César runs a bar along Marseilles' port, assisted by his 23-year-old son, Marius. Friends since childhood, Fanny and Marius love each other, but Marius has a secret wanderlust: every ship's whistle stirs a longing for foreign lands. When M. Panisse seeks Fanny's hand in marriage and when a...
Trouble is started by one of the unfortunate girls, ensconced in a chateau by a generous lady so they can recuperate,but a grandfather and a teacher cause the little drama to be soon forgotten.
Leaping forward twenty years, the trilo'gy continues with the death of Fanny's husband, Panisse, and the discovery of her secret by her son, Césariot. The young man resolves to track down his biological father, Marius, whose life has been fraught with calamity and poverty.
In the 30s, a small village in the Provence is losing its inhabitants because young people prefer to go to the city to find easy jobs and escape from being farmers living in relative poverty. Only a few old people and the poacher Panturle remain. Panturle dreams of bringing the village back to...
Soon after Marius's departure, Fanny learns that she is pregnant with his child, to the disappointment of her mother and of Marius's father, César. To secure a better life for her unborn child, she accepts a marriage proposal from the aging widower Honoré Panisse.
Marcel Pagnol's adaptation of his own novel Manon des sources, the story of a shepherdess who exacts her revenge on the townsfolk she blames for killing her father, in two parts: Manon des sources and Ugolin.
After the death of her husband, Christine realizes she has possibly wasted her life by marrying him instead of the man towards whom, in her youth, she had a stronger inclination. To overcome these dreary thoughts, she decides to find out about him and the other men who danced with her during a ball...
The gratuitous murder of his father and the misery of the people, aggravated by a succession of bad harvests, lead Gaspard, a great admirer of Mandrin and blacksmith by profession, to revolt. With his companion Samplan, he finds himself at the head of a handful of soldiers dissatisfied with their...
Tartarin is the local hero in the small provincial town of Tarascon. He shows off about imaginary adventures in Africa, where he has never been, as a Lion Hunter, which he is only in his imagination. Even though the locals know he has never been to Africa, they keep hoping he will leave one day....
The wife of a Marseille industrialist is murdered. An inspector and a young journalist investigate together, and suspect the husband, then the lover, before finding the real culprit.
In the Camargue, a herdsman has just become engaged to a young local girl when his heart is troubled by a stranger who is playing the comedy of love for him. After this disappointment, he resumes the interrupted idyll.
Two women, Léa and Clotilde, with two men, Ludovic and Papillon, form a nice quartet of crooks. Their targets: pharmacists, diamond dealers, and gogos of all kinds who respond to enticing classified ads. Business is booming, but the police are watching. Commissioner Masson will eventually arrest...
Somewhat reminiscent of 'Mädchen in Uniform' (1931), the story is set in a private girl's school, populated almost exclusively by children from broken homes. Among the few students who can claim family stability is Micheline Presle, but even her happiness is threatened when her lawyer father Andre...
Cavalcade D'Amour is divided into three sections, each depicting a romance occurring within the walls of the Chateau de Champs. Legend has it that whoever marries in the Chateau is doomed to an unhappy life. This proves to be the case in 1639 and 1839, but the heroine of the 1939 segment, Corinne...
To try solving the strange disappearances of 11 young Parisian women, the police obtain the services of Adrienne Charpentier, friend of the latest missing person.
A respected gangster, Justin, finds himself in a deadly feud with his rival, the unscrupulous Esposito. The latter plans to steal a cargo of opium bound for China and to have Justin killed.
A husband, exasperated by his wife, spanks her without paying attention to the open window in front of which he is. He is annoyingly surprised to discover the next day that the scene has been photographed by a neighbor, and that the image is circulating in Paris. A debate then ensues: is this an...
An assistant pharmacist in the South of France , Blaise works for Mrs. Pinède, a well-endowed hot-blooded woman who has developed a crush on him, and her husband ... who hasn't! One day, Blaise meets Felloux, a rich man who is convalescing in Cassis. Felloux takes a liking to Blaise and decides to...