You could say that Marcel Pagnol’s films are defined by the faces he has launched, no more distinctive than that of Raimu, a music music legend has become a star on the big screen that Orson Welles called “the biggest actor in the world”. As It Happens, “The Triplets of Belleville” Director Sylvain Chomet’s Films Are also Marked by Faces, which the French Animator Sketches by Hand in a loving but labor-intensive process that reflects the previous century Every bit as much as pagnol’s Best-Loved novels (“ “Manon of the Spring”) and Plays (“Marius,” “Fanny” and “César,” All Three of which He adapted to the screen).
What a beautiful marriage of artist and author “A magnificent life” should be, right? It is only partially true, alas. Inspired by the test of tests incorporating Pagnol career, “Confidences”, Chomet honors man’s achievements – the way in which a dry manual or an educational graphic novel could – but fails to explain why those who do not already have a certain level of fascination for Pagnol should care about it. Presence at the Cannes Film Festival, the film has the same animated visual style as the previous work of Chomet, which is by far its best quality (the enchanting partition of Stefano Bollani is another of its forces).
The film’s script is less successful and the actors of the voice that read it in the French and English versions. The operation of Chomet, the personality of the film appears via the detailed and incredibly expressive faces, not the dialogue or its delivery. If the objective was to trigger an interest in the life and work of Pagnol – to send the public rushing to the criterion channel or a bookstore to hang on to his work – then he risks having the opposite effect, presenting Pagnol as this funny man who made the scene to be cut at a time when the discussions took off in France.
But Chomet assumes that you already know why this counts (a pioneer of the seventh art, Pagnol built his own studio and insisted that his characters speak in an authentic south-south accent). Written with the participation of Pagnol’s grandson, Nicolas, “A Magnifice Life” serves a collection of anecdotes from the first bucolic years of the legendary creator in Marseille on the death of his daughter at an unreasonably young age, without establishing what the man fights against – or to aim.
As Pagnol himself said, “This is the life of a man. Moments of joy, olibered by unforgettable sadness. There is no need to tell children. ” Reduce the unmatched skills of Chomet to transmit layers of comedy and melancholy that even the photographic camera cannot capture, and it will take more pizazz to interest the public in its theatrical career – where the film begins, with a flop on the Parisian scene (“Fabien”). A few scenes later, Pagnol is complimented by an editor of Elle Magazine, who promises to publish her memoirs … if only he could write them.
Faced with the virgin page, Pagnol seems to have trouble recalling his youth, until a boy named “Marcel” appeared in his office. The French title of the film, “Marcel and Monsieur Pagnol”, identifies these two lucishly as distinct characters. It is a strange device, using the younger self of the author to raise significant anecdotes of the corners of his heart, especially since the boy goes and goes at will of significant moments in the past of Pagnol.
Since other characters can see it, the young Marcel is probably more than a simple projection of the scribbler subconscious. For the public, he is in a way a pest, making a racket and differently distracting a relatively simple life story. The boy’s presence suggests an attempt on the part of Chomet to attract a younger audience, although it is quite difficult to imagine them find exploits of Marcel or Mr. Pagnol all this fun.
In any case, we are far from “the illusionist”, Chomet’s tribute to another French legend, Jacques Tati. “A magnificent life” seems more determined to educate than entertaining, although his choice of details can sometimes be perplexed. An extract from a room, in which two male actors disguised in old ladies comment on the sagged breasts of others, caused the bad guy of schoolchildren to Cannes – so maybe children are not the ideal audience. One of the actors in this scene is the very important Raimu, whose Pagnol stage career helps to start with a revolutionary decision.
Instead of writing games in the “appropriate” French – as is the norm in respectable Parisian theaters – Pagnol has decided to channel the colorful accents of its native Marseille. In the French version of the film, the adult Pagnol is expressed by the request actor Laurent Lafitte without any trace of a regional accent, while the young Marcel rings as if he comes from the south. But how do you translate this nuance for the English public exactly?
When Paramount instructed Bob Kane for producing films in French and other languages, the executive approached Pagnol to adapt his pieces to the screen – an idea that seduced the playwright, which provided the popularity of the cinema and kissed the way in which this emerging media allowed him to reactr up the comedy and the drama differently (bringing the audience closer to these marvelous faces, for example).
Pagnol insisted that he draws “Marius” with authentic accents from Marseille. French ears should appreciate not only the musical quality of voice like that of Raimu, but the idioms impossible to transform pagnol woven throughout his dialogue (although it looks like an error to have thrown Lafitte into the main role). The dub in English, although perfectly charming in its own right, cannot do justice to this dimension of signature of Pagnol’s work.
This leaves the public to follow the anecdotal history of the losses and the successes of Pagnol: the lucky night he bet all his money while his play was played next to it, a pitch meeting where Paramount managed to pass a series of “Marcel”, the goat he rented to appear on the screen … and was adopted later to see it. These fun facts do not trigger laughter in its context, but can have fun when the public repeats what they have learned from others on the road.
What the film is missing is a feeling of clear conflict – the kind of drama to which its subject has excelled. Magnificent that Pagnol’s achievements have been, it is a shame that the decade of one of the greatest storytellers in France has not made a better story in itself.
