Sara Batkie
It might be hard to believe now, given the glut of superhero films and I.P. money grabs at the multiplex, but there was a time when a handsomely mounted period piece could be a bona fide cultural event. Or at least it could in France. That’s where director Claude Berri released not one but two adaptations of Marcel Pagnol’s novel L’Eau des Collines in 1986 – the first, Jean de Florette, in August and its sequel Manon of the Spring in November. Made simultaneously and said at the time to be the most expensive films ever made in the country, they were also box office hits. Americans reacted with similar warmth, but Berri’s works have been difficult to find on streaming. A new two-disc edition out from Criterion this month offers a welcome opportunity for their rediscovery.
It’s a little wild to contemplate that a studio would put such faith in audiences to come see a multi-part literary adaptation on the big screen. Usually that only happens these days with established, Y.A.-skewing franchises like Twilight or The Hunger Games. Highbrow fare like Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall series is relegated to television which, to be fair, offers more generous runtimes for sprawling storylines. Taken together, Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring would make up just four hour-long episodes – barely a miniseries in our bloated era. But that only makes their joint achievement all the more miraculous.
It was something of a miracle at the time, too. Shot on location in an isolated area of Provence, production was an arduous and complex process in a way that often matched the source material, a tale of grand plans gone awry, undone by greed, treachery, and that fickle mistress, fate. With a title like Jean de Florette, you’d be forgiven for thinking him the protagonist of the story. But he doesn’t actually appear until almost thirty minutes in. First we’re introduced to the scheming César Soubeyran (the legendary Yves Montand) and his nephew Ugolin (Daniel Auteuil), who has recently returned from the battlefields of World War I.
Ugolin has brought back carnation grafts and hopes to grow the flowers on his land, but they require abundant water to thrive. The Soubeyrans have their eye on an adjacent property that has access to a spring, but the owner won’t sell. When he dies following an altercation with César, the farm is left to the man’s sister, Florette; it’s suggested that she and César have a history. But he has a sinister plan in mind: he and Ugolin plug up the spring in the hopes it will dissuade others from buying the land should she decide to sell. Instead news arrives that she’s passed away and it all goes to her son Jean (Gérard Depardieu), a tax collector and hunchback whose idealistic hopes for “authentic cultivation” will soon bring him into conflict with his new neighbors.
It’s a classic city versus country set-up, albeit one with Biblical dimensions. Cinematographer Bruno Nuytten captures the idiosyncrasies of the pastoral landscape, which is both beautiful and unforgiving, especially to outsiders like Jean. His bourgeois furnishings and modern techniques make him an object of ridicule for the villagers, but they also work, at least for a time. His rabbits and crops thrive; while Ugolin frets, César preaches patience, knowing Jean’s innovations will be no match for the summer heat ahead if he has no water at hand. Jean cannot fathom why God has cursed him but we do. Meanwhile his watchful daughter Manon (played as a child by Ernestine Mazurowna) grows increasingly wary of the Soubeyrans, though she won’t recognize the full extent of their villainy until her father has already met his inevitable ruin.
It’s a testament to the strength of both films that Manon of the Spring isn’t merely a continuation of the first part but an expansion of it. This is the “chickens coming home to roost” portion of the story, when the seeds of betrayal planted in Jean de Florette flourish as vengeance. Picking up roughly ten years down the line, Manon (now played by Emmanuelle Béart) has grown into a stunning beauty. Referred to as the “little savage” by the townspeople, she lives a feral existence, tending a flock of goats and cannily evading anyone who crosses her path.
Time has been comparatively kind to the Soubeyrans: Ugolin’s carnation business has prospered while many of the more elderly farmers are beginning to pack it in. Still, César is not content simply to enjoy the spoils of their fortune. He’s thinking about the future, namely their family’s lack of one since neither he nor his nephew have married or produced an heir. He pushes Ugolin to think about taking a wife, not realizing the hunchback’s daughter has caught his eye. She, understandably, is repulsed by the affections of a man whose avarice caused the death of her beloved father.
But the Soubeyrans didn’t act alone in that. The stopped spring might have been their handiwork, but years of secrets kept, truths withheld, and villagers willfully looking the other way also contributed to Jean’s demise. When Manon overhears two hunters admitting as much, she hatches a scheme of her own, one whose consequences will prove disastrous not just for Ugolin and César but the livelihood of the entire town. It all culminates in a cascade of tragedies worthy of Greek drama, complete with public denunciations, a suicide, and revelations that come too late to make any difference.
Berri and his crew went to great lengths to maintain historical accuracy during filming, and their meticulous attention shows in the final products, which have an immersive quality rarely reached in modern cinema. Both Jean and Manon are attuned to the rhythms of rural labor, particularly their unique hardships, and the actors bore many of those physical burdens over the thirty-week shoot. There was emotional wreckage too: Montand’s wife of thirty-four years, actress Simone Signoret, died while he was on location. He was only away from set one day for her funeral.
Watching the films now invites a certain nostalgia for when studios invested in such lavish productions, and audiences reliably went to see them. But Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring are also marked by their lack of sentimentality. At the end of the day, these are stories about how easily men can turn on one another, especially when precious resources are perceived as scarce. Human relations require as much tending as a crop field. To value one over the other can lead them both to perish.
“Jean de Florette” and “Manon of the Spring” are available on 4K and Blu-ray from the Criterion Collection.
