In this current time of filmmaking (2015) heavily sourced from franchises or cast in the mold of an event, audiences are starved of rich stories. Stories crafted with subtle aesthetics and invoking narrative rhythms that harken back to earlier periods where form reinforces content and doesn’t draw attention to itself because of the need to deflect audiences from subject matter bereft of ideas. As a counterpoint therefore, I decided to re-visit the classic two parter, Jean De Florette and Manon des Sources, a classic epic directed by Claude berry in 1986.
The story, a drama, was adapted from a French novel by Marcel Pagnol and is rooted in themes of causality, the inexorable workings of destiny and how destiny is propelled by an inherent moral gravity bringing ruin and despair upon those seeking to advance themselves by destroying the lives of others. In the first part, the story concerns the ambitions of Cesar Soubeyran to preserve his family’s property and influence in the region. It is set in Provence in the 1920s. Cesar’s mission grows from the delusion that eternity of family is established through perpetual ownership of their land. He sets his ambitions on acquiring a neighboring farm to increase his holdings. Unfortunately, upon the death of the owner, inadvertently caused by Cesar, the property is inherited by the neighbor’s closest relative, a hunchback tax collector from the city, who, against all the odds, moves his family onto the farm to establish a life of self-sufficiency. His arrival pits scientific agriculture against traditional farming techniques. His expectation of a joyful life is rooted in an idealistic plan to raise his family surrounded by the rhythms of nature, far away from the cynicism of urban life. In a supreme irony, what he encounters instead are the malevolent schemings of Soubeyran., who, with his nephew, Ugolin, recently returned from the war, secretly blocks the only water source to the newcomer’s property. Everything the hunchback attempts to grow eventually succumbs to drought leaving him destitute and resulting in his eventual death.
Berri created an extraordinary epic, drawing on powerful and visceral elements to add color and depth. Much like David Lean, Berri excelled at telling stories of an intrinsically intimate nature cast against vast backdrops, in this case the Provencal landscape and nature. Water is the main artery through which the conflicts emerge and reach a climax. Without water there is no life and water is the pivotal theme of the story. Florette beautifully recreates the languorous and potent dramas on the anvil on which collisions between town and country life were beaten out, tradition versus innovation, superstition versus science.
Berri invokes elements of absurdity and farce in scenes such as the fight between Cesar and his neighbor, in which Cesar, provoked by his neighbor, yanks him down from the tree in which he is working, grabs his legs, and swings him round before hurling him free, killing him as a result. Similarly, the scene of the dead neighbor being shaved by the village barber, prior to his funeral, in which the barber insists that the dead man be vertical for him to do his work, evokes the absurd. Such scenes, although bordering on the macabre are instilled with humor and show a deep human empathy for his characters.
Berri’s rich depictions of vast, sometimes shimmering landscapes using rich colors, are juxtaposed against the intimacy of unfolding human drama and brilliantly photographed by Bruno Nuytten.
The score, composed by Jean-Claude Petit and derivative of Verdi’s overture to his opera, The Force of Destiny, forms a beautiful melodic arrangement, evoking the inexorable flow of destiny, manifesting the tragedy of humans who make causes destructive of life, and inescapably reap the effects as a consequence. The harmonica, playing the central melody, represents that quintessential French instrument, the accordion, bringing us directly into the realm of French country life where the story is set.
The performances are near perfection. Berri’s unhurried directorial style coupled with an editing rhythm that pays respect to the lyricism of the story while staying clear of tipping the balance into melodrama allows the characters to be authentic and encourages them to explore emotional depths contributing richly to the tragedy of the story. One of the most memorable scenes is when Cesar sits on a bench in the village cemetery where he is joined by an older woman who has known him all his life. She recounts events from the past which entirely contradict Cesar’s assumptions about what happened to the love of his life and their subsequent separation. She reveals the fact that the hunchback was, in fact, his only son, for whose death Cesar was responsible. The scene is told largely over the shoulder of the old woman onto Cesar. Throughout her revelations his face manifests the whole range of emotions spanning over thirty years of life, and revealing the remorse, anger, regret, and finally the entire weight of hopelessness and inconsolable grief to which he succumbs.
This is a performance that ranks with the greatest and leaves the audience unsuccessfully fighting back their own poignant emotions. One of the great films of the last 50 years.