La femme du boulanger ("The Baker's Wife")

Production

Producer and distributor: Les Films Marcel Pagnol.
Production manager: Charles Pons.
Script and dialogues: Marcel Pagnol, after an episode from the novel by Jean Giono, "Jean le Bleu".
Direction: Marcel Pagnol.
Visuals: Georges Benoît.
Cameraman: Roger Ledru.
Location: Castellet.
Studios: Marcel Pagnol, Marseille.
Editing: Suzanne de Troye.
Music: Vincent Scotto.
First public screening: Paris (Marivaux), September 1938.
Running time: 2h07.

Performers

Raimu - Aimable Castanier, le boulanger
Ginette Leclerc - Aurélie, sa femme
Charles Moulin - Dominique, le berger
Fernand Charpin - le marquis Castan de Venelles
Robert Vattier - Le curé
Alida Rouffe - Céleste, sa bonne
Robert Bassac - L'instituteur
Edouard Delmont - Maillefer
Charles Blavette - Antonin
Odette Roger - Miette, sa femme
Paul Dullac - Casimir, le buraliste
Julien Maffre - Pétugue
Maupi - Barnabé

Story

When the village baker refuses to make bread because his flighty wife has left with a handsome shepherd...the individual tragedy becomes a collective one. Raimu provides a stupendous performance, which led Orson Welles to claim that he was the greatest actor in the world. The film was, along with the Trilogy, one of Pagnol's major successes.

"He is a prodigious actor... At first, he did not want to play the baker. Maupi was to do it. But, once he had read the text, he came to me and told me: "Don't you think I should do it?" When he gets plastered and tries to roll a cigarette, to think that he had never rolled one before, he is just fantastic; everyone was lost in admiration, we would not dare to stop the camera."
Marcel Pagnol