Film Review
It was the phenomenal success of
Marius (1931) and
Fanny
(1932), the first attempts to bring his popular stage plays to the
screen, that led Marcel Pagnol, one of France's most acclaimed
playwrights, to try his luck as a film producer. Pagnol's
dissatisfaction with another adaptation of his work, Louis Gasnier's
Topaze
(1933), was an additional motivating factor that led him to create the
film production company Les Auteurs Associés with Marcel Achard,
Steve Passeur, Roger-Ferdinand and Arno Charles Brun. Pagnol
himself had the honour of directing the first film for this fledgling
company, an adaptation not of his own work, but of a mid-19th century
stage play,
Le Gendre de Monsieur
Poirier, by Émile Augier. This was the first film
that Pagnol directed - and it proved to be a monumental flop.
The failure of Pagnol's debut film came as a bitter blow but it is easy
to see how it happened. Audiences had been expecting another
Provençal slice of life, perhaps a continuation of the
Marseillaise saga featuring Marius and Fanny. Instead, what they
got was a plodding and airless adaptation of a dated piece of bourgeois
theatre, competently directed but having none of the charm and insight
of Pagnol's own plays. Boycotted by the public, ignored by the
critics, the film was hastily withdrawn from circulation and
every copy of it in France was
destroyed. The film was considered lost for many years, and it is
only quite recently that one copy of it has been found, a version with
English subtitles exhumed in England.
The subject matter and setting of
Le
Gendre de Monsieur Poirier may be atypical for Pagnol, but in
spite of this its director's signature can be readily discerned.
Throughout his career Pagnol believed that a director's role was
subservient to that of the writer. To him, the text was
sacrosanct, hence his reluctance to change or cut a single line from
Émile Augier's original play. With his own plays, Pagnol
understood his characters inside-out and was better placed to bring
them to life within the confines of cinema. In his first film, he
appears to be too respectful of the author's play, and so the result
feels theatrical and remote. The performances, by members of the
esteemed Comédie-Française, would be excellent on the
stage, but on film the characters come across as unsympathetic and
caricatured, virtually impossible to engage with. The out-dated
nature of the plot, totally incongruous in Depression Era France, also
counts against it. As a first film,
Le Gendre de Monsieur Poirier is
not bad for its time, but for someone of Pagnol's stature and ability
the world was right to expect something far better.
© James Travers 2013
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Next Marcel Pagnol film:
Angèle (1934)
Film Synopsis
Under the reign of Louis-Philippe, Monsieur Poirier has amassed a huge
personal fortune through his business dealings. The only thing he
lacks is a title, and this is what he hopes to acquire by marrying his
daughter Antoinette to an impoverished aristocrat, the Marquis Gaston
de Presles. The bride's dowry barely covers Gaston's gambling
debts and Monsieur Poirier soon finds that he is bankrolling the
dissipated life of a wastrel and scoundrel. When Gaston's
extra-marital affairs reach the ears of Antoinette she is appalled and
decides that her marriage, hitherto a sham, is over. Moved
by his wife's distress, Gaston has a change of heart and resolves to
become a reformed character. He even promises to get himself a
job!
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.