When Marcel Pagnol adapted his play Marius for the cinema in 1931, he was a relatively well-known young playwright who had recently left behind his modest Marseillais beginnings and a teaching career. By the time Cesar , the third part of the trilogy, came out in 1936 (and was the no. 1 box-office hit for that year), he had become one of the most popular filmmakers in France, was running parallel careers as novelist, journalist, and publisher, and had founded his own film production company. His "empire" was completed by the opening of his own cinema in Marseilles for the release of Cesar. For although Pagnol had to move to Paris to "make it", his roots remained in the south, and the trilogy is first of all a tribute to Marseilles and its people.
Critics at the time may have preferred the cinematically innovative work of Renoir or Gremillon, or the committed manifestos of the Popular Front, but audiences flocked to see Pagnol's films and in particular the trilogy. Constant repeats on French television show that time has done nothing to erode this tremendous popularity, and some of the trilogy's phrases have entered the national vocabulary ("tu me fends le coeur!"). Apart from a first-class cast, Pagnol's joky claim that "I only write about cliches" may give a clue to this lasting appeal and relevance: like all Pagnol's films, Marius, Fanny, and Cesar share a direct concern with simple but basic psychological and social relations, and primarily the family.
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