Fanny (1932)

Director:

Marc Allégret

Writers:

Marcel Pagnol (play)
Marcel Pagnol (screenplay)

Release Date:

12 February 1948 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama

Plot:

Marius has left, signed up for a five year hitch on a ship bound for the Indian Ocean. In his few letters to his father César...

Plot Keywords:

Marseilles France | Marseille | Sequel | One Word Title | Pregnant Bride

Cast

Raimu	...	César
Pierre Fresnay	...	Marius
Orane Demazis	...	Fanny
Fernand Charpin	...	Honore Panisse
Auguste Mouriès	...	Félix Escartefigue (as Mouriès)
Robert Vattier	...	Albert Brun
Marcel Maupi	...	Innocent Mangiapan chauffeur du ferry-boat
Alida Rouffe	...	Honorine Cabanis
Milly Mathis	...	Tante Claudine Foulon
Odette Roger	...	Fortunette
Louis Boulle	...	Elzéar
Édouard Delmont	...	Dr. Felicien Venelle
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
André Gide
Pierre Prévert	...	Un voyageur du tramway
Annie Toinon	...	Amélie

Runtime:

140 min

Country:

France

Language:

French

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Noiseless Soiund System)

Filming Locations:

Marseille, Bouches-du-Rhône, France

Company:

Les Films Marcel Pagnol

Trivia:

Famed restaurateur and founder of California cuisine, Alice Waters, was so taken with the Fanny trilogy that she named her Berkeley restaurant Chez Panisse. The café upstairs from the restaurant is decorated with posters from the films Marius, Fanny, and César.

Movie Connections:

Follows Marius (1931)

A triumph for all involved

FANNY is the second film of a trilogy, based upon a play by Marcel Pagnol, from which all three works are taken, featuring most of the cast of excellent actors which made the stage original a great artistic and popular success, including Raimu, Charpin, Pierre Fresnay, and Orane Demazis as Fanny, an assemblage which remains faithful to the heart of the original. By repudiating the normal placement of concurrent French films made in Parisian studios, and producing the work in his native Marseilles, in Provence, Pagnol achieves a finely-hewn naturalism which is very congenial to the scenario, dealing as it does with a hard-working bourgeoisie whose lives are in concert with rhythms of a major seaport. Fanny's passionate attention to Marius (Fresnay) results in her pregnancy from their farewell coupling at the denouement of the first of the trilogy, MARIUS, with her lover falling prey to the lure of a seafaring life and she, abandoned, accepts a proposal of marriage from a much older M. Panisse (Charpin), in order to save the reputation of her family. The love of Panisse for the child of Fanny is the moving force in what must be the inevitable fulfillment of the storyline, i.e., the return of Marius to claim his erstwhile fiancée and his true child in a scene which brings the best from Demazis, Fresnay, and Raimu as Cesar, the father of Marius and lifelong friend of Panisse. Pagnol directed only the finale of the trio, and selects for FANNY Marc Allegret, who leads the cast with distinction, displaying particular skill when allowing Pagnol's magnificent dialogue to be developed in what is essentially a filmed work for the stage, with few sets, and who allows liberal emphasis upon the plastic Raimu, who is, after all, the most important presence in this romantic masterpiece.