Film Review
It was the success of his 1929 play
Marius
which established Marcel Pagnol as one of France's leading
playwrights. Pagnol was not content with being just a playwright,
however, and the windfall that came with Alexander Korda's screen
adaptation of
Marius gave him a heaven-sent
opportunity to begin directing his own films, for his own production
company. Pagnol wasn't yet confident enough to take up the
director's baton, so the honour of directing the next film version of
one of his plays,
Fanny, was
conferred on an up-and-coming director, Marc Allégret, who had
already made a promising start to his career with
Mam'zelle Nitouche (1931) and
La Petite chocolatière
(1932). The star of both of these films was Raimu, who had
previously created the role of César in the stage and film
versions of
Marius, so it is
possible that Pagnol may have chosen Allégret at Raimu's
suggestion.
Although the theatrical production of
Fanny
was nothing like the runaway success that
Marius had been, it was
sufficiently popular for Pagnol to choose it as the first film for his
newly founded company, Les Films de Marcel Pagnol. Interestingly,
neither Raimu nor Pierre Fresnay had appeared in the stage version of
Fanny (Fresnay had other
commitments and Raimu was sacked after falling out with the impresario
Léon Volterra, to be replaced by Harry Baur), but Pagnol had no
choice but to hire them for the second instalment of what was to become
his
Marseille Trilogy if he
was to capitalise on the success of the first film. Reprising the
role of Fanny was Orane Demazis, Pagnol's muse, mistress and mother of
his illegitimate son. The distinguished character actor Fernand
Charpin (another Pagnol regular) also returns, to give what is possibly
his greatest screen performance, as the sympathetic store owner
Panisse.
What Pagnol had found most disappointing about the screen adaptation of
Marius was that it was heavily
studio bound. There were a few filmed inserts of Marseille, but
none of the action takes place in exterior locations, so the film lacks
that distinctive Provençal ambiance that is so keenly felt in
all of Pagnol's subsequent films. Because Pagnol's film studios
were located in Marseille, there was ample opportunity for
incorporating the busy seaport and its environs into the
narrative. There are many scenes in
Fanny where characters step out of
a studio set and appear in a perfectly matched real location, without
any sense of discontinuity. As a result,
Fanny has a much more modern,
naturalistic feel than
Marius,
and we can glimpse the forerunner of today's social realist dramas
within it. There is, however, one noticeable flaw.
Allégret's bitter romanticism, which is so vividly expressed in
his later films
Lac aux dames (1934) and
Sous les yeux d'occident
(1936), sits uncomfortably alongside Pagnol's interest in the
mundanities of everyday life. You can feel the tension between
two conflicting visions throughout the film, and it could well have
been this that persuaded Pagnol that he should direct his own films in
future.
Fanny deals with a familiar
theme that recurs throughout Pagnol's oeuvre, the problem of pregnancy
outside wedlock. As ever, it is the woman who suffers most,
having to make sacrifices to conform with the social norms and avoid
bringing disgrace on her head and her family. In
Fanny, the heroine must agree to a
marriage of convenience, accepting a proposal from a man who is old
enough to be her father and giving up her love for the man she truly
loves but who abandoned her for a life on the ocean wave. Fanny's
plight is handled with Pagnol's trademark compassion and delicacy, and
provides the basis for a viciously ironic comedy of manners in which
the petty prejudices of the older generation and their disconnection
from the problems of their offspring are cruelly exposed. The
reaction of Fanny's mother to her predicament is so over-the-top that
it becomes pure vaudeville, whereas that of Marius's father is within a
stone's throw of Greek tragedy, particularly when Raimu goes into
pathos overdrive and strains every muscle he has for dramatic effect.
Even though
Fanny was another
major critical and commercial success, it would be another four years
before Pagnol was able to complete his trilogy with
César
(1936), by which point he had become an accomplished
filmmaker in his own right, the shining example of what we would now
term an
auteur. Thirty
years on,
Fanny was remade
in America as
Fanny (1961),
directed by Joshua Logan and starring Leslie Caron, Maurice Chevalier
and Charles Boyer, with Horst Buchholz cast (improbably) as
Marius. More recently, Daniel Auteuil directed a French-language
remake, due to be released in July 2013, as part of his complete remake
of the
Marseille Trilogy,
with Auteuil, Victoire Belezy and Jean-Pierre Darroussin in the roles
of César, Fanny and Panisse respectively. The prevailing
interest in Marcel Pagnol's plays and films is as much a testament to
the genius of the man himself as it is to the universality of the
subjects encompassed by his works.
© James Travers 2013
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Marc Allégret film:
La Petite chocolatière (1932)
Film Synopsis
Such is the status accorded to single mothers in France of the 1930s that
Fanny has no choice but to surrender herself to a marriage of convenience.
The alternative - rejection by her family and a disapproving society - is
more than she can bear. If only her beloved Marius had stayed with
her, waited just a while longer to learn that he had given her a child.
But Marius's love of the sea was too strong for him to resist, so here Fanny
is, alone and pregnant in her hometown of Marseille, whilst her gallant lover
explores the big wide world, indulging his wild appetite for adventure.
Honoré Panisse may not be the most desirable of husbands, but, a successful
and highly respected shopkeeper, Fanny can rely on him to take care of her
and her child, once it is born.
What does it matter that Panisse is thirty years older than Fanny?
He is a good, honest man, and what wife could ask for more? Naturally,
Fanny's prim and proper mother is delighted with the arrangement. Her
daughter's marriage to Panisse will do as much good for her social standing
as it will for Fanny's peace of mind. The wedding is a happy occasion
for everyone, and a few month later Fanny gives birth to her son, Césariot
- named after César, the father of the absent Marius. Meanwhile,
many thousands of miles away, Marius has come to realise that his feelings
for Fanny are much stronger than he had thought. How wrong he was to
leave her!
Overtaken with shame, Marius makes his way home, but he arrives too late
to claim his beloved's hand in marriage. It is with deep sorrow that
he learns the news that Fanny has had to marry another man, but such is his
devotion to her that he can scarcely bear to leave her a second time.
It is up to César to persuade him that there can be no future in his
affair with Fanny. For the best interests of the young woman and her
son, Marius soon comes to realise that he must depart and never return to
the one who has stolen his heart. For the love of Fanny, he must now
accept that he has lost her forever...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.