La femme du boulanger

In a town where the priest and the teacher argue, where neighbors wrangle because this one's trees as throwing shade on the other's giant cabbages, where no one talks to anyone else for reasons their grandfathers didn't remember, where the last baker hanged himself, there's a new baker in town. It's Raimu, and his bread is magnificent. His wife, pretty Ginette Leclerc promptly runs off with a handsome shepherd. Raimu immediately goes to pieces and the town is split between mocking him, calling her a tramp and worrying about where they'll get bread.

One of the stories about this movie is that Marcel Pagnol wanted Joan Crawford for the role of the baker's wife. She declined on the grounds that she didn't speak French. The other story is that after the war, Orson Welles asked Pagnol for an introduction to Raimu. He was told Raimu was dead and wept. I can understand the reaction. Raimu is so clueless and sad and yet very funny in the role. Any man who has had a woman he loves leave him without any warning can sympathize, even as he looks at Raimu and laughs.

Raimu could fill this movie by himself, yet there are other good roles: the local nobleman who has seven young women living in his chateau; the priest who mouths platitudes without understanding anything; the women who gossip and wrangle among themselves; the old man who has found Mlle Leclerc, but has to tell the story in his own, endless way.

I'd like to have seen Miss Crawford in the role. She would have aced the physical acting, and if she couldn't be coached in the thirty or forty words the character speaks, they could have looped her sides. No one could have replaced Raimu in this magnificent, sad comedy.

It is an incredibly romantic poem that has been made into a silver screen story. In Urdu, there is a type of poem - Ghazal - the song that lovers sing when they are apart. This movie is one which could be equated to it.

It is a village - a very small one - in which no two persons - either gender - sees eye to eye - and that includes the two who should - the Vicar and the teacher - who greatly dislike each other, and of course there is a great sinner there, the marquis of the territory, who has four 'nieces' living with him. Of course all know, and he too doesn't hide the fact about the relationship between him and his supposedly nieces. But he is incorrigible despite all the exhortation by the vicar (and he does explain why, and one can sympathise with his human - well one can call frailties).

In this village arrives a middle age and not too handsome baker (Raimu) with his lovely and young (enough to be his daughter, as he tells her later) wife, Aurelie (Ginette Leclerc). Her love/romance-less life is awakened by a young and handsome shepherd Dominique (Charles Moulin) and she elopes with him. It all happens quickly and the rest of the movie deals with the suffering of the husband and the behaviour of the villagers. First natural, contemptuous and contemptuously sarcastic towards the cuckolded husband, the matters change, when they find that the baker has stopped baking. With the 'daily Bread' now gone, the only way is to search and bring the wife back to him, and in this effort all the enemies (including the Vicar and the teacher) bury their enmity. However that, and the ending is only consequential. The main thing that makes this exquisite is the pain and suffering of the cuckolded husband - and his feeling towards the wife that has betrayed him (and his still care, and support for her) - and even though he expresses his bitterness - in the end, allegorically, but not hidden to the audience - on or off screen - but still he is ready to forgive and forget - despite the wound inflicted - unlike any of the others - including the Vicar, who does preach the 'First stone' principle, but prefers that it - the confession and pardon of the sinner-ess, if caught - takes place in some one else's vicarage, not his. Only one who probably understand and really sympathises is the devil's disciple of the area, the Marquis, but as he has hinted, he too suffered from the affliction, or may be lack of it - though it is mentioned as love of flesh by Vicar - but really it was much more subtle and beautiful. The story, a few times might seem moving slow - especially at may places where it was almost monologue of the husband - but really can't be sped up - else it would lose the poetic quality - and added to it, it has some very witty dialogues - a few could be (and was, by the Vicar), blasphemous. Came across the movie just by chance - and I wonder why this doesn't figure in the "Movies before you die" lists.

My favourite of all the Pagnol films, including the recent ones, due to the timeless, moving performance by the great Raimu as the lovelorn baker. The French stars of that period have never been surpassed as character actors, and for this film the writer was a great character author.

This little French film from the Thirties is sweet and sharp as well. The village has a new baker, and bread being the staple of their lives, he becomes the local celebrity. He has a pretty wife who works hard. He is a rather fat, homely man who worships her, even though there is little physical love between them. The people in town ultimately care more for his bread than him. So during a single day, they parry and thrust around him, trying to figure out what to do to raise his spirits. There is a vacuous, know it all priest who pontificates about everything but who has no trouble benefitting form the kindness of his flock. He has all the answers but no answers at all but he maintains an elevated position. But the baker is the character most admirable. He is forgiving. He is faithful. He sees the world for what it is although he loses control at one point. The ending is not maudlin. The townsmen still want the bread more than anything. But they are also happy for him.

Such a pity that over eighty years on this undisputed classic from the Golden Age of French cinema has attracted so few reviews but glad to see that most of them are appreciative and full of praise.

Before an unfortunate rift in their professional relationship Marcel Pagnol and Jean Giorno enjoyed one of the most fruitful partnerships in the history of film.

The most renowned of their collaborations is undoubdtedly 'The Baker's Wife' which Pagnol has adapted and considerably enlarged from an 'episode' in Giorno's novel 'Blue Boy'. The casting of Raimu who had already immortalised César in Pagnol's Marseilles trilogy is the icing on the cake.

The story is simply told. Aimable the baker is married to a much younger Aurelie. She runs off with the local hunk and Aimable refuses to bake any more bread until she returns. Faced with this crisis the villagers set about getting her back. Husband and wife are eventually reconciled in one of the greatest scenes ever put on film and Aimable resumes baking 'le pain extraordinaire'.

Raimu's performance as Aimable transcends the art of acting and voluptuous Ginette Leclerc is perfect as Aurelie. She went on to excel in 'Le Corbeau' but thereafter her career suffered from accusations of collaboration. Great supporting cast notably Fernand Charpin and Robert Vattier.

This film was a resounding success in America, not only winning the New York Film Critics Circle for Best Foreign Film but clocking up a record-breaking seventy-five week run in New York alone.

The rich characterisations plus the combination of comedy and pathos make this one of the handful of films that can truly be called sublime.

Let us leave the final words to Albert Einstein: 'It is the finest, the most human film that I have ever seen'.