The Glory of My Father, from Marcel Pagnol to Yves Robert

A look back at the history of this great popular success from 1990 that France 3 is rebroadcasting this evening, followed by My Mother’s Castle.

By Marcel Pagnol…

The year is 1957. Marcel Pagnol has recently taken a double retirement. That of the cinema to which the man of Marius, Fanny and of The Baker’s Wife ended in 1954 with the adaptation of Letters of my mill by Alphonse Daudet. And that of a playwright ended by the failure of his comedy in four acts, Damien, at the same period. That’s when a women’s magazine asked her to write a short story for its Christmas issue. And writing this short text gives him an idea. Recount his childhood memories in various volumes. First of all The glory of my father And My mother’s castlefollowed in 1960 by The Time of Secrets then in 1977, from love time, published posthumously. In the final stretch of his existence, he begins a new life: that of a novelist.

First part of these Childhood memories, The glory of my father is dedicated to the childhood of its author in Marseille and the village of La Treille where his family went on vacation. Pagnol signs here a declaration of love to his two parents which will meet with enormous success in bookstores with 50,000 copies sold in one month. He then plans to bring it to the screen and return behind the camera. He even wrote a first treatment of it but never went further. Because this period is definitely behind him: he will only achieve the adaptation of the Priest of Cucugnanfor television in 1967.

Daniel Auteuil: “I almost gave up the role of Ugolin”

… to Yves Robert

Beware of preconceived ideas. We could indeed believe that Yves Robert embarked on the adaptation of the diptych The glory of my father/ My mother’s castle at the beginning of the 90s to surf on the theatrical success of another diptych “pagnolian”, Jean de Florette And Manon des Sourceswhich caused panic at the box office in the heart of the 1980s.

And all the more so since the filmmaker had crossed these same 80s almost like a ghost (only one film, The twin with Pierre Richard, as quickly seen as quickly forgotten despite his 1.7 million admissions), while he had been so prolific in the previous decade, that of Tall blond with a black shoeofA elephant is very deceptive and of We will all go to Heaven. But that’s not the case.

Because Yves Robert showed his interest in bringing these childhood memories of Pagnol to the screen as early as… 1963, only 6 years after their publication. He then just won the Jean-Vigo Prize for The War of the Buttons and his ease in childhood makes him, on paper, the ideal man for such a project. He therefore goes to see Pagnol to get his approval but he declines, explaining to him that it would be his last film at the cinema. Film which never saw the light of day. And so we had to wait until 1989 for Yves Robert’s dream to become a reality when the author’s heirs gave him and his producer Alain Poiré the green light.

Yves Robert is responsible for the adaptation with the Nice writer Louis Nucera and the screenwriter Jérôme Tonnerre (A few days with me by Claude Sautet). And he chose to entrust the role of Joseph, the father of little Marcel to an immense theater actor via dizzying stage performances (Ariadne or the golden age…), absent from the big screen (where he was an unforgettable Molière under the direction of Ariane Mnouchkine in 79) for ten years: Philippe Caubètre.

The glory of my father will triumph in theaters: 6.2 million admissions, the second biggest success of 1990 behind Dead Poets Society. And he will be nominated four times for the César – including one for the music of Vladimir Cosma who has accompanied Yves Robert since Alexander the Blessed in 1967 – but left empty-handed. My mother’s castle will attract 4.2 million spectators. But the beautiful story of Childhood memories de Pagnol is not going to stop there. Christophe Barratier (The chorists) recently adapted The Time of Secrets.

Manon des Sources: luminous Emmanuelle Béart