Episode 9: Marcel Pagnol In And Around Marseille

The author and film-maker Marcel Pagnol is inextricably linked with Marseille – where he lived, set some of his early works and is buried – and with the Provencal countryside around the city. The garrigue landscape provides the backdrop to his popular autobiographical works, La Gloire de Mon Père (My Father’s Glory) and Le Château de Ma Mère (My Mother’s Castle) and is also the setting for his gripping novels Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources. This post gives a little biographical information and an idea of where to ‘find’ him in the area today. There’s much more detail on the podcast, including some quotations from his work.

a brief biography

Marcel Pagnol was born in nearby Aubagne in 1895 and moved with his parents to Marseille when he was five. The family spent weekends and school holidays – his father was a teacher – in a little house in the village of La Treille, now on the outskirts of Marseille and his love for the hills and the countryside began then and never waned. Originally an English teacher, Pagnol began writing in his twenties and his first success was a trilogy of plays – Marius, Fanny and César – set around the harbour of Marseille. These became popular films and his career was launched.

Pagnol’s Autobiographical Writings

La Gloire de Mon Père (My Father’s Glory) is the story of the author’s childhood, especially his family’s many weekend and holiday visits to a little house in the neighbouring hills. Young Marcel and his friend Lili roam freely together, drinking from springs, setting traps and exploring the natural world around them. Marcel’s admiration for his bookish father as the fount of all knowledge takes a knock when he realises his Uncle Jules is a much better huntsman. But it’s restored in a key scene near the end of the book, when his father somehow manages to shoot a pair of rare rock partridges. Marcel remembers this triumph for the rest of his life.

Le Château de Ma Mère, continues the story and is an affectionate homage to Pagnol’s mother who died when he was only 15. Marcel particularly recalls the family’s shame when they are caught trespassing on a château-owner’s land in a bid to find a shortcut to the holiday house and the injustice of his mother, already frail and weak, being harshly treated stayed with him into adulthood. But then, wealthy from the success of his novels and films, he was able to put things right by buying the château.

Both books are packed with detailed descriptions of the countryside around Marseille and there are some examples read out on the podcast.

3 Plays Set in Marseille

A trilogy of plays set around Marseille’s harbour was one of Pagnol’s early successes, first in the theatre and then on film. Marius tells the story of a bar-owner’s son who falls in love with Fanny, the girl who runs the harbourside shellfish stall, but who also feels a longing to set off to sea and explore the world. Fanny gives him her blessing, but the play ends with her fainting when she discovers he really has gone. The sequel, Fanny, is about her discovery, after Marius has set sail, that she is pregnant with their son. The final part, César, takes up the story twenty years later. Together, they make a gripping family drama, full of Marseille flavour.

There is much more detail, along with some quotations, on the podcast.

two gripping novels

Jean de Florette is set in a rural Provençal village, where an old man and his only remaining relative cast their covetous eyes on an adjoining vacant property. They need its spring water to grow their own flowers and crops, so are dismayed to hear that a new owner is moving in. César and his nephew Ugolin block up the spring and watch as their new neighbour, Jean, tries to keep his crops watered from wells far afield throughout the hot summer. Though they see his desperate efforts are breaking his health and his wife and daughter’s hearts, they turn a blind eye as events reach a tragic conclusion.

Manon des Sources continues the story 10 years later. Manon, Jean’s daughter, has found out what happened to her father and plots her revenge. Meanwhile, Ugolin, whose flowers are now thriving, falls in love with her. The story twists and turns and ends with a devastating surprise that you surely won’t see coming. This review gives the flavour: ‘Biblical in its cadences, epic in its sweep to destiny, and old fashioned in development of character and plot, this saga charts the destruction of a Provencal family.’

The novels were published in the early 1960s and were made into popular films two decades later, directed by Claude Berri and starring Yves Montand, Daniel Auteil, Gerard Depardieu and Emmanuelle Béart.

finding marcel pagnol today

This site offers lots of ideas for self-guided walks around places connected with Marcel Pagnol. In the little town of Aubagne, a short train ride from Marseille’s St Charles station, you can visit his birthplace, now a museum. There, you can see period furniture, family photographs and information about his books and films. Perhaps you will recall the lines in La Gloire de Mon Père in which he remembers looking out of an upstairs window and watching his father playing boules in the street below. In fact, his earliest memory is from here: ‘The first sight I recall is a very lofty fountain, under the plane trees along the Cours, just in front of our house.’

The Aubagne Tourist Office is also based in this building and there you can collect a leaflet detailing a walk around the little town Pagnol remembered so fondly, plus information about other places to visit. At the Petit Monde de Marcel Pagnol, you can see 200 santons (small clay figures) illustrating his life and work. Big fans of santons will also enjoy the Village des Santons, where thousands of the little figures so typical of the region are displayed in some 20 vast scenes depicting Provencal life, from village squares to mountain landscapes. Aubagne offers pretty streets to wander and a selection of restaurants, mainly clustered around the town square, very close to Pagnol’s birthplace.

There’s more on the podcast about visiting La Treille, on the outskirts of Marseille, where the original house rented by the Pagnol family still stands and where you can visit the cemetery where he chose to be buried. Also nearby is the Château de la Buzine, the site where Marcel’s parents were caught trespassing, a property which he himself bought later in life. His dream that it should be turned into a centre cinématographique was realised after his death and today you can visit it to learn about the history of 100 years of cinema.

To read or watch Pagnol’s work is to be transported to Provence. If you are in or near Marseille, don’t miss the opportunity to find out more about this celebrated local writer. For André Malraux, author and Minister of Culture, he was “one of the great writers of our generation” and for no less a director and actor than Jean Renoir he was “the leading film artist of his age”. Here, to finish, is Pagnol’s own description of how felt as a small boy when he first discovered the wondrous landscape of his favourite mountains, Tête Rouge, Taoumé and Garlaban.

‘We left the village, and then enchantment began: I felt welling up inside me a love that was to last all my life. A vast landscape rose before us in a semi-circle, reaching to the sky. Black pine-woods, divided by valleys, died away like waves up to the foot of three rocky peaks.’