Jean De Florette (DVD)

Jean De Florette and Manon Des Sources, both from 1986, are two of the best-loved and most celebrated films in French cinema. They're adapted from the "L'Eau De Collines" books written by Marcel Pagnol, and really it's best to see them as two parts of the same story, rather than as the original film and its sequel. Jean De Florette won a whole heap of Bafta nominations in that year, and strangely it won Best Film overall yet missed out on Best Foreign Film! However it wasn't even nominated for an Oscar, which is a shame. It tells the tragic story of two greedy farmers in the French countryside. César Soubeyran (played by Yves Montard) and his nephew, ...

In the late 80s and early 90s, it was quite normal to find foreign language films on BBC2 and C4 at times when people were still up and awake. Dumming down hadn't happened yet, and the channels had a commitment to entertainment as art, and a desire to address the needs of people who didn't want to watch Sly Stallone or Arnie movies all the time and were able to read subtitles AND look at the visuals on the screen. Over Christmas, there used even to be WHOLE SEASONS devoted to world cinema, French cinema etc. It was during those days that I opened my eyes and realized what I had been missing, and an interest in non-Hollywood cinema was born. One movie ...

I think it's fair to say that many films have come about because of a novel. However, how often can you say that a film has then gone on to inspire a book? 'Manon des Sources' was perhaps one of the first films to inspire a book. Now this is where it gets a bit confusing, because the 'Manon des Sources' I'm refering to is the original, made in 1952 by Marcel Pagnol, who had made a name for himself in the 1930s as one of France's most successful and respected independent film makers, with films such as 'Topaze,' 'César,' and 'La Femme du Boulanger'. In the original version of the film, Pagnol tells the story that had been recounted to him as a 13-year-old boy ...