagnol’s undoubted talents could manage this without ending up with a weak farce.

Raimu, one of the finest French actors of the 1930s, gives one of his most moving performances in this film.  Alternately the comic buffoon and the tragic victim, he gives the film its emotional imperative.

One of the most popular French films ever to be released in the United States, this is a film that plays perfectly to the emotions without ever appearing sentimentalised or contrived.

© James Travers 2001


No less an authority than Orson Welles called La Femme du boulanger the finest film ever made and Raimu the finest actor - and it would take a brave man to disagree.  Director Marcel Pagnol preferred to adapt his own plays or fiction for the screen but here he is adapting a work that did not originate from his own pen, although the setting is Pagnol’s beloved Provence. 

Raimu is beyond magnificent as the simple, good-hearted baker, who is devastated when his wife, Ginette Leclerc - a specialist in naughty girl roles and brilliant in Le Corbeau - is seduced by a local shepherd and runs away with him.  Raimu and Leclerc are new arrivals in the small community.  Having become addicted to the bread that Raimu bakes, the villagers are equally devastated when Raimu feels he is unable to go on with his profession.  The villagers then unite to locate Leclerc and persuade her to return, thus allowing Pagnol to display his mastery of not just two leads but an entire community.  The last shot in which Raimu and Leclerc symbolically ignite the oven is one of the most lyrical in French cinema.

© Leon Nock (London, England) 2010

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