The writer and director, who died fifty years ago, almost killed Malraux, destroyed one of his films with an axe and stopped making films after the death of his daughter.
Marcel Pagnol writes and shoots films, has its own studios and distribution house, has cinemas and a magazine on the seventh art… He mastered the cinema chain from A to Z: an exception for the time – with Charlie Chaplin. He was also a pioneer who understood the revolution of talking pictures before anyone else. He had the spark when he attended the screening of Broadway Melody, the very first fully sound feature film. He leaves the room upset, and convinced of one thing: talking cinema, this is what he now wants to devote himself to. If, at the start, we laugh at this madness, the stubborn director doesn’t give up. The sequel will prove him right: released in October 1931 on the big screen, Marius will be one of the first successful films of French talking cinema… and a global triumph! Marcel Pagnol was the first director to enter the very select Académie française. On April 4, 1946, the Aubagnais was elected to seat 25: he became Immortal… A well-deserved accolade for an artist whose work has been adapted all over the world, from Egypt to Japan to the United States. Just two years after its creation, the play Topaz had already known 75 different versions abroad. As for the works of the Provençal author, they will have been translated into more than thirty languages! But who was Marcel Pagnol really?
Marcel Pagnol hid the tragedy of his childhood
In the hills of Garlaban, a boy with a Provençal accent runs through the middle of the scrubland… Here, young Marcel Pagnol is in paradise. It is in this limestone massif that from 1904 the boy from Aubagne will experience “the most beautiful days of [sa] life”. Those of the holidays spent with his parents Joseph and Augustine, his younger brother Paul and his little sister Germaine, uncle Jules and aunt Rose, as well as his dear friend Lili des Bellons. And too bad if we have to do kilometers on foot from Marseille – where Dad is a teacher – loaded like mules to reach this end of the world! Six years of happiness which came to an abrupt end on June 16, 1910: Augustine, this beloved motherdies of a pneumonia at the age of 36. Marcel is 15… He will have no memory, or very little, of his mother’s funeral: “As if my 15 years had refused to admit the force of a grief that could kill me.”
A mediocre student, Marcel Pagnol dreams of becoming a playwright
And duncethe future Academician? If we judge by some of his school reports, yes! “Mediocre”, “zero”: at the Thiers high school in Marseille where he studied from 1905 to 1913 – and met Albert Cohen, his friend for life – the student Pagnol accumulates poor results. However, he already sees himself as a playwright and, very early on, begins to write. Poems first, which he publishes at the age of 15 in the newspaper Marseillesand soon novels: Peluque’s Wedding appears thus in Fortunioa literary review that Marcel created with his comrades in February 1914. The little student adventure would last fifty years. Renamed in 1925 The Notebooks of the Southit even became a reference which, until its end in 1966, published the greatest intellectuals of the 20th century.
At 21, Marcel Pagnol secretly marries
His father doesn’t want this wedding? Never mind: on March 2, 1916, the rebellious son 21 year old wife Simone Collin, a minor of 18 years old, in secret and in church… If he knew it, this atheist Joseph Pagnol would be crazy! But these two are no longer close to an argument. Joseph remarried a woman who was only eight years older than Marcel and, ever since, father and son have been estranged. The writer’s tumultuous love life won’t help anything. In 1926, he separated from Simonne before having three children out of wedlock from three different mothers. We have to wait for his meeting with the actress Jacqueline Bouvier so that the desire to marry would take hold of him again: they united on October 6, 1945. Jacqueline, who would give him two children, would be his last companion, his muse, his “bit of poetry and tenderness.”
Marcel Pagnol enjoys his first success in Germany
The Big ABCthis is not a very evocative title… And yet, it is the German version of Topazthe play that would make Pagnol famous. While he struggled to get this satire of careerism performed in France, the young author turned to his German neighbor. Bingo: in the fall of 1927, the premiere at the Renaissance Theater in Berlin was a success. A year later, it was Paris that gave this play a triumph. comedy by Marcel Pagnol. More than 3,000 performances in France, Belgium and Switzerland followed, as well as around a hundred international tours.
Her casual shoots worry Fernandel
In April 1934, Fernandel participates in the filming ofAngela where he plays the role of Saturnin, and he doesn’t understand. The games of pétanque between takes, the pastis at lunchtime, the team meals that last for hours… “Fernandel was a very anxious person who needed a precise framework. So inevitably, Pagnol’s way of working made him terribly anxious”, says Karin Hann, in Marcel Pagnol, Another Look (ed. du Rocher). Except that the filmmaker doesn’t know how to do otherwise. When he shoots, it’s in espadrilles and an open shirt. He needs this relaxationand also to be surrounded by those he loves: his troupe of technicians and artists, the same for years, as well as his wife, his children and his friends, the leading roles in his life.
Marcel Pagnol almost killed André Malraux
And to think that Marcel Pagnol almost deprived us ofAndre Malraux… The fault of one of the many experiments that this guy loves to conduct science enthusiast. One of his obsessions? The search for perpetual motion. One evening, in his small Parisian apartment, he was testing a machine he had made. Suddenly, the piston of the machine exploded, went through the ceiling and landed in the bathtub of the neighbor upstairs who was washing… Malraux himself! This accident would not stop Pagnol. All his life, this great handyman will spend time inventing new machines. In 1937, he even created a car, the Topazette, “three seats, three wheels, 3,000 francs and three liters per cent”… and three barrels on its first outing!
Raimu is his great friend who ruins his life
“You cannot make a speech on the grave of a father, a brother or a son. For me, you were all three at once.” On September 20, 1946, Marcel Pagnol was at Langer, a restaurant on the Champs-Élysées, when he learned of the death of Your face at age 62 of a heart attack. The filmmaker is in shock. So, on a table, he scribbles these few words for his friend Jules. Since in 1929, the Aubagnais gave the Toulonnais the role of Caesar in his play Marius, these two never leave each other, or almost. But if they admire each other, their relationship is stormy. It must be said that Raimu does not have an easy character. In 1936, while he was filming Césarthe star has a series of tantrums. Raymond Castans, friend and biographer of Marcel Pagnol, recounts: “Raimu used to say: “Mr. Pagnol, if he wants Mr. Raimu, he’ll pay for him.””
Marcel Pagnol, a fishing enthusiast
To go and tease the stud, the Provençal bought a boat. One day, he invited another enthusiast, the director René Clair, to go fishing at sea with him. But his friend prefers to wait for him on the terrace of a café. Too bad, Marcel will leave alone. A few hours later, he returns to the port at full speed to impress René. It doesn’t miss: the boat crashes against the quay before ending its course on the terrace where his friend is.
Marcel Pagnol wanted to cut a legendary scene
Without the intuition of a Raimu, the mythical card game of Marius and his “Tu me fends le cœur!” would not have been filmed. Marcel Pagnol actually intended to delete the scene planned for his play – later adapted for the cinema. Why? “Because it was a sketch and I had very strict theories on art and theatre at that time”, he would later confide. But Raimu immediately sensed its potential. So he rehearsed it in secret with the other actors. “On the night of the premiere, they played the card game, Pagnol didn’t know about it. It was a triumph“, raconte Karin Hann.
Marcel Pagnol destroyed a film with an ax
“I am perhaps the only one who refused to film for the Germans.” A bit of Marseille, the filmmaker? The fact is that Pagnol has multiplied the acts of resistance against the Nazis. While they control the French cinemahe refuses to give them his film Prayer to the stars… and even destroys the reels with an axe. That’s not all: after selling his distribution companies to Gaumont, Pagnol rehired his employees as horticultural workers to avoid the Compulsory Work Service in Germany. In 1942, he started growing carnations, which made Raimu say: “If Marcel becomes a florist, then I’ll just have to go and sell scorpion fish!”
After the death of his daughter, Marcel Pagnol stops working in cinema
Already, since the post-war period, this big screen craftsman no longer recognized himself in an increasingly industrial seventh art. In 1954, when his little Estelle, 28 months old, died of a blood disease, he definitively lost the desire to make films. This sudden disappearance leaves him in mourning for life. With his wife Jacqueline, he needs change. He left Monte-Carlo, where he had settled in 1951, to return to Paris and devote himself to new activities: he translated the Latin poet Virgil and became a historian by publishing in 1965 an in-depth investigation into the Iron Mask. But there will never be any question of cinema again.
Without knowing it, Marcel Pagnol buys his “mother’s castle”
He saw it over the hedge and recognized it. The castle of his childhood… In 1941, Marcel Pagnol bought a property in Marseille without having seen it: La Buzine. It is only by visiting it that the director understands where he is. This domain is the one that made his mother tremble when they crossed it illegally to reach Garlaban: “The castle of fear”, as he nicknames it in his Childhood memories. In this series of four autobiographical novels (The glory of my father, My Mother’s Castle, The Time of Secrets, The time of love) written from 1957, he recounts his youth, a lost paradise populated by “dear shadows of the past”: his parents Augustine and Joseph, his brother Paul and his friend Lili, all disappeared. When Marcel Pagnol died on April 18, 1974 at the age of 79, he went to meet them for eternity in the small cemetery of La Treille, the village of happy days.
Marcel Pagnol, the first filmmaker at the French Academy
Marcel Pagnol’s quick bio
February 28, 1895 Born in Aubagne.
1904 First vacation at La Bastide Neuve, in the Garlaban massif.
June 16, 1910 Death of his mother Augustine.
October 1928 His piece Topazmounted in Paris, made him famous.
October 6, 1945 Marries Jacqueline Bouvier.
1954 His daughter Estelle died at 28 months.
1957 Start writing Childhood memories.
18 avril 1974 Dies at age 79 in Paris.
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