Fanny (1932)
Directed by Marc Allégret

Film Review

It was the success of his 1929 play Marius which established Marcel Pagnol as one of France's leading playwrights.  Pagnol was not content with being just a playwright, however, and the windfall that came with Alexander Korda's screen adaptation of Marius gave him a heaven-sent opportunity to begin directing his own films, for his own production company.  Pagnol wasn't yet confident enough to take up the director's baton, so the honour of directing the next film version of one of his plays, Fanny, was conferred on an up-and-coming director, Marc Allégret, who had already made a promising start to his career with Mam'zelle Nitouche (1931) and La Petite chocolatière (1932).  The star of both of these films was Raimu, who had previously created the role of César in the stage and film versions of Marius, so it is possible that Pagnol may have chosen Allégret at Raimu's suggestion.

Although the theatrical production of Fanny was nothing like the runaway success that Marius had been, it was sufficiently popular for Pagnol to choose it as the first film for his newly founded company, Les Films de Marcel Pagnol.  Interestingly, neither Raimu nor Pierre Fresnay had appeared in the stage version of Fanny (Fresnay had other commitments and Raimu was sacked after falling out with the impresario Léon Volterra, to be replaced by Harry Baur), but Pagnol had no choice but to hire them for the second instalment of what was to become his Marseille Trilogy if he was to capitalise on the success of the first film.  Reprising the role of Fanny was Orane Demazis, Pagnol's muse, mistress and mother of his illegitimate son.  The distinguished character actor Fernand Charpin (another Pagnol regular) also returns, to give what is possibly his greatest screen performance, as the sympathetic store owner Panisse.

What Pagnol had found most disappointing about the screen adaptation of Marius was that it was heavily studio bound.  There were a few filmed inserts of Marseille, but none of the action takes place in exterior locations, so the film lacks that distinctive Provençal ambiance that is so keenly felt in all of Pagnol's subsequent films.  Because Pagnol's film studios were located in Marseille, there was ample opportunity for incorporating the busy seaport and its environs into the narrative.  There are many scenes in Fanny where characters step out of a studio set and appear in a perfectly matched real location, without any sense of discontinuity.  As a result, Fanny has a much more modern, naturalistic feel than Marius, and we can glimpse the forerunner of today's social realist dramas within it.  There is, however, one noticeable flaw.  Allégret's bitter romanticism, which is so vividly expressed in his later films Lac aux dames (1934) and Sous les yeux d'occident (1936), sits uncomfortably alongside Pagnol's interest in the mundanities of everyday life.  You can feel the tension between two conflicting visions throughout the film, and it could well have been this that persuaded Pagnol that he should direct his own films in future.

Fanny deals with a familiar theme that recurs throughout Pagnol's oeuvre, the problem of pregnancy outside wedlock.  As ever, it is the woman who suffers most, having to make sacrifices to conform with the social norms and avoid bringing disgrace on her head and her family.  In Fanny, the heroine must agree to a marriage of convenience, accepting a proposal from a man who is old enough to be her father and giving up her love for the man she truly loves but who abandoned her for a life on the ocean wave.  Fanny's plight is handled with Pagnol's trademark compassion and delicacy, and provides the basis for a viciously ironic comedy of manners in which the petty prejudices of the older generation and their disconnection from the problems of their offspring are cruelly exposed.  The reaction of Fanny's mother to her predicament is so over-the-top that it becomes pure vaudeville, whereas that of Marius's father is within a stone's throw of Greek tragedy, particularly when Raimu goes into pathos overdrive and strains every muscle he has for dramatic effect.

Even though Fanny was another major critical and commercial success, it would be another four years before Pagnol was able to complete his trilogy with César (1936), by which point he had become an accomplished filmmaker in his own right, the shining example of what we would now term an auteur.  Thirty years on, Fanny was remade in America as Fanny (1961), directed by Joshua Logan and starring Leslie Caron, Maurice Chevalier and Charles Boyer, with Horst Buchholz cast (improbably) as Marius.  More recently, Daniel Auteuil directed a French-language remake, due to be released in July 2013, as part of his complete remake of the Marseille Trilogy, with Auteuil, Victoire Belezy and Jean-Pierre Darroussin in the roles of César, Fanny and Panisse respectively.  The prevailing interest in Marcel Pagnol's plays and films is as much a testament to the genius of the man himself as it is to the universality of the subjects encompassed by his works.

Film Synopsis

Such is the status accorded to single mothers in France of the 1930s that Fanny has no choice but to surrender herself to a marriage of convenience.  The alternative - rejection by her family and a disapproving society - is more than she can bear.  If only her beloved Marius had stayed with her, waited just a while longer to learn that he had given her a child.  But Marius's love of the sea was too strong for him to resist, so here Fanny is, alone and pregnant in her hometown of Marseille, whilst her gallant lover explores the big wide world, indulging his wild appetite for adventure.  Honoré Panisse may not be the most desirable of husbands, but, a successful and highly respected shopkeeper, Fanny can rely on him to take care of her and her child, once it is born.

What does it matter that Panisse is thirty years older than Fanny?  He is a good, honest man, and what wife could ask for more?  Naturally, Fanny's prim and proper mother is delighted with the arrangement.  Her daughter's marriage to Panisse will do as much good for her social standing as it will for Fanny's peace of mind.  The wedding is a happy occasion for everyone, and a few month later Fanny gives birth to her son, Césariot - named after César, the father of the absent Marius.  Meanwhile, many thousands of miles away, Marius has come to realise that his feelings for Fanny are much stronger than he had thought.  How wrong he was to leave her!

Overtaken with shame, Marius makes his way home, but he arrives too late to claim his beloved's hand in marriage.  It is with deep sorrow that he learns the news that Fanny has had to marry another man, but such is his devotion to her that he can scarcely bear to leave her a second time.  It is up to César to persuade him that there can be no future in his affair with Fanny.  For the best interests of the young woman and her son, Marius soon comes to realise that he must depart and never return to the one who has stolen his heart.  For the love of Fanny, he must now accept that he has lost her forever...