Film Review
Thirteen years after he directed
Les Lettres de mon Moulin
(1954), the last film he made for the cinema, Marcel Pagnol took a break
from his successful literary career to direct this short film, which
was also taken from Alphonse Daudet's famous collection of short
stories. The film was made for French television and was
broadcast in France on Christmas Day in 1968. As engaging and
humorous as the film is, it contains little of the visual flair of
Pagnol's previous cinematic offerings and feels frustratingly confined
and static. For the most part, the camera is fixed on Fernand
Sardou, who gives a rivetting performance as a parish priest who
indulges in a naughty bit of subterfuge to bolster his church
attendance numbers. It's unashamedly a one man show in which
Sardou shows off his talents as a raconteur and stand-up
comedian. Even though it was made over a decade after Pagnol's
last film,
Le Curé de Cucugnan
fits almost seamlessly into his
Les
Lettres de mon Moulin and clearly belongs to a different era
from the one in which it was made.
Dare we make a connection between the old priest appealing
to his faithless congregation not to desert the church and the old filmmaker
urging his audience not to turn their backs on cinema?
© James Travers 2014
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Marcel Pagnol film:
Le Gendre de Monsieur Poirier (1933)
Film Synopsis
In the rural French village of Cucugnan, an old parish priest named
Martin decides that desperate measures are called for if he is to avoid
preaching to an empty church. One day, he delivers a sermon in
which he purports to recount a dream. In his dream, Martin
reveals that he visited both purgatory and Heaven, but found not one
soul from Cucugnan. Instead, every last inhabitant of the village
ended up in the fiery furnace of Hell, a just retribution for their
sinful lives...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.