Naïs (1945)
Directed by Raymond Leboursier, Marcel Pagnol

Film Review

The strain of trying to run an independent production company at the time of the Occupation, aggravated by the messy break up of his relationship with Josette Day, finally took its toll on Marcel Pagnol in 1941.  After abandoning production on La Prière aux étoiles, Pagnol gave up filmmaking for the duration of the war, and on the next film he produced, Naïs, he was all too eager to hand over the directing duties to another party, Raymond Leboursier.  It was an odd choice, as Leboursier, more experienced as a film editor, had so far only directed one film, the lame comedy Les Petits riens (1942).  As things turned out, Pagnol and Leboursier spectacularly failed to hit it off and the former remained in control during the filming, with Leboursier effectively reduced to the role of a whipping boy.  It was not a happy production.

Although Naïs was based on a short novel by Émile Zola (entitled Naïs Micoulin), it actually feels like a lazily cobbled together compendium of several previous Marcel Pagnol films.  In fact, if Pagnol had merely soldered the plots of Angèle (1934) and La Fille du puisatier (1940) together, the result could hardly help looking like Naïs - a typically Pagnolesque tale in which a morose old farmer tries to thwart a liaison between his daughter and a good-for-nothing playboy but is defeated by a surfeit of thickly ladled on niceness.  The characters, the story, the setting are all quintessential Pagnol, and yet the end result feels like a mere imitation of the writer-director's previous films.  The winning formula has turned a tad stale and predictable with over-use.

The uneven direction aside (clearly the result of conflict between two cooks both equally intent on spoiling the broth), the main failing with Naïs is that none of the principal characters succeeds in being more than just a shallow example of a Pagnol archetype.  Toine, the lovelorn hunchback, is the stock naive loser (effectively an amalgam of Jean de Florette and Ugolin).  Frédéric is just a rehash of Pagnol's urban Don Juan types, the sort that exist only to deflower innocent country girls.  Naïs is the epitome of such a girl, too pretty and too silly for her own good.  And Micoulin is the archetypal over-protective father, the kind that is ready to eviscerate any man who comes within a mile of his daughter with lustful intent.  Pagnol's characters were never particularly deep or subtle, but here the characterisation is so flat it is cringe-worthy, and the fact that the film stands up as well as it does can only be explained by the calibre of the cast that Pagnol was able assemble for the film.

First and foremost, there is Fernandel in what is beyond question one of his finest screen roles.  His character, the unfortunate Toine, is the only one that rings true, and the only one for which Pagnol appeared capable of writing convincing, unplatitudinous dialogue.  Having worked with Fernandel already on three films - Regain (1937), Le Schpountz (1938) and La Fille du puisatier, Pagnol knew the actor almost inside-out by this time and gave him a perfectly made-to-measure role that would show him at his best.  It depressed Pagnol no end that Fernandel wasted so much of his career in third rate comedies and here he allows the actor to show what a great talent he really was - not a second-rate funny man, as comes across in so many of his films, but an exemplary dramatic actor, one with the capacity to move an audience to tears with the most magical of performances.  It is only in the scenes with Fernandel that Naïs matches up to the high standard of Pagnol's previous films, and his last scene with Germaine Kerjean, right at the end of the film, is one of heartrending poignancy.

Jacqueline Bouvier, by contrast, is totally miscast in the title role of Naïs (as she would be in pretty well every subsequent Pagnol film).  The character is supposed to be a simple, fairly ordinary looking country girl (at one point, she describes herself as plain), but the overly made-up Bouvier looks more like a deb's delight, dolled up to resemble a fairytale princess with none of the naïveté that the part demands.  Pagnol was obviously too smitten with Bouvier to realise she was totally unsuitable for Naïs - he married her not long after the film was completed and ruined his subsequent films by giving her the lead female role.

Raymond Pellegrin is a somewhat better choice for the part of Frédéric, but his is a difficult character to engage with.  He just comes across as a smooth-talking rogue, and it is hard to fathom Toine's generosity towards him, let alone Naïs's infatuation for such a blatant scoundrel.  Henri Poupon does what he can in the role that was clearly written with Raimu in mind, but, ill-served by some risible dialogue and laughably bad characterisation, he fails to convince and ends up looking more like a misplaced psychopath than an over-attentive father.  Of the supporting actors, only Germaine Kerjean appears comfortable in the film and able to give a performance that matches up to the excellence of Fernandel's.

On the casting front  Naïs is a pretty hit-and-miss affair, and things are not helped by a patchy script and even patchier direction, but the film still has its charms.  It may not be classic Pagnol but it has one ace up its sleeve - Fernandel at his very best.  Maybe this was why the film was so well-received on its first release in France in 1945, when it attracted an audience of just under three and a half million.  Pagnol was wise, however, not to pick up the director's credit.

Film Synopsis

Toine, a farmhand on a farm in rural Provence, has the misfortune to have been born with a hump on his back.  For years he has secretly loved Naïs, the only child of his grouchy employer, Micoulin, but he is too conscious of his deformity to dare broach the subject with her.  Naïs also has a secret love - in Frédéric Rostaing, the disreputable son of the wealthy couple who own Micoulin's farm.  Frédéric does not have the same feelings that Naïs has for him, but plans to seduce her when he and his parents take their summer holiday on Micoulin's farm.  On discovering Naïs and Frédéric's secret romance, Micoulin is so outraged that he feels he has no other option than to kill Frédéric.  Convinced that Frédéric and Naïs are genuinely in love, Toine thwarts his employer's homicidal scheme and arranges matters so that the two young lovers may have a happy future together...