Fanny (1932)

User Rating:

7.7/10   

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:

Remade as Fanny (1961)

Feels like a filmed stage play

I have just finished watching Proof, a film released in the year of our Lord, 2005, which is adapted from a stage play in which the director has gone to great pains to hide the fact that his work is based on the play. flash back 70 years and we have a movie made that looks like a filmed stage play with real locations replacing the stage sets. All early sound movies feel set-locked as people talk and deliver within the range of the camera. Therefore, to hold the interest to the modern viewer, the dialogue and acting must be believable and engaging. The film fails to achieve it for the most part because the performance of the actress playing Fanny is a total success even though she was reprising her role from the stage. First time director, Pagnol adapting his own stage works suffers from a non-visual eye. The delight, is French star Raimu who delivers a performance still worthy to the eye even today. There is a reason Orson Welles called him a genius. The melodramatic plot of a scorned, (maybe that is too strong a word: even abandoned is too strong because she never lets on to her man that she does not want him to leave) woman who is pregnant is passé though common in the literature of the period. I remember a tracking shot that impressed me as the camera follows Fanny through the streets as she suspects she is pregnant. In the way it is handled and executed, it is cinematic authorship at its finest. It is a film in the middle of the trilogy, therefore there are loose ends left to be resolved. All movies are time capsules, it is said, therefore approach this with the right attitude and you might be rewarded.