Film school gave us a wonderful introduction to foreign cinema, although one often limited to big-name directors. The only real presence outside Europe was Akira Kurosawa. The standard classics were also the ones shown in repertory houses or at the Museum. I remember only occasionally seeing more exotic fare, such as Mother Joan of the Angels, The Shop on Main Street and Forbidden Games. A rare print of Peeping Tom was squirreled away in the UCLA Film Archive. I assume that it was the property of a private collector, and we only saw it when a projectionist volunteered to give a hush-hush screening in a small room upstairs. While we dug into American pictures, I never saw classic-era French films. Francophile friend Bob Hoover had lived in France, where he became a fan of Sacha Guitry and someone named Marcel Pagnol. I’d heard about the Marseille Trilogy but had only seen the Warners’ remake Fanny (1960), a picture that was pretty and little else. In the 1990s I had access to a VHS copy of one of the films, Marius, but the quality was terrible.
Europeans have been making impressive progress restoring their film treasures. Compelling evidence of that now surfaces with Marcel Pagnol’s The Marseille Trilogy in a new and frankly stunning 2015 restoration. The first two films are adaptations of stage originals, directed by the big names Alexander Korda and Marc Allégret; the third is a screen original directed by Pagnol himself. Having just seen them for the first time I admit to feeling unqualified to do much more than praise what I saw, while making sure not to spoil the experience for other viewers. The first film seemed slow at times, but builds to a powerful finish. The second and third movies are gripping from one end to the other. Yes, these are filmed plays, but they’re staged on the real Marseille waterfront and acted so warmly that I found myself having strong emotional reactions to every new scene. I know that a film is working when I think, ‘people I care about need to see this.’
Going in, the only actor I knew well was Pierre Fresnay, from The Grand Illusion and some other films. Now that I’ve seen the show, I have four more favorite performers to look out for.
If I limit myself to just setting up the characters, the story won’t be spoiled. Rough, quarrelsome widower César Ollivier (Raimu) runs Marseille’s Bar de la Marine, a modest saloon frequented by a group of happy chums — ferry captain Escartefigue (Paul Dullac), Lyon transplant Aldebert Brun (Robert Vattier), Doctor Venelle (Édouard Delmont) and Honoré Panisse (Fernand Charpin), a well-to-do sail maker with a shop a few doors away. Also a widower, Panisse has no children to inherit his riches. César raised his 20-year-old son Marius (Pierre Fresnay) on his own. The trouble is with Marius, whose affections are split between his childhood sweetheart Fanny Cabanis (Orane Demazis) and a longing to go to sea on a grand sailing ship. Fanny is heartsick over Marius’ confusion, especially when her mother Honorine (Alida Rouffe) encourages her to accept the marriage proposal of Panisse, who is thirty years older than she. Fanny is too virtuous to trick Marius into a marriage, but then a situation arises that forces her to make painful decisions. No matter how she chooses, she cannot help but cause lifelong pain to those she loves.
At first Marius seems slow, as the play takes its time setting up the pace of dockside life, where most people work hard and most are poor. It takes a while to realize that the characters are not music hall clowns, but richly conceived people, each with a problem. All want respect and a chance for happiness and all have difficulty seeing past their immediate personal problems. When the film’s big issues hit them, they’re each tested in a different way. What is family duty and family honor and how much suffering should one have to bear to maintain it? To what degree do we have the right to hide the truth from our children? How do we sort out our selfish desires from doing The Right Thing? Marcel Pagnol generates a positive statement about the human condition, in that the constant conflict between these good people builds understanding. Although each suffers, enough love is generated to dissolve years of bitterness. The events stack one highly emotional problem on another but we find ourselves believing in everything we see.
How many film actors have we been told are ‘the world’s greatest?’ (Jules) Raimu is certainly up there. He cemented his fame on stage and in the three movies as César, the saloon keeper with a big mouth and a heart of gold. At first we think that Fernand Charpin’s Panisse is a silly fool, trying to marry a girl who could almost be his granddaughter. But Panisse turns out to be an entirely decent and sympathetic man as well, one who refuses to take advantage of an amorously advantageous situation. The Trilogy covers only about twenty years or so, but we feel that we’re watching a multi-generational story. The first and last films were made only five years apart, yet the characters seem to have properly aged.
The ‘adult’ generation contains a number of survivors from the trenches of WW1, and at one point Panisse laughs off his problems by remembering the hell of Verdun. Although WW2 is in the unknown future, we wonder what will happen to the next generation. We feel so close to the film’s characters, we regret not being able to know their fates beyond the framework of the Trilogy.
Orane Demazis’ Fanny has the looks of an ignorant waif, but surprises us with her depth of feeling and instinctual values. We soon understand why she’s the dream girl of the docks, and by the end of the first picture she indeed seems a great beauty. Very often the notion of ‘doing the best for one’s children’ is an excuse to victimize others. Likewise Pierre Fresnay’s Marius is blinded by his daydreams of a life on the ocean, and like the other men (except for Panisse) is prone to overlook the feelings of others. The Trilogy is long enough to place a great many dramatic crises in a larger context. People say that they don’t care about ‘the rules’ but almost always take paths that conform to what society demands, for their own personal peace of mind.
Raimu and Charpin are so good that I can’t even think of American actors for comparison. The ensemble cast seems immediately familiar. The newest film in the trilogy is now 81 years old, but we feel as close to the characters as people we know. So few modern pictures even attempt character depth like this . . .
If the stories had been cut down to normal feature dimensions, some of the best material would have to go. Many of the film’s scenes sneak us into debates about various issues. At their card games the dockside buddies talk about honesty, duty, and pride. A bedside confession expands into a discussion of sin. Marius tries to describe his obsession to see the world in such a way that Fanny realizes that it’s a dream too big to compete against – what good is catching a man against his will, if he spends the rest of his life in resentment? The quality of Pagnol’s writing can’t be overstated, as what in other films might come across as lame character exposition or ‘author’s messaging,’ here emerges as brilliant insight into human nature. Some of these discussion scenes go on for minutes. The entire last half-hour of Fanny felt like one crucial dialogue scene between the main actors, hashing out the pros and cons of a conflict that will change all of their lives.
I wouldn’t call the Trilogy primitive cinema, even though it is not overly concerned with progressive cinematic effects. Human faces and moving drama beat fancy camera tricks every time. The location shooting is vivid but limited – in the first film, César’s saloon interior doesn’t quite fit with the exterior filmed right on the Marseille waterline. Alexander Korda and Marc Allégret’s films play smoothly, nicely disguising the fact that 70% of the footage consists of close-quarters dialogue scenes. Pagnol personally took over the direction of the final show. He does just as well with his dramatic material, but snooty film students will roll their eyes at his constant odd angles. We’ve seen enough great scenes that violate the 180-degree rule, to want to throw said rule out the window. . . but some of Pagnol’s scenes have wince-inducing flip-flop cuts that show why the rule was invented in the first place. Still, when the drama is so strong, such details barely matter.
Forty years ago we thought all movies from the early 1930s had ‘iffy’ audio. The restoration of course helps, but the direct dialogue recording and mixing is strong in all of these pictures. The one near-blooper gaffe is in the newest (1936) picture, when a woman shouting in the close foreground, was recorded by a microphone obviously 100 feet away. Otherwise, the technical achievement is tops. In some situations, especially the last film César, it looks as if multiple cameras were used to record dialogue scenes without breaking up the flow. But the drama of the last part of Fanny is so absorbing, I barely noticed whether the camera moved or cut. The trilogy didn’t feel like a filmed play, but a powerful life experience.
To Bob Hoover, wherever you are.
