ajhclarke

Sundrenched and redolent of Marseille and Southern France. A real delight but there is a slight puzzle here .... is Auteil setting this in some never-never land? The original dates from 1929, adapted for film two years later. There is no firm indication here of date at all .. the costumes hint at the 1920s or even earlier, the ships in the small port seem in fact 19th century, but characters in a café are dancing to music from the late 1950s. And over the end-titles comes the wonderful Charles Trenet singing a song he recorded in 1947! This is some amazing time-travelling... So the time and settings are all over the shop .. but the story is strong enough to withstand it. I hope the chronology gets sorted out by the time I get around to viewing Part Two, 'Fanny', of this Pagnol trilogy. It better gets sorted out fast .. I'm watching it tomorrow night.

Take 'A Star is Born', throw in a bit of 'Singin in the Rain' and a touch too of 'Sunset Boulevard'. Keep all the clichés and throw out any real plot development, and you have this fairly flat soufflé which just refuses to rise. It's supposed to be an homage to silent movies but is way short of the best of that genre. It could have been worthwhile if the script had contained either more wit or more real emotion .. in this one, everyone seems just to be going through the motions, though I must confess that the star, Jean Dujardin, does his best with the lame material. An Oscar chance? It shows how far cinema has regressed almost 85 years after the introduction of the talkies!

At last. In September this year (2011) this masterful adaptation of Nancy Mitford's semi-autobiographical family saga is being released on DVD in all its eight-part glory. I'm not sure if it's slated for release in the States, but British buyers can advance-order now. This is one of the finest literary adaptations ever, ranking with Andrew Davies' 'Pride and Prejudice' and with the BBC adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's 'Brideshead Revisited'. It is witty, but also moving and at times tragic. The story inspires its cast (including Judy Dench, Vivian Pickles, Michael Williams and Michael Aldridge) to turn in some of their finest performances. I had often wondered why Thames Television was resolutely ignoring such a gem in its back-catalogue; thankfully, someone in that organisation has finally woken up.

Anthony, in Woodend, Victoria, Australia