Pacific Film Archive
Film Notes for June 1995

All times are p.m., listed by date. See also a shorter chronological listing of playdates and times, with links to individual film notes.


Thursday June 1

!@#$%* Suzuki Returns!
With our January-February series, !@#$%* Cinema Suzuki! the Japanese pop-art genre director Seijun Suzuki finally got his due: sold-out houses from start to finish. This month we bring back selected films from the Suzuki tour, organized by PFA's Mona Nagai, before its return to Japan. We have added two titles last shown here in 1993, Zigeunerweisen and One Generation of Tattoos. Avoid sell-outs-charge tickets by phone! (510-642-5249) The series is presented with the generous cooperation of The Japan Foundation, Nikkatsu Films, and the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. The series is made possible in part through the support of The Japan Foundation and the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund Museum Collections Accessibility Initiative. Prints are courtesy The Japan Foundation, with permission of Nikkatsu Films, unless noted.

Zigeunerweisen 7:30
Seijun Suzuki (Japan, 1980)
This hypnotic and extraordinarily beautiful film from Suzuki's post-Nikkatsu Studio years weds French surrealism to Japanese ghost story with a bit of German expressionism thrown in. Set in the late 1920s--a pre-militarist period of changing mores and international influence in Japan akin to that in Weimar Germany-the story involves a Japanese professor of German on vacation in a seaside resort who is drawn into a bizarre sexual pentangle. Denizens of the supernatural appear to roam comfortably in the free-spirited universe in which the professor finds himself. The title refers to Sarasate's violin composition which haunts this film both as an element of its story and in the score. Suzuki's first truly independent film, Zigeunerweisen won the Japanese Oscar and the prize at Berlin; Japanese critics voted it the best Japanese film of the eighties.
-- Written by Yozo Tanaka. Photographed by Kazue Nagatsuka. With Yoshio Harada, Naoko Otani, Toshiya Fujita, Michiyo Okusu. (145 mins, In Japanese with English subtitles, Color, 16mm)


Friday June 2

Pathe: Cinema's First Empire
Les Portes de la nuit 7:00
Marcel Carne (France, 1946)
Preceded by: Pathé Journal (newsreels, 1946).
(Gates of the Night). Carne; and Pre;vert's last collaboration is set in Paris against a stark picture of the problems of the immediate postwar period: the black market, the return of war profiteers from London, collaborators who grew rich and others who fear punishment. In the foreground is an allegorical melodrama about a man (Yves Montand) who is introduced to "the most beautiful woman in the world" (Nathalie Nattier) by a vagrant musician who calls himself Fate. Between night and dawn, the relationship between them and the woman's husband and collaborationist brother is played out. Based on a ballet that Pre;vert had written in '45, and scripted originally for Dietrich and Gabin, the film was a resounding commercial failure. But its failure "was due less to its weaknesses than to its good qualities," Georges Sadoul points out, setting the stage for a rediscovered classic.
-- Written by Jacques Pre;vert. Photographed by Philippe Agostini. With Yves Montand, Nathalie Nattier, Pierre Brasseur, Serge Reggiani. (120 mins, In French with English subtitles, B&W, 35mm)

Romance de Paris 9:30
Jean Boyer (France, 1941)
Preceded by: Boireau roi de la boxe (1912) and Pathe; journal (newsreels, 1941).
This "backstage" musical fantasy from the radio days has an energy that is infectious. Georges, a good son and a good electrician, watches his mother suffering over the flightiness of his actor father. Papa is discovered by the director of the Folies-Concert, and makes his debut under the name of Papillon (Butterfly). Mama, Georges and the family will enjoy Papillon on the radio quite some time without realizing his identity.
-- With Charles Trenet, Jean Tissier, Yvette Lebon, Jacqueline Porel. (110 mins, In French with English subtitles, B&W, 35mm)


Saturday June 3

!@#$%* Suzuki Returns!
Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards! 7:30
Seijun Suzuki (Japan, 1963)
(Tantei jimusho 2-3: Kutabare akutodomo/a.k.a. Detective Bureau 2-3: Down with the Wicked). Private eye Tajima (Suzuki perennial Jo Shishido), who runs Detective Bureau 2-3 with two eccentric assistants, persuades the police to let him infiltrate a yakuza gang in order to investigate illegal arms sales by GIs. He follows a trail that leads from girls in American-style nightclubs to men in high places before his cover is blown and a hit is out on him. This expert gangster movie-shot, as critics have noted, with a kinetic energy to make Sam Fuller weep-is also a set-up for Suzuki, the very type of film he will soon begin to parody mercilessly. Already, this is a stylishly idiosyncratic crime film; the sleaze factor is to die for.
-- Written by Iwao Yamazaki, based on a novel by Haruhiko Oyabu. Photographed by Shigeyoshi Mine. With Jo Shishido, Reiko Sasamori, Tamio Kawachi, Nobuo Kaneko. (89 mins, In Japanese with English subtitles, Color, 'Scope, 35mm)

Kanto Wanderer 9:15
Seijun Suzuki (Japan, 1963)
(Kanto mushuku/a.k.a. The Woman Sharper). Suzuki called Kanto Wanderer "a straightforward yakuza film and nothing more," though even he admitted that it "contains `ideas.'" But "idea" is an action word in this film, expressed in a breathtaking use of color, movement, and abrupt histrionics that the important critic Tadao Sato compared to Brecht. Moody matinee idol Akira Kobayashi, decked out in elaborate upper-body tatoos, a sword scar across one cheek, plays a gambling hall bouncer who renounces the gangster's code of honor, which forbids romance, for the love of a professional woman gambler. It's a classic conflict between giri (duty) and ninjo (humanity), in a script based on a novel by Taiko Hirabayashi (1905-1972), an important Japanese writer. But Suzuki's dazzling play with visual elements eclipses plot, raising obsession to the level of narrative.
-- Written by Yasutaro Yagi, based on a story by Taiko Hirabayashi. Photographed by Shigeyoshi Mine. With Akira Kobayashi, Chieko Matsubara, Hiroko Ito, Daizaburo Hirata. (93 mins, In Japanese with English subtitles, Color, 'Scope, 16mm)


Sunday June 4

Pathe; Cinema's First Empire
Introduced by Jacques Kermabon (tent.)
Jacques Kermabon is the author of a major book, Pathe; Premier Empire du Cinema, published by Centre Georges Pompidou on the occasion of the Pathe; centenary.

Le Silence est d'or 5:30
Rene; Clair (France, 1947)
Preceded by: Les Primitifs (early views, trick films, 1896-1903) and Pathe; journal (newsreels, 1947).
(Silence Is Golden/ U.S. release title: Man About Town). Rene; Clair often acknowledged his debt to the "primitives"-Georges Me;liès and others-and this period piece is a tender and clever evocation of the early years of cinema. Maurice Chevalier apparently won back some of the hearts he lost during the war years with this portrayal of M. Emile, a middle-aged film producer who gives lessons in savoir faire to his timid assistant, only to have the assistant savoir a little too well. Soon he is courting the producer's own true love. The period background is superbly recreated, with the inclusion of a number of tiny film dramas of the kind made in Paris in 1906. Clair's characteristic set pieces and comic routines here revolve around the mysteries of theatricality vs. real life.
-- Written by Clair. Photographed by Armand Thirard. With Marcelle Derrien, Dany Robin, Christiane Sertilange, Maud Lamy. (90 mins, In French with English subtitles, B&W, 35mm)

Coeur Fidele 8:00
Jean Epstein (France, 1923)
Bruce Loeb on Piano. (The Faithful Heart). Jean Epstein was one of the pioneers of "pure cinema" as opposed to the theatricality of popular cinema. Coeur Fidèle was his masterpiece. Rene; Clair wrote in 1924: "What distinguishes Coeur Fidèle from so many other movies is the fact that it was composed for the screen....The lens leans on all sides, turns about things and people, seeks an expressive shot, an unexpected angle of vision...." Henri Langlois, founder of the Cine;mathèque Française, later wrote, "In Coeur Fidèle the public found all of modern poetry, the port of Marseilles, the quais, the boats, the dirty rooms...that world which was one of the great inspiring themes of the literature of that day....It was the Quai des brumes of the twenties." As a "pure" film, Coeur Fidèle dispensed with dialogue titles.
-- Written by Epstein. Photographed by Paul Guichard. With Leon Mathot, Gina Manes, Edmond Van Daele. (65 mins, Silent, B&W, 16mm, From George Eastman House)


Tuesday June 6

No Strings Attached: Puppets, Dolls, Masks
This Shared Voices program is made possible through the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund Museum Collections Accessibility Initiative.

A Potpourri of PFA Puppet Pleasures 7:00
Curated and Introduced by Russell Merritt
Jon Mirsalis on Piano. Tonight we strike a blow for the puppet film, unaccountably ignored amidst the renewed interest in commercial animation. We've gone to the PFA vault and, with some help from sister archives, selected the cream: an array of puppet films that extend from Edwin S. Porter's delightful The "Teddy" Bears (Edison, 1907, 15 mins) to Jiri Trnka's harrowing masterpiece, The Hand (Czechoslovakia, 1965, 18 mins). We've found rarities: a charming unknown Starevitch called The Navigator (France, 1934, 12 mins), featuring two dogs honeymooning on a drowning ship; and an excerpt from a Nazi-produced children's parable, The Boy Who Wanted to Know What Fear Was (Germany, 1935, 10 mins). We will excerpt puppet scenes from live-action features, such as puppets reacting to a suicidal bureaucrat in the madly satiric Soviet film My Grandmother (K. Mikaberidze, Soviet Georgia, 1929, 11 min. excerpt, 35mm). Also, Please Excuse Me (Lubomir Benes, Czechoslovakia, 1974, 5 mins, 35mm). Watch out for added surprises-including a film by Karel Zeman, and Academy Award nominees and American puppet heroes of the past.-Russell Merritt. Russell Merritt is a film historian currently teaching at Stanford University, co-author of Walt in Wonderland and of the Emmy-nominated program D.W. Griffith: Father of Film (1993).
-- (Total program: 120 mins, 16mm except as noted, From MOMA, PFA Collection) The Great Gabbo 9:15
James Cruze (U.S., 1929)
Von Stroheim's first appearance in a talkie had him playing opposite a puppet. As the Great Gabbo-famous ventriloquist, ego-maniac, and spurned lover-Von Stroheim ushered in the long line of crabby ventriloquists who live and can only express affection through their wooden alter-egos. This is considered one of Von Stroheim's great performances, but Gabbo has other pleasures of a campier kind. Cheaply produced for Sono-Art, a poverty-row independent, the film's technical crudities were abetted by lunatic dance numbers, notably "Web of Love" with Don Douglas and Betty Compson as a spider and fly surrounded by a swarm of writhing chorus girls impersonating terrorized insects. The film long ago passed into cult status as the epitome of early talkie strangeness. After Gabbo, director James Cruze, like Stroheim, saw his career crash in the talkies. Writer Ben Hecht, on the other hand, was just warming up.-Russell Merritt
-- Written by Hugh Herbert, based on a story by Ben Hecht. Photographed by Ira H. Morgan. With Erich von Stroheim, Betty Compson, Donald Douglas, Margie "Babe" Kane. (82 mins, B&W, 16mm, PFA Collection)


Wednesday June 7

Urban Revisions
Jem and Adam: The Other Cohen Brothers 7:30
The Cohens depict the city as haunted terrain, filled with chill facades and ghostlike inhabitants. Though the brothers work separately, they ply a common genre, the city symphony, and share the same fascination with the play of light upon a skyline, the whispered histories captured in chance encounters. Adam Cohen's Blind Grace (1993, 20 mins) moves sensuously through the streets of New York, finding the little disturbances that mark one moment from the next. A man engulfed by pigeons, a prostitute applying her makeup, children fleeing from the snap of firecrackers-behind these discarded glimpses, the city looms in its hard majesty. Jem Cohen's Buried in Light (1994, 60 mins) seeks the imprint of history in an Eastern Europe slowly sliding into modernity. The past weighs heavily upon the dark brow of Berlin, Dresden, Krakow, Budapest, and Prague, yet Cohen also locates the present in the quiet insinuation of western culture. Aqueous light and time-drenched imagery call forth the symphony of a provisional place.-Steve Seid
-- (Total running time: 80 mins, Color/B&W, 3/4" Video, From the artist, Video Data Bank)


Thursday June 8

!@#$%* Suzuki Returns!
Gate of Flesh 7:30
Seijun Suzuki (Japan, 1964)
(Nikutai no mon). Suzuki's nihilism and sense of the absurd trace back to the war years when he was among a generation of men taught to desire death. His war films such as Story of a Prostitute, interestingly, are about women and their war. Gate of Flesh, based on a notorious novel by Taijiro Tamura, is set in the melee of the immediate postwar period. Amidst the black market, the homelessness and starvation; amidst Christian missionary and GI attempts to conquer hearts, minds, and bodies, a group of prostitutes make a home in an abandoned building. A strict territorial imperative applies, and free sex is punishable by sadistic pay-back. These violent set-pieces are no less disturbing because performed by women. The word "riveting" in film reviews sometimes sounds like a form of viewing torture and in this case, it applies: we can't take our eyes off this overwrought, rubble-strewn setting, can't turn away from the violence, precisely because Suzuki manages to make us root for the tawdry whores in their bright, color-coded shifts that look like Funny Face gone ballistic.
-- Written by Goro Tanada, based on a novel by Taijiro Tamura. Photographed by Shigeyoshi Mine. With Ikuko Kasai, Yumiko Nogawa, Kayo Matsuo, Tomiko Ishii. (90 mins, In Japanese with English subtitles, Color, 'Scope, 35mm)


Friday June 9

Pathe: Cinema's First Empire
Deadlier Than the Male 7:00
Julien Duvivier (France, 1956)
Preceded by: La petite cuillère de Carlos Vilardobo (1966) and Pathe; journal (newsreels, 1956).
(Voici les Temps des assassins). Noir, tre;s noir.... Lest we forget that film noir has roots, on screen as in language, in the French, this gem with Jean Gabin and Danièle Delorme offers the quintessential femme fatale, hooking the quintessential unsuspecting guy who quickly becomes suspecting, and dangerous. A middle-aged, easygoing Parisian chef and restaurateur gets a visit from the daughter of his ex-wife, who says her mother is dead. He becomes her protector and more. Of course she's doing the double cross, but why she has it out for him, and for her other lover, is the question. The picture serves up enough scenes of bubbling cuisine to please a Pagnol, but its slice of life is grim.
-- Written by Duvivier, Maurice Bessy, Charles Dorat. Photographed by Armand Thirard. With Jean Gabin, Danièle Delorme, Lucienne Bogaert, Ge;rard Blain. (113 mins, In French with English subtitles, B&W, 35mm)

The Three Musketeers 9:25
Andre; Hunebelle (France, 1953)
Preceded by: Little Moritz demande Rosalie en mariage (1911) and Pathe; journal (newsreels, 1953).
(Les Trois Mousquetaires). Alexandre Dumas's novel adapted to a colorful cinema spectacle.
-- Written by Michel Audiard, based on the novel by Alexandre Dumas. Photographed by Marcel Grignon. With Georges Marchal, Gino Cervi, Bourvil, Jacques François. (116 mins, In French with English subtitles, Color, 35mm)


Saturday June 10

!@#$%* Suzuki Returns!
Youth of the Beast/Wild Youth 7:30
Seijun Suzuki (Japan, 1963)
(Yaju no seishun). Following the discovery of two corpses-a dead cop and his equally dead mistress-a new yakuza in town (Jo Shishido) begins his rise to power, using the Takeshita School of Knitting as a cover. This was Suzuki's breakthrough film, as aggressively stylistic as they come, from the pink limo parked under matching pink cherry blossoms, to the incongruous sandstorm. Even Jo Shishido's chipmunk cheeks are an element of style (what is he hiding in there?). "However much they may pay lip service to the code of honor, Suzuki's gangsters become comic (no matter how violent) as the conventions of the genre are pushed to the point where they reveal their hollow artificiality. Sarcastically but with a straight face, he shows that a yakuza in films is only a romanticized version of an already idealized image of the samurai...." (Edinburgh Film Festival '88)
-- Written by Ichiro Ikeda, Tadaaki Yamazaki, based on a novel by Haruhiko Oyabu. Photographed by Kazue Nagatsuka. With Jo Shishido, Ichiro Kijima, Misako Watanabe, Mizuho Suzuki. (91 mins, In Japanese with English subtitles, Color, 'Scope, 16mm)

Our Blood Will Not Forgive 9:15
Seijun Suzuki (Japan, 1964)
(Oretachi no chi ga yurusanai). "Matinee idol Akira Kobayashi is an almost languid tough guy, Elvis with a pinch of Mitchum, who seems to be nursing an inner wound....Our Blood Will Not Forgive [is] conceptually as well as visually exciting. Kobayashi is the eldest son of an assassinated yakuza boss who, on his deathbed, begged his offspring to forswear revenge and stay out of the family crime business. First Son appears to comply, and maintains a false front of buttoned-down respectability, but he's a worm-eaten secret sinner....The deep waters of Kobayashi's sullen soul are played off against the blunt nature of his more conventionally rebellious kid brother....Kobayashi's hypocritical yuppie gangster...gets a daringly long, drawn-out death scene, staggering around a barren country landscape, bleeding on the underbrush, until his sins are paid off with interest and he is transfigured."-David Chute, Film Comment
-- Written by Ryuma Takemori, Katsuhiro Hosomi, based on a novel by Kenro Matsuura. Photographed by Shigeyoshi Mine. With Akira Kobayashi, Hideki Takahashi, Chikako Hosokawa, Hiroshi Midorikawa. (97 mins, In Japanese with English subtitles, Color, 'Scope, 35mm)


Sunday June 11

Pathe: Cinema's First Empire
Belphegor 5:30
Claude Barma (France, 1965)
Today, Pathe; is largely involved in television productions. This celebrated story of the Phantom of the Louvre (also serialized by Pathe; in the silent era) was a popular television mini-series which shows here in its cinema-screen version. In four parts.
With Yves Re;gnier, Juliette Gre;co, Jean Topart. (Parts 1-4: 192 mins, intermissions, In French with English subtitles, Color, 35mm)


Tuesday June 13

No Strings Attached:
Puppets, Dolls and Masks 7:30
The magical miniature world of puppets and dolls offers a stage on which scaled-down versions of human relations can be played out. Recognizably "human" yet not fully "alive," their limited qualities allow them to stand in for us-acting with limited understanding, acted upon by larger forces. Tonight's program includes Jan Svankmajer's surrealist modernist homage, Punch and Judy, and the recently rediscovered There It Is, a stop-action mystery featuring Scotland Yard-the pasture, that is-by the incredible Charley Bowers. Comedians Michael Smith and Douglas Skinner talk politics, while Joe Gibbons's latest monolog has him talking to himself in the form of a Ken doll. Steven Davis searches a park for the remnants of a sex doll, piecing together an illicit tale. Submerged dramas are also brought to life in Tony Oursler's sexualized theater and Eric Saks's playing out of a childhood experience using masks, cut-outs, and animation.-Kathy Geritz Punch and Judy by Jan Svankmajer (1966, 10 mins, 35mm). There It Is by Charles R. Bowers (1928, 20 mins, B&W, 35mm). The Acrobatic Fly by F. Percy Smith (1908, 3 mins, Silent, B&W, 16mm). Mike and Doug Weigh Their Chances by Marshall Reese, Dan Walworth. Performed by Michael Smith, Douglas Skinner (1992, 4 mins). Puppets by Tom Kalin (1986, 3 mins). Gun Talk by Eric Saks (1991, 14 mins). Pretty Boy by Joe Gibbons (1994, 3 mins). The Unknown Pervert by Steven Davis (1989, 7 mins). EVOL by Tony Oursler (1984, 29 mins).
-- (Total running time: c. 110 mins, Color, 3/4" Video, unless indicated otherwise, From artists, Electronic Arts Intermix, George Eastman House, Kino International)


Wednesday June 14

Urban Revisions
Tell Me Shibam and Free from Babylon 7:30
Saad Salman (Germany, 1991)/ Gustavo Vazquez (U.S., 1991)
Anachronistic architectural styles often survive simply because of cultural tenacity-or strong-willed revival. We look at two such anachronistic forms, distant in their locales but not necessarily their motivations. In Gustavo Vazquez's unfettered Free from Babylon (28 mins), Treehouse Joe, an eccentric San Diego naturalist, recycles society's detritus into whimsical homes. Elaborate treehouses and earth stations, often made with crude tools and archaic engineering, mirror Joe's philosophy of non-interventionist architecture. Craftsmen in the Yemenite town of Shibam have followed a similar ethos, constructing strident clay-brick high-rises for the past 1600 years. Saad Salman's poetic Tell Me Shibam (41 mins) explores these elegant structures by illustrating a Yemenite folktale about a stranger striving to learn the ancient crafts needed to build them. The tale tells us that it requires an empathy for the cycles of nature to stack adobe high into the arid skies.-Steve Seid
-- (Total running time: 69 mins, Color, 3/4" Video, From the artist and Wexner Center, permission of Les productions de la lanterne)


Marcel Pagnol's Provence Pagnol Centennial 1895-1974

In 1931 Marcel Pagnol, who was born the same year as the cinema, "invented for the French public ze talking picture" (Jean-Pierre Gorin). In disseminating his plays on the screen Pagnol created a unique style that transcended "filmed theater." Never was talk so cinematic as in his portraits of Provence which, despite a precise dramatic structure, are shot (and shot through) with a brilliant naturalism. Pagnol's actors were trained in his robust caf'conc' style in which tragedy is never so tragic as to preclude a kind of low-key vaudeville. The almond-eyes of Orane Demazis, the elastic visage of Fernandel, the contained explosion that is Raimu, and the countless village pundits who people Pagnol's cinema keep these films always in the present tense. We hope you will enjoy our whole series celebrating Pagnol's centenary-which includes films never before shown here-but you can, in effect, enter Pagnol's provençal chronicle at any moment along the way. Pagnol's was a cinema not about but of Provence, its rough dry textures, its flavors, its pace, its accent, its humor and gravity and pride. But it was also a cinema of rich and abiding humanity, which is neither tragic nor corny.

"With Marcel Pagnol, making a film is first of all going to Marseilles, then eating some bouillabaisse with a friend, talking about the rain or the beautiful weather, and finally if there is a spare moment, shooting..."-Fernandel

In conjunction with our film series, on Monday evenings in June, Chez Panisse, a restaurant named for a character in Pagnol's Fanny Trilogy, will serve special dinners à la Pagnol-the unique foods and wines of Provence. Two seatings. Fixed price: $35/person. Call Chez Panisse at 510-548-5525 for reservations which can be made a month in advance. Sunday, June 25, enjoy The Fanny Trilogy at PFA and dinner à la Provence by Cafe Grace in the museum's sculpture garden. Menu prepared from the cookbook Marcel Pagnol's Favorite Recipes from Provence. Dinner begins at 5 p.m. Fixed price: $20. Call Cafe Grace at 510-548-4366 for dinner reservations. Marcel Pagnol's Favorite Recipes from Provence, written by Jacqueline Pagnol as a joyful accompaniment to the centennial celebration, is sold at PFA and at the UAM/PFA Bookstore ($8, paperback).

Thursday June 15

Marcel Pagnol's Provence
PFA is pleased to join with Nicole Jouve of Interama, New York, and the Marcel Pagnol Estate in France, to present a series celebrating the Marcel Pagnol centennial. We thank the Consulate General of France, San Francisco, and Jean-Pierre Filiu, Cultural Attache;, for their assistance. We also thank Alice Waters, Chez Panisse; and Maggie Back, Cafe Grace, for their participation. English-subtitled prints in the exhibition are from Interama and the PFA Collection; the unsubtitled films are presented through the courtesy of the Marcel Pagnol Estate. This project is made possible through the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund Museum Collections Accessibility Initiative.

Topaze 7:00
Louis Gasnier (France, 1933)
"Topaze remains a little masterpiece of stinging irony and vengeful humor" (Franc Tireur). In 1929 Pagnol's play Topaze was one of the most successful French stage productions ever. A Hollywood adaptation with John Barrymore and Myrna Loy was memorable in its American way but this version with Louis Jouvet (who played the role on stage) and Edwige Feuillère is far closer to the original. The delightfully cynical satire chronicles the metamorphosis of a timid, persecuted, not-too-clever schoolteacher, whose lessons emphasize ethics and morality, into a dishonest but decidedly more confident individual when he is thrust in spite of himself into a crooked business scheme. Topaze was filmed again in 1951, this time with Pagnol at the helm and Fernandel in the title role (see June 30).
-- Adapted by L. Marchand from Pagnol's play. With Louis Jouvet, Edwige Feuillière, Marcel Valle;e, Jacqueline Delubac. (95 mins, In French with English subtitles, B&W, 16mm, From Interama)

Jofroi and Cigalon 8:50
Jofroi
Marcel Pagnol (France, 1934)
Jofroi reached American shores in 1950, packaged with Rossellini's The Miracle and Renoir's A Day in the Country as the omnibus film Ways of Love. The most warmly comical of the three, Jofroi combines the irrationality of the one film and the earthiness of the other, its "love" being a man's consuming passion for his ancestral land. Recognition of the gnarled old farmer Jofroi's obsessiveness in no way lessens our sympathy with his determination not to let his beloved trees be destroyed, despite his having sold the land on which they stand. Based on a novel by Jean Giono, Jofroi is enriched by the same sun-drenched mood that glows throughout the Fanny Trilogy. Vincent Scotto, who composed the music for many of Pagnol's films, plays the title role.
-- Written by Marcel Pagnol, based on the novel Jofroi de la Maussan by Jean Giono. Photographed by Willy Gricha, R. Ledru. With Vincent Scotto, Annie Toinon, Tyrand, Henri Poupon. (42 mins, In French with English subtitles, B&W, 16mm, From Interama)


Cigalon
Marcel Pagnol (France, 1935)
The importance of good food is not to be underestimated in the life of a community-witness The Baker's Wife (June 22). Cigalon, who has opened a restaurant in a small village in Provence, constantly refuses to serve his clients. It seems he has been a chef in the best French restaurants and is convinced that his new customers are not worth his cooking. But Mrs. Toffi, ex-laundress, understands that money can be made off the tourist trade. She opens an inn close to Cigalon. War is declared...
Note: Presented without subtitles but with written English synopsis. Written by Pagnol. Photographed by Albert Assouad. With Arnaudy, Henri Poupon, Madame Chabert, Jean Castan. (73 mins, In French with English synopsis, B&W, 16mm, Courtesy the Marcel Pagnol Estate, permission Interama)

Friday June 16

Marcel Pagnol's Provence
Angele 7:00
Marcel Pagnol (France, 1934)
Pagnol's most important work, for which he left Marseilles to shoot in the hilltowns of Provence. The Fanny Trilogy introduced us to Orane Demazis but Angèle is her pièce de re;sistance. It's about a farmgirl whose re;sistance is low to a city slicker who, unbeknownst only to her, plans to set her up as a prostitute in Marseilles. She is rescued from the life by the kindly farmhand Saturnin (Fernandel, cast against type for his finest role). "Friendship cleans all," but this cannot save her from family; with her baby, Angèle is kept locked away like a dirty secret. When she emerges from capture into the harsh provençal light, it is thanks to the amour fou of a young mountain man, Albin and the good will and grace of his fellow itinerant worker Ame;de;e, perhaps the most noble of all Pagnol savages. Pagnol's film likewise is saved from its melodramatic premise by love-of the land on which it is filmed, the much-traveled roads, the creaking windmills, the peasant farmhouse with its big kitchen table, to be seated at which marks one's acceptance as a member of the human race.
-- Written by Pagnol, based on Un de Baumugnes by Jean Giono. Photographed by Willy, Roger Ledru. With Orane Demazis, Fernandel, Annie Toinon, Henri Poupon, Jean Servais, Edouard Delmont. (132 mins, In French with English subtitles, B&W, 35mm, From Interama)

Harvest 9:30
Marcel Pagnol (France, 1937)
(Regain). Aubignac, a small village situated high upon a crag in Provence, suffers the common fate of such enclaves, reduced and abandoned over time. Only three people remain: an old blacksmith, a withered crone, and a middle-aged poacher, Panturle (Gabriel Gabrio). And finally, it is Panturle, alone. Enter Arsule (Orane Demazis), a down-at-the-heels cabaret singer, and Ge;de;mus (Fernandel), an itinerant knife-grinder who has picked her up (now she pulls his cart, like something out of La Strada). Arsule and Panturle team up to revitalize her existence and his land; they will sow wheat in the welcoming soil of Aubignac. Harvest is at once Pagnol's clearest and crudest statement about humans and the earth-both will decay if left alone. But there is darkness, too, from the gendarme who welcomes Arsule's degradation to the grinder whose comic ruses are edged with threat. And it is against this that the simple humanity of Arsule and Panturle becomes rather more complex.
Written by Pagnol, based on the novel by Jean Giono. Photographed by Willy. With Orane Demazis, Fernandel, Gabriel Gabrio, Marguerite Moreno. (127 mins, 35mm, In French with English subtitles, From Interama)


Saturday June 17

!@#$%* Suzuki Returns!
One Generation of Tattoos 7:30
Seijun Suzuki (Japan, 1965)
(Irezumi Ichidai). Tokyo in the 1930s. Murakami Tetsutaro-nicknamed "White Tiger Tetsu" because of his fine tiger tattoo-became a yakuza to help pay his brother Kenji's way through art college. Now he wants to go straight, but the price demanded by his oyabun for his freedom is that he carry out one last assassination....Suzuki and [art director Takeo] Kimura's visual stylization actually hits a new pitch of sophistication in this film, replacing the gaudy primary colors of earlier films with subtler autumnal shades....The emphasis on art and romance helps to deflate the usual machismo of the genre even more than similar emphases did in Kanto Wanderer, justifying Suzuki's description of it as "my most feminine film."-Tony Rayns, Branded to Thrill
-- Written by Kinya Naoi, Yoshi Hattori. Photographed by Kurataro Takamura. With Hideki Takahashi, Hananomoto, Akira Yamauchi, Hiroko Ito. (87 mins, In Japanese with English subtitles, Color, 'Scope, 16mm)

Carmen from Kawachi 9:15
Seijun Suzuki (Japan, 1966)
(Kawachi Karumen). A wonderful if little-known addition to the "Carmen" films (to coin a genre). Carmen from Kawachi brings the nihilist Suzuki universe to a woman's life in the decidedly unsentimental education of a provincial factory worker, Tsuyuko (Yumiko Nogawa), whose rape by two fellow villagers starts her on the road to sexual awareness and finally, independence. It is a long, picaresque road indeed, meandering from Osaka's Club Dada through liaisons with, among others, a dominatrix and an action painter. The encounter that brings the story full circle is with a corrupt monk who had been her primal introduction to sexual hypocrisy and male brutality. This B feature was designed to play with Imamura's Insect Woman, and like that lepidopteran lass, Tsuyuko has a tenacity that amounts to a killing charm. You have to love the Suzuki heroine because nobody else does.
-- Written by Katsumi Miki, based on a novel by Toko Kon. Photographed by Shigeyoshi Mine. With Yumiko Nogawa, Koji Wada, Asao Sano, Tamio Kawachi. (89 mins, In Japanese with English subtitles, B&W, 'Scope, 16mm)


Sunday June 18

Marcel Pagnol's Provence
Merlusse 5:00
Marcel Pagnol (France, 1935)
Pagnol was a schoolteacher before writing his knowing satire Topaze, and Merlusse benefits as much from that experience as from his having also been, inevitably, a schoolboy. It is Pagnol's own "Zero for Conduct," shot in a boarding school using school kids as actors. It tells of a bearded, one-eyed teacher who is nicknamed Merlusse (codfish) by the kids who fear and revile him. As always with Pagnol, the film is a delicate balance of parched realism and profound humanity, giving no slack to melodrama and much to argot and observation. Variety, in 1936, raved: "Curious and deeply interesting relation of boy and teacher, in a dozen phases, is masterfully painted throughout...He's gone deep into the feelings of schoolboys."
Note: Presented without subtitles but with written English synopsis. -- Written by Pagnol. Photographed by Albert Assouad. With Henri Poupon, Andre; Pollack, Thomeray, Rellys. (75 mins, In French with written English synopsis, B&W, 35mm, Courtesy Marcel Pagnol Estate, permission Interama)

Marius 6:30
Alexander Korda (France, 1931)
Fanny 8:55
Marc Allegret (France, 1932)
The films in the Fanny Trilogy may be appreciated on their own or as a triptych. Marius and Fanny are presented tonight, Ce;sar on Friday. The trilogy is presented again in its entirety on Sunday, June 25. For program notes, please see June 25.


Tuesday June 20

No Strings Attached: Puppets, Dolls, Masks
Heidi 7:30
Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy (USA, 1992)
Preceded by short: This Is a Dead Boy (Michael J. Collins, 1992). Using wonderful, mysterious tableaux, dolls and masks, Michael Collins fractures a fairy tale, exposing loss of hope, the prevalence of evil, and the inevitability of death. (14 mins, Color, 3/4" Video, From the artist).
Where the traditional story of Heidi is smothered in rustic innocence, in Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy's brilliant and truly grotesque retelling Heidi finds herself in the confines of a mock chalet inhabited by her twisted grandfather and her putative sibling and seducer, Peter. Using life-size dummies, ghoulish masks, wiggy costumes, and a claustrophobic, curiously colored set with haylofts, peepshows and unadorned rooms, the artists depict scenes from the degeneration of a "rural gothic" family. The six tableaux obsess on the disciplinary rituals of childhood and the morbid re-routing of sexual drives. Incest, parodic violence, and a weird fascination with bodily functions serve as the disturbing crux of Heidi , but Kelley and McCarthy go beyond the family plot to dramatize desire and the body as perverse social production. In this compulsive work, nature struggles with nurture in a precipitous land where the cuckoo clock has no hands.-Steve Seid
-- (63 mins, Color, 3/4" Video, From the artist, Electronic Arts Intermix)


Wednesday June 21

No Strings Attached
Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex 7:30
Julie Taymor (U.S., 1993)
Preceded by short: Screenplay (Barry Purves, U.K., 1992). An exquisite kabuki performance in miniature. A tiny rotating stage is the wondrous site for the unexpectedly expressive puppetry and fusuma screens. (11 mins, Color, 35mm, From BFI)
In Julie Taymor's startling rendition of the Stravinsky opera (libretto by Cocteau) there are two Oedipuses. One, attired in a costume with soaring shoulders, a Minoan headdress, and large sculpted hands, performs the traditional part of the King of Thebes. The other-a butoh dancer encrusted with layers of clay-parodies Oedipus's every gesture. He is a full-scale puppet, a man not in command of his movements. The other is a king, but also a puppet to the angry gods who have delivered him to his tragic fate. Taymor, widely known for her ambitious puppet theater, has slyly accented an essential mechanism of Greek tragedy, that man is but a plaything tugging against the strings of fate. Only through the self-recognition of Oedipus's crimes can the puppet shed its sodden shell to reveal the fully rendered man beneath. Designed for a Japanese festival, Taymor's staging includes sculptures and a benshi-like narrator. With Jessye Norman as Jocasta, Philip Langridge as Oedipus, and Min Tanaka as the Oedipus dancer.-Steve Seid
-- Film and Stage Production Directed by Julie Taymor. Opera by Igor Stravinsky. Libretto by Jean Cocteau. Saito Kinen Orchestra conducted by Seiji Ozawa. Masks and Costumes by Taymor, Emi Wada. Sets by George Tsypin. (57 mins, In Japanese and Latin with English subtitles, Color, 35mm, From Sony Classical Film and Video; Special thanks to Peter Gelb and Kevin McGee of Sony Classical)

Thursday June 22

Marcel Pagnol's Provence
The Baker's Wife 7:00
Marcel Pagnol (France, 1938)
(La Femme du boulanger). A warm and ribald comedy, still as hilarious as they come. Under the trees that cast their sunflecked shadows, the constant debates of a village are diverted when the new baker's wife runs off with a shepherd. Not that it surprises anyone (the postman rings twice in Provence, too), but the baker says he cannot be two things-a cuckold and a breadmaker-at the same time. It behooves the villagers to band together to find the wayward wife, for she is their daily bread. Even the priest capitalizes on the shepherd metaphor, but the remoteness of the Church ("Your god can't run away, he's nailed to a cross") is counterposed to a growing compassion among the townspeople for this uninitiated newcomer who is so profoundly moved by his wife's metamorphosis. Largely a vehicle for the magnificent actor Raimu, this is a classic of cuckoldry, as poignant and powerful in its way as The Blue Angel.
-- Written by Pagnol, based on an incident in a novel by Jean Giono. Photographed by G. Denoit, R. Ledru, N. Darius. With Raimu, Ginette Leclerc, Charles Moulin, Robert Vattier, Charpin. (124 mins, In French with English subtitles, B&W, 35mm, From PFA Collection, permission Interama)

Le Schpountz 9:20
Marcel Pagnol (France, 1938)
Fernandel, having come, like many of Pagnol's actors, from a music-hall background, is ideally suited to this portrait of a country bumpkin who envisions himself the next Charles Boyer and sets off for Paris to make it in the movies. Such a person is called a "schpountz" in local trade parlance and the sound of that word somehow resonates particularly well with Fernandel's elastic face and his elastic nature: the ability always to bounce back that keeps him from being a tragic figure. Pagnol, who should know, takes the opportunity to satirize French producers and their methods of financing, and the film has a number of ridiculous situations and set pieces probably based entirely on reality. Orane Demazis and Charpin co-star.
-- Written by Pagnol. Photographed by Willy. With Fernandel, Orane Demazis, Charpin, Pierre Brasseur. (135 mins, In French with English subtitles, B&W, 16mm, From Interama)


Friday June 23

Marcel Pagnol's Provence
Cesar 7:00
Marcel Pagnol (France, 1936)
Please see program notes for June 25.

The Well-Digger's Daughter 9:15
Marcel Pagnol (France, 1940)
(La Fille de puisatier). One would not have thought there were many fresh narrative options for the girl who becomes pregnant without benefit of clergy but Pagnol managed three in Fanny, Angèle, and The Well-Digger's Daughter. The stories lie in the reactions of those around her, which run the gamut from the humane to the hysterical. Josette Day, the eponymous offspring in this film made during the Occupation, becomes pregnant by "the hardware store's son," who is forthwith sent to the front and didn't intend to marry her anyway. The former softens the blow of the latter for the girl's widower father, and the boy's reported death at the front draws both families together. But, like the Occupation and the war itself, it's not over till it's over. This warm comedy, both pastoral and earthy, pits the rustic wit of Raimu, as the peasant father, against the sarcastic superiority of Charpin, as "the hardware store," and offers Fernandel in a typical role of asexual bumpkin.
-- Written by Pagnol. Photographed by Willy. With Josette Day, Raimu, Charpin, Fernandel. (120 mins, In French with English subtitles, B&W, 16mm, From Interama)


Saturday June 24

!@#$%* Suzuki Returns!
Tokyo Drifter 7:30
Seijun Suzuki (Japan, 1966)
(Tokyo nagaremono). Suzuki used a plot about the last honorable yakuza to chip away at his own obligations to genre; by the next year and Branded to Kill, he would be shown the door at Nikkatsu for making "incomprehensible films." Tokyo Drifter marks an epiphany in Suzuki's collaboration with art director Takeo Kimura. The plot sketches a fine line between underworld and high finance in the story of ex-yakuza Tetsu, who tries to go it alone and finds that Monopoly's a pretty tough game. From the gorgeous, black-and-white opening shots in a train yard, to the shoot-the-piano-player finale in saloon and snow, Suzuki and Kimura raise the set-piece to an art installation. Cabaret walls are color-lit as if from within, background music is somehow heard by the actors, key encounters are eclipsed by visual metaphors like a car methodically being crushed, and characters eclipsed by their idiosyncrasies, like the maniacal secretary who devours comic books and, incidentally, men.
Written by Yasunori Kawauchi. Photographed by Shigeyoshi Mine. With Tetsuya Watari, Chieko Matsubara, Hideaki Nitani, Ryuji Kita. (83 mins, In Japanese with English subtitles, Color, 'Scope, 35mm, From ICA, London, permission Nikkatsu)

Branded to Kill 9:10
Seijun Suzuki (Japan, 1967)
(Koroshi no rakuin). Hanada Goro, "Number 3 Killer," is hired by gang boss Yabuhara to undertake a mission fraught with danger, while Yabuhara busies himself with Hanada's wife. Three assassinations later, the sharpshooting but insecure No. 3 (Jo Shishido, natch) would seem to be moving up on the menu until he bungles a shoot because a butterfly settles on his telescopic sight at the crucial moment. Branded to Kill goes all the way with Suzuki's brand of eroticism and cruel humor, much of it at the expense of the hero. Hanada, for example, is able to become sexually aroused only when sniffing boiling rice, while his relationship with the Mrs. is more like high stakes than high times. Then there's the true love interest, a female straight out of Detour who travels light, with white convertible, portable rainstorm, and death wish. "Things happen" is the conclusion of this absurdist thriller, and that's a fitting end to our series.
-- Written by Hachiro Guryu. Photographed by Kazue Nagatsuka. With Jo Shishido, Mariko Ogawa, Annu Mari, Koji Nanbara. (91 mins, In Japanese with English subtitles, B&W, 'Scope, 16mm)


Sunday June 25

Marcel Pagnol: The Fanny Trilogy
Dinner a la Provence by Cafe Grace in the museum's sculpture garden begins at 5:10 p.m. Fixed price: $20. Call Cafe Grace at 510-548-4366 for dinner reservations.

Marius 3:00
Alexander Korda (France, 1931)
Marcel Pagnol directed only one of his Fanny Trilogy, as the films Marius, Fanny, and Ce;sar are affectionately known, but he is the true auteur of all three films based on his plays about the inhabitants of the old port of Marseilles. Marius establishes the characters of Ce;sar (Raimu), philosopher-at-large and proprietor of a quayside bar; his son Marius (Pierre Fresnay), whose dreams of a life at sea blind him and finally bind him to the love of Fanny, the fish-monger (Orane Demazis); and Panisse (Charpin), a kindly widower who quotes poetry from face-cream pots and waits in the wings for Fanny's hand. Marius and Panisse's wishes are granted but it's no fairy tale. Written by Pagnol from his play. Photographed by Ted Pahle. With Raimu, Orane Demazis, Pierre Fresnay, Charpin, Alida Rouffe. (130 mins, In French with English subtitles, B&W, 35mm, From PFA Collection, permission Interama)

Fanny 7:00
Marc Allegret (France, 1932)
The Fanny Trilogy is ostensibly concerned with the passions of the youngsters, Marius and Fanny, but it is the older generation who dominate. They are the spinners of fantasy, theirs the impossible logic and fast-talking energy that is life itself in this quayside community. This is so, from the sidewalk gents who take bets on the melodrama unfolding before them, to Fanny's manipulating Mama, to Panisse and, most especially, Ce;sar. Orson Welles once called Raimu the greatest actor of the cinema and it is Raimu's presence that pulls the threads of this twenty-year saga into a beautiful whole. Fanny, the second part of the trilogy, is Fanny's tragedy but Ce;sar's story, as he asserts his strange wisdom and his mad love to create something marvelous-a family-out of characters who are all "at sea."
-- Written by Marcel Pagnol. Photographed by Nicolas Toporkoff, Roger Hubert. With Raimu, Orane Demazis, Pierre Fresnay, Charpin, Alida Rouffe. (125 mins, In French with English subtitles, B&W, 35mm, From PFA Collection, permission Interama)

Cesar 9:20
Marcel Pagnol (France, 1936)
The third part of the Fanny Trilogy opens, some twenty years after Fanny, with the confessions of Panisse on his deathbed. True to form, these occasion something other than tears-digressions so lengthy and so funny Panisse forgets to die. The son he has raised with Fanny (with a little help from "godfather" Ce;sar) is now old enough to track down his real father. And so the story of Fanny and Marius begins again. Love is revolution in the literal sense of the word.
-- Written by Pagnol. Photographed by Willy. With Raimu, Orane Demazis, Pierre Fresnay, Charpin, Andre; Fouche. (116 mins, In French with English subtitles, B&W, 35mm, From PFA Collection, permission Interama)


Tuesday June 27

No Strings Attached:
Puppets, Dolls and Masks 7:30
The use of puppets and dolls often raises the question, who is controlling whom? They can be an effective, even chilling way to suggest the invasiveness of government or popular culture, a sense of fragmented identity. A fascination with the complex reverberations of being acted upon can be seen in Lewis Klahr's use of Cosmopolitan magazine cutouts, Peter Celli's invasive medical procedures, and Steven Dye's observations from outer space. In a permutation on the use of puppets and dolls as stand-ins for our experience, Emily Breer and Janie Geiser (whose The Red Book screens May 3) create new models whose experiences cannot be limited by the stage laid out for them. In Tony Labat's Mayami, Winston Tong and his evocative dolls perform in spaces created between "cut" and "action" with Miami Vice as backdrop. In these works, the question of who is the author or maker is complicated: who speaks and with whose words; who acts and on which stage-society? the artist? the puppet or doll?-Kathy Geritz
-- Cranial Invasive Reproductive Procedure by Peter Celli (1992, 7 mins). LUN by Steven Dye (7 mins, 16mm). Altair by Lewis Klahr (1994, 8 mins, 16mm). What Happened by Richard Kizu-Blair. Sculpture by Elizabeth King (1991, 3 mins). Babel Town by Janie Geiser (1992, 7 mins, 16mm). Superhero by Emily Breer (1994, 10 mins, 16mm). Shane and Cory by Michael Smith, Doug Skinner (1994, 4 mins). Mayami: Between Cut and Action by Tony Labat. With Winston Tong (1986, 14 mins). (Total running time: c. 90 mins, 3/4" Video, Color, unless indicated otherwise, From artists, Canyon Cinema, Electronic Arts Intermix)


Wednesday June 28

The Judah L. Magnes Museum Presents:
The Second Annual Jewish Video Competition 7:30
Artists and activists have passionately embraced the potential of moving images to call forth the beliefs, the struggles, the aspirations that embody the world community of Jews. Video, for its part, has provided an expressive medium that has artfully enhanced the account of this culture by depicting the intimate along with the communal, recording the voices and images that muster the past and guarantee continuity into the future. The Judah L. Magnes Museum sponsors the Jewish Video Competition, now in its second year, to recognize the accomplishments of these committed videographers. Last year's inaugural screening featured compelling works that ranged from the heartfelt story of one woman's return to her Polish home in Diamonds in the Snow to the whimsical portrait of Yiddish Folksingers on Miami Beach. Join us for an evening that will divulge some of the stories that comprise the Jewish experience.
-- Competition sponsored by the Richard and Roslyn Lindheim Fund. This year's panelists: Bill Chayes, Thalia Drori, Jerry Graham.


Thursday June 29

Marcel Pagnol's Provence
Manon des sources and Ugolin 7:00
Marcel Pagnol (France, 1952)
(Manon of the Spring). With Manon des sources and its second part, Ugolin, "in the newly acquired freedom of his inspiration, [Pagnol] was to give Provence its universal epic." (Andre; Bazin) The story of a wild shepherdess (Jacqueline Pagnol), who takes revenge on the villagers responsible for the death of her father by diverting the spring that supplies them with water, will be familiar to those who saw Claude Berri's 1986 twin remake Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring. "Pagnol didn't have Berri's technical polish and basic filmmaking know-how, but his unselfconscious feeling for his people and his sly manner in exposing their foibles and petty-mindedness gives the B&W film a large edge on its glossy color successor." (Lenny Borger, Variety) This leisurely tale speaks to the question of responsibility for our fellows that runs a natural course through the Pagnol films, quite taken for granted until the postwar Manon, where the villagers must be made to understand that one can be guilty of silence.
Note: Presented without subtitles but with written English synopsis. Written by Pagnol. Photographed by Willy. With Jacqueline Pagnol, Raymond Pellegrin, Henri Poupon, Rellys. (Part I: 118 mins; Part II: 110 mins, intermission; In French with written English synopsis, B&W, 35mm, Courtesy Marcel Pagnol Estate, permission Interama)


Friday June 30

Marcel Pagnol's Provence
Letters from My Windmill 7:00
Marcel Pagnol (France, 1955)
Pagnol adapted three provençal stories by noted author Alphonse Daudet to make a film "of marvelous comic worth" (New Yorker). In the first two, the director's skepticism about the clergy (so delicately needled in The Baker's Wife) meets his worship of a good meal, a cup of wine and... In "The Three Low Masses," a chaplain whose thoughts linger on the Christmas feast temptingly described to him by the Devil himself has trouble achieving a state of grace. In the second tale, "The Elixir of Father Gauchet," a padre who brews liqueur to raise a few francs to do God's work has a similar obstacle to transcendence. The third, "The Secret of Master Corneille," brings in the loaf of bread in a mystery of a miller whose windmill has turned for twenty years, despite the advent of modern steam mills and no customers to be seen.
-- Written by Pagnol based on stories by Alphonse Daudet. With Henri Vilbert, Daxley, Rellys, Robert Vattier. (140 mins, In French with English subtitles, B&W, 35mm, From Interama)

Topaze 9:30
Marcel Pagnol (France, 1951)
This oft-filmed satire on the wages of opportunism found a new resonance in each decade. Pagnol's own film version of his hit play stars Fernandel as the moralistic but unhappy schoolmaster who finds that crime pays-it gives him the spirit he always lacked as an idealist.
-- Written by Pagnol. Photographed by Philippe Agostini. With Fernandel, Jacqueline Pagnol, Marcel Valle;e. (98 mins, In French with English subtitles, B&W, 16mm, From Interama)

Movie Image in Berkeley has generously provided videotapes for our research.