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Among the bounteous literary and cinematic legacy of
Marcel Pagnol, poet laureate of Provence, is a two-volume memoir,
My Father's Glory and
My Mother's Castle. The enormous success of
Jean de Florette and
Manon of the Spring (Claude Berri's 1986 remakes of two Pagnol films from the '50s) encouraged Yves Robert to shoot another Pagnol diptych. Like Garlaban, the great bluff overhanging Pagnol's childhood home, the result is "less than a mountain, much more than a hill." The first part,
My Father's Glory, spans Marcel's early years from infancy to preteen. The film keeps faith with its juvenile subject, leaping from one quirky detail of landscape, character, or biography to the next--whatever has caught the child's fancy and lingered in the adult narrator's memory. This makes for episodic storytelling, but it's an appropriate way to reflect childhood experience, and it doesn't prevent Robert from developing loving portraits of Pagnol's nearest and dearest, or paying luminous tribute to the Provençal countryside Pagnol loved. You can almost feel the sunshine, smell the wild thyme.
--Richard T. Jameson
Product Description
Based on the best-selling memoirs of French novelist/filmmaker Marcel Pagnol, this captivating recollection of a young boy's life in turn-of-the-century South of France is an intelligent, emotionallyrealistic account of a more idyllic time. A glorious celebration of family, this is one of the most beguiling films since charm went out of fashion (Time)! Among the intoxicating hills of rustic Bastide Neuve, young Marcel and his family experience an unforgettable summer holiday. Marcel,mystified by nature, eagerly turns to his father, Joseph, for an education on the ways of the wild.But Joseph comes up short in Marcel's eyes when cantankerous Uncle Julesan experienced woodsmanproves to be far more knowledgeable. To redeem himself, Joseph challenges Jules to a hunting matchto prove once and for all that he is not only the patriarch but a father who deserves respect.
