Le Gendre de Monsieur Poirier (1933)
Directed by Marcel Pagnol

Film Review

It was the phenomenal success of Marius (1931) and Fanny (1932), the first attempts to bring his popular stage plays to the screen, that led Marcel Pagnol, one of France's most acclaimed playwrights, to try his luck as a film producer.  Pagnol's dissatisfaction with another adaptation of his work, Louis Gasnier's Topaze (1933), was an additional motivating factor that led him to create the film production company Les Auteurs Associés with Marcel Achard, Steve Passeur, Roger-Ferdinand and Arno Charles Brun.  Pagnol himself had the honour of directing the first film for this fledgling company, an adaptation not of his own work, but of a mid-19th century stage play, Le Gendre de Monsieur Poirier, by Émile Augier.  This was the first film that Pagnol directed - and it proved to be a monumental flop.

The failure of Pagnol's debut film came as a bitter blow but it is easy to see how it happened.  Audiences had been expecting another Provençal slice of life, perhaps a continuation of the Marseillaise saga featuring Marius and Fanny.  Instead, what they got was a plodding and airless adaptation of a dated piece of bourgeois theatre, competently directed but having none of the charm and insight of Pagnol's own plays.  Boycotted by the public, ignored by the critics, the film was hastily withdrawn from circulation and every copy of it in France was destroyed.  The film was considered lost for many years, and it is only quite recently that one copy of it has been found, a version with English subtitles exhumed in England. 

The subject matter and setting of Le Gendre de Monsieur Poirier may be atypical for Pagnol, but in spite of this its director's signature can be readily discerned.  Throughout his career Pagnol believed that a director's role was subservient to that of the writer.  To him, the text was sacrosanct, hence his reluctance to change or cut a single line from Émile Augier's original play.  With his own plays, Pagnol understood his characters inside-out and was better placed to bring them to life within the confines of cinema.  In his first film, he appears to be too respectful of the author's play, and so the result feels theatrical and remote.  The performances, by members of the esteemed Comédie-Française, would be excellent on the stage, but on film the characters come across as unsympathetic and caricatured, virtually impossible to engage with.  The out-dated nature of the plot, totally incongruous in Depression Era France, also counts against it.  As a first film, Le Gendre de Monsieur Poirier is not bad for its time, but for someone of Pagnol's stature and ability the world was right to expect something far better.

Film Synopsis

Under the reign of Louis-Philippe, Monsieur Poirier has amassed a huge personal fortune through his business dealings.  The only thing he lacks is a title, and this is what he hopes to acquire by marrying his daughter Antoinette to an impoverished aristocrat, the Marquis Gaston de Presles.  The bride's dowry barely covers Gaston's gambling debts and Monsieur Poirier soon finds that he is bankrolling the dissipated life of a wastrel and scoundrel.  When Gaston's extra-marital affairs reach the ears of Antoinette she is appalled and decides that her marriage, hitherto a sham, is over.   Moved by his wife's distress, Gaston has a change of heart and resolves to become a reformed character.  He even promises to get himself a job!