EPISODE 298: Jean de Florette / Manon des Sources
SPOILER ALERT: your neighbors are terrible. We bring this up Dear Listener because, with the infinite amount of “content” out there, it can be hard to decide what to watch, but Gareth has a suggestion: Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources, with their examination of crime, hope and atonement are just the thing for this week. A real spoiler alert: please watch these two films before listening to the show. Yours in Cinema, Jett and Gareth.
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The Film Talk is brought to you by you folks who listen and help out. Just go to patreon.com/thefilmtalk for details. Now on with the show.
Folks, friends, sinners, lovers, everyone out there.
That's a callback, Gareth, a callback to a previous episode. A whole history of cinema to talk about. We kind of, Gareth and myself, want to tell you, talk about, suggest, reminisce about what films to watch this week and why, sometimes.
And interestingly to me, and we'll get into it, this week, Gareth wants to talk about that diptych, that diptych of French films from the 80s, huge hits, Jean de Florette, Manon of the Spring. I don't know why he wants to talk about these two.
I cannot wait, along with you, to find out. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to The Film Talk. I'm Jett Loe.
Gareth Higgins, The Conversation never ends.
There's one simple reason and one deeper reason about why I want to talk about Jean de Florette and its clean piece that was released in the US as Manon of the Spring and in France, Manon des Sources.
And the timely reason is that Criterion has just released a 4K restoration of these two films. And so I watched them last week. And the deeper reason for me is these were the first non-English language films that I was ever familiar with.
I was 16 years old when a friend who was a filmmaker in Belfast, his name is Alastair, he introduced me to French cinema.
He was one of two people, in addition to my parents, who had the most influence on me having, let's say, a more expansive experience of cinema than would be typical for somebody my age growing up in Belfast.
And I'm so grateful to Al and then later the other person, Michael Open, who ran the Queen's Film Theatre, the Art House in Belfast, where you and I met, for, I guess, an on-ramp, because so much talk about what used to be called foreign language
cinema, and now it's more respectfully called non-English language or international cinema, depending on where you're standing, was hard to get to. There was kind of an intellectual conversation around it that might have inhibited or intimidated
somebody like me. But Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources, were my on-ramp into French cinema.
Because they're approachable.
They are approachable.
Easily understandable. Like when you watch the film, you go, I understand what the film is doing. I get that it's got themes.
Here are the themes. It's very tidy. You're not shocked or surprised.
It's comforting, like a nice warm casserole.
I'm certainly shocked by something in the film or surprised by something in the film. But yeah, they are approachable. But here's the thing.
So is Shakespeare. Shakespeare was a populist artist. Honestly, so is The Godfather.
The Godfather, you know what's happening. It's what you call it classical filmmaking, classical storytelling, at least in the first Godfather, beginning, middle, and end in that order.
But even in The Godfather Part II, which jumps back and forth between two time zones, you're actually, or two time periods, you're still seeing the unfolding of this person's life over the course of what happened to his father when he was young.
And frankly, the film, The Godfather Part II, ends with a kind of a prefiguring of the future.
Because even though Michael Corleone is, I guess is he in his late 30s, maybe early 40s at the end of that film, you know what the rest of its life is going to be like. He might as well die there and then.
Just so we could avoid the haircut of Godfather III.
Exactly. That's exactly. That's exactly why.
So I've had a relationship with these films for about 35 years.
Okay.
And I've changed and the films haven't, but my experience of them has changed. What they say to me and what they mean to me. So I wanted to revisit them and I did.
And then I was delighted to discover you had not. Seen them and so what I'd probably want to do is ask you to go first about what they sparked in you and then, and then let's have a conversation. There's also one thing we do need to mention.
Probably before we go any further and that is that one of the main actors in these films is Gérard de Bardieu, who was just convicted in a French court of sexual assault.
And so we have to acknowledge that when we're going to talk about this film, because in some sense it's The Elephant in the Room, it's also respectful to the people he has been convicted of hurting.
Because I think when people go to see films and they know something about the actors' lives, it's only natural that it sparks questions.
And perhaps especially among people watching these movies who are survivors of things like that, it might be a tender or sensitive thing to watch a film with that actor in it.
And at the same time, there's a fairly superficial discourse in our culture that we should just cancel the movies altogether if somebody who's done a bad thing is involved in them.
And it seemed to me valuable for us in The Film Talk to say something about that whole discourse. So Jett, what are your thoughts on that? And I'll share some of my own.
Well, you know, there's that great film, satirical film Four Lines made by Chris Morris, brilliant English satirist who did Brass Eye.
He's really sharp. And I remember watching an interview with him. Someone was asking, this is after 9-11, how could you make this comedy about terrorists?
You know, these are Arabic terrorists blowing things up. And he said, well, you know, you looked at the transcripts, went to the court proceedings. And the fact is, is that a certain percent of people are just, I'm paraphrasing here, are morons.
Why do we expect terrorists to be any different? So with regards to Roger Perdue or anybody, it doesn't matter to be in the arts, it can be in any area, one's life. There's a percentage of people that are just terrible.
There are terrible, terrible people out there. And maybe they compartmentalize and think they're not terrible. I don't know.
But you can't, I don't think you can go live your life and say, I'm not going to read this book or see this movie because I found out that somebody and it was terrible. Because guess what? Your neighbors are terrible.
It's one thing I learned living in the United States. Since I've come back here from the UK, it's like, gee, a certain percentage of people are just really awful. So for me, I don't have a problem watching something like, you know, Annie Hall.
It's a great movie. Woody Allen? Maybe he's terrible.
Now, I can understand, oh, I don't want to give money to these folks. So if I'm not familiar with the Gerard DePriest specific case, like maybe he'll get the two cents or five cents or 10 cents from my Amazon Prime purchase.
I can understand that, and that's an interesting, that's a valid conversation. But I myself am not too personally troubled about watching films where I found out the person is terrible. With one exception, Steve McQueen.
I have a problem there. Only one. Now, if you could ask why that is, it probably has something to do with my personal life and what I've seen with people abusing other people.
But that's where I'm there with that, Gareth. I'd love to talk about the movies. If you want to talk more about Dror de Perdue, again, I'm not familiar with the case or allegations.
One more thing about that, I'd probably put it differently than you, and I think that everybody's capable of doing terrible things, and some people do a lot of terrible things, but a film is not its maker, a film is not its star, and particularly in
a film like Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources, this is an ensemble piece. There are other actors in this film, and there are other people behind the film, and there are other people who presumably get residuals from the movie too, and so I
guess, you know, it's different if we're talking about a single author of a book or something like that, if you want to pull something as a protest, but even then, there are people who work in the publishing ecosystem who will be negatively affected
by such a boycott. So I'm not, I don't really buy that argument. I do think, however, that when talking about a movie, as we get the chance to do, and when something like what's just happened with Gerald Ebrecht here has happened, it's insensitive
and disrespectful to not mention that, and to not validate the fact that just as there are people who do terrible things, there's also lots of totally legitimate reasons to not want to see a movie. It doesn't make you weak if you don't want to see a
particular horror movie because it stirs the trauma that you've experienced in your own life, etc. I am intrigued, and this will maybe be a conversation for another day, about the impact of occupying a role in a movie on your own life.
Like what happens when you play a cruel character? What happens when you play a compassionate character? Richard Dreyfus says that all art is autobiographical, and that's a one-way street where he's talking about he's infusing himself into the roles.
I'm just curious about what playing roles does to people who occupy those roles.
Well, it depends on the person, right? It depends upon the craftsman, it depends upon the person. Are you just externalizing yourself?
That's what Richard Dreyfus says. Maybe that's totally true for him.
For him, sure.
For him.
Yep.
I mean, Dustin Hoffman did The Graduate and then Midnight Cowboy. You know, practically back to back, which is a great career move.
Well, one film is about becoming emotionally mature. The other film is about lamenting compassion for marginalized people.
I guess my question is, I don't think it's, you know, it's not, sometimes it's considered intellectually superficial to advocate that the purpose of art is to help make the world better. But I'm happy to keep advocating for that.
And I would like to think that if one participates in making a work of art, that's about compassion. But the purpose of your art, perhaps one might become more compassionate.
That's a nice thought. Purpose of your art is to help.
Purpose of my art. Yeah.
And it's a nice thought. Lovely. I would hope so.
My lifetime of experience in the real world says that maybe perhaps not. Let's talk about these films. I always appreciate your idea.
Lovingly, I've had a lifetime of experience in the real world too.
Some people, as we both know, the great philosopher Lex Luthor from his layer in Grand Central Station said some people can read War and Peace and come away thinking it's a simple adventure story and other people can read a chewing gum wrapper and
unlock the secrets of the universe. I think Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources could be compared to War and Peace and to Shakespeare and to The Godfather.
Compared favorably, you're saying?
Absolutely, compared favorably.
Because everything could be compared to Shakespeare.
Okay, let's get into it. Based on stories by Marcel Panyol, directed by Claude Berry, he came out in 1986, 1987. I think they are the godfather of French cinema.
They're among my absolute favorite films. But as you are the Jean de Florette, Manon des Sources virgin, you go first. Well, how did these films impact you?
What was your experience of these films?
Listen, any film, Friends, Lovers, Gareth, Sinners All, any film that starts with a character arriving in an old ramshackle bus at dawn is worth watching. We're going to get that out of the way.
I have to tell you, the film engrossed me so much right from the start. Again, these are two films in case you're not familiar with them. They were big hits in the 80s, but basically it's a long film done in two parts.
Two films released a few months from each other, like three months apart in France, I think maybe four months in the United States. This film was so engrossing at the start, Gareth, that I'm watching it. I ordered it on the old Amazon Prime.
It was many minutes after the film had started. In the characters, we have the ramshackle bus comes to town, beautifully shot, I want to talk about that. He meets his, maybe he's his uncle.
He calls him grandfather, but that's everyone calls him grandfather. They're talking about-
Papi, can I call you Papi? I was thinking I might do that.
Well, you can, but I'm not gonna kill anybody and then try to use that for financial gain.
Steal their farm.
Steal their farm.
Hold on a minute, are you slightly jumping ahead of yourself? Can I say something about the premise of the story?
No, no, no, people gotta watch. I wanna say something that's in the positive before I go to things that are not so positive. So I'm watching the movie, I'm 10 minutes in, 15 minutes in, and I realize something.
I hadn't turned on the subtitles, I hadn't turned them on.
I was so engrossed, I don't speak French, it didn't matter, I was totally, and I mean, I'm watching the character speak, and I'm so enveloped in the beauty of this motion picture and in the vibe, as the kids would say, I don't realize that I do not
understand the words coming out of these actors. And so it works on a fundamental level there, talk about The Godfather, it works on a fundamental level. And it's beautifully shot in Provence. The first time I ever was in Provence, I was very young.
I had gotten off a bus with my then girlfriend, and Silence of Lambs was playing, and I hadn't seen it, I'd heard it was a hit. And I said to her, oh, you know, don't worry, they'll subtitle it. They won't dub it.
They dubbed it, of course, because, you know, Geordi Foster famously speaks French. Hannibal le Cannibal. And we watched the entire film in French, and it worked, Jonathan Deming.
So, okay.
What's the premise of this film? What's the premise of this story?
The premise of, what's the premise? The humans are terrible, and they try to atone.
No, everyone's your neighbor.
You know? Well, we don't need to, people can look it up on IMDb. It's a-
Listen, out of respect for the listener, the premise is we're just after the First World War, we're in Provence in a fairly, not a very well-heeled town.
Hugo Lin, played by Daniel O'Toole, who maybe is my favorite actor.
Yeah, he's great.
He returns home after the war. He goes to see his uncle, César Subérin, played by Yves Montand, known as Pape, and discusses with him. He has this vision to grow carnations and become financially well off.
There is a farm just above them that has a spring in it. They try to buy the farm from the farmer. This farmer is none too pleased about that because of both cognitive decline and bitterness regarding something in the past.
An altercation occurs. This farmer is accidentally killed and they decide to stop up the spring so that the inheritor of this farm, played by Gérard de Bardieu, when he come on, won't be able to use the spring.
That's in about the first 14 minutes of this film. There is an economy of story telling here that is wonderful, and that's the premise of this film.
It's a great kind of, let's call it a theatrical space for people to examine the question of, exactly, you're right, people do terrible things.
Does that make them terrible?
But who is my neighbor? The question this film asks is, who is my neighbor?
If you find out, it turns out they may be terrible. Here's something else I need to address before we get into the themes, because it is very thematically rich. It's up there with sinners.
It's a great piece of work, these two films. Here's the thing, Gareth, you talked about how this was your entry into non-English speaking drama. Is that right?
In the movies.
Yeah. I may have seen The Red Balloon, which is a French film, but it doesn't have any dialogue.
They did show that to kids still to this day.
That's a masterpiece too.
Yes.
We had an inverse experience here because as you know, and I've talked about on the show, as a kid, I watched every single film that was theatric released in the United States that was shown in the Bay Area, which was a lot of movies, including
R-rated ones, even when I was like 12 or whatever, because I would just sneak into the movie theaters. There were dozens, 20, 25 screens within a short distance from my house. So I saw everything.
The only thing I did not see growing up was Labyrinth and these two films. Labyrinth, don't know why, and these two films. Now, here's the thing, then I moved to the UK, right?
And what happened with these films in the UK? The music and vibe of these two films was licensed by the beer company Stella Artois. So there's a famous harmonica piece with the Jacques de Florent theme.
You know, we did music for The Brutalist, we can do music.
If you want to go ahead and do it.
That's The Godfather, or very, very close. No, it's very close to The Godfather. We know, we know.
So here's the thing.
I see this is a huge marketing campaign in the UK, dear listeners, in front of movie theaters, there'll be like a two minute mini movie using this theme from these films and also set in Provence and involving Red Carnations, basically satires and so
on. So I was watching these two films for the first time, and every time that goddamn theme comes on, I want to reach Pavlovian like for a Stella Artois.
So much so that in the break between the two movies, I went out to my good friends over Root 66 Liquor, there's a live near Root 66, famous Root 66, and bought some Stella Artois so then I could drink Stella Artois the whole time watching the second
film. So I'm just putting that out there to explain that I had a different cinematic experience than Gareth, almost the opposite. Now, we can talk about the themes of the film, but there's something else we have to talk about first.
And this relates to, I could use an example, the Sandra Bullock Nicole Kidman film Practical Magic from a few years later. By the way, Practical Magic 2 coming out soon.
And there's a reason why I know Practical Magic 2 is coming out soon is because Practical Magic, I've watched like on the HBO, I've never seen it. Big hit from the late 90s.
Any good?
And then I find out a couple of days later, oh, Practical Magic 2 is coming out. That's great. But then I realized, oh, the only reason I saw Practical Magic is because they had a marketing campaign on the algorithm to feed you Practical Magic.
Then you would watch it and then get Practical Magic 2. Anyway, hit from the 90s. Here's the point, tying all this together.
Middle Brow, not great movie Practical Magic, right? It's like witches in the cinema. It looks incredible.
It is a beautifully shot film in a way that films aren't now. I think, Gareth, they're growing consensus. There's a high point of Western cinematography that came from the time of Jean de Florette.
From the mid-80s until the late 90s before the digital revolution, when the film stocks got so amazing, they were so rich, they were so beautiful, that even films like Practical Magic, to modern eyes, people are watching like the Marvel direct where
everything is gray, is absolutely beautiful. So for me, these films have a almost a different impact because films can't look like this anymore, if that makes sense. They can't look like this.
The vibrant blues, the reds of the carnations don't exist anymore. When you see a film that's graded, now it's shot digitally, graded means when they get it out of the chip, basically it's all gray.
Notice how all the colors look the same, like every blues, someone's blues t-shirt, it's going to be the same blues on the bus. It's because of how they're using the grading software.
So it's almost they're built, baked into the technology is what Warren Beatty was doing with Dick Tracy. Dick Tracy willing to use six colors. We're going to use this red, this blue, which is a cool idea for Dick Tracy, it's a comic book.
But it makes films now look nowhere near as rich and beautiful as these two. Yeah, everything looks like slop, it looks like sludge, so much of digital cinema today.
That's why films that are shot on film like VistaVision, like The Brutalist, Sinners, Stand Out. And even the latest Dune films, they shot digitally, and then they scanned it and photographed it with film, and rescanned it in to give it something.
So these films, apart from anything else, Gareth wants to talk about with the themes, which are something, they're important, they're asking some most important questions. The films look incredible, they're transportive.
It's one of the reasons why I didn't even realize I didn't have subtitles on for minutes. Jean de Florette, Manon of the Spring, go see it. But there's one big exception.
You talked about The Godfather. Oh, but there's one question I have to ask you. There's one question.
All right, ask me.
Here's the thing, dear listeners, obviously a lot is lost in translation.
Even if you go to IMDb and you watch like the trailer for these films, the subtitles are totally different than the versions that I saw, right? So okay, take that with a grain of salt.
And there's clear big comedy scenes that we know there's supposed to be comedy scenes, but it doesn't quite translate. And there's a variety of things. There's going to be things that are known to French culture that don't translate.
There's something these two films do and it's a conceit, and they do it over and over and over again. And Gareth, I want you to... And I'm thinking, am I missing something about like French farce, or this is a reference to something?
Because here's the thing, they do this thing early in the first film, and you go, oh, that's contrived, but we'll give it to them, you do it once. Then five minutes later, they do the same thing again. I'm like, oh, that's weird.
And then five minutes later, and you can, I don't know how many times I do it, 20 times, 18 times. Do you know what I'm talking about here, Gareth?
No, I don't.
Every few minutes in both these films, a character finds out something by hiding behind a bush, watching people, unaware of them, about five feet away. And it happens once, and I'll give it to you.
Then again, and then I thought, they can't keep doing it. It keeps. And I'm like, is this a reference?
Is this a famous trope that they're playing with in French cinema and French drama, theatrical drama?
Maybe the way that people in rural Provence in 1920 found things out about their neighbors.
Okay, the last time they do it, it happens so often. And he's literally five feet away, one of the protagonists, the Oogalan. But in this time, he has woven in his hair a camouflage to hide.
So I'm wondering, is that like a, that's like a joke. There's got to be something I'm missing here.
Oogalan isn't the smartest character in movie history.
No, and then we find out why though. We find out why he kind of horrifically may be the result of inbreeding. It's something, man.
There's a lot of setup and a lot of payoff in these movies.
But he's, I mean, he also talked about his father's suicide and his mother's death. So this, you know, to me, fair enough, the finding things out by hiding it behind a bush might be overdone. So that perhaps takes it a notch down from The Godfather.
But for me, this is, this is absolutely gorgeous, classical story telling that invites us to reflect on our own complicity in the suffering of others and be compassionate regarding our own suffering too.
It has a, you know, it is saying something simple, but that's like the greatest art often does. You know, Macbeth says, don't misuse power. Bad idea to misuse power.
The Tempest, okay to feel vengeful, but better to allow yourself the catharsis of taking that out in a punch bag rather than naturally destroying the lives of others. And if you happen to have magical powers, you can undo the sting of that revenge.
Then you should use those magical powers. Romeo and Juliet, tell the truth. Tell the truth, and if you should know better and you realize your children are suffering because of your selfishness and pride, get over that and go the extra mile.
And this film is, Everyone Has Their Reasons, which is probably the, you know, if they're, oh, I just had an interesting idea. If you, if you, if you, you know, Everyone Has Their Reasons is the, is it the Shibboleth, is that the word?
It is the Shibboleth of French cinema. That's what Jean Renoir in Le Règle du Jeu was positing. And it'd be kind of interesting to look at national cinemas from around the world and ask, what's the one statement that sums it up?
Maybe US American cinema would be forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown. Probably not, there's probably something.
Is this a response to what happened with Vichy France and The Resistance? That's my first thought while watching, because the film takes place in the 20s, but it was made after the first version of this film was from the 50s.
So he did a version of the movie.
I'm not sure when it was written though. I'm not sure when the story was written.
Well, he wrote it later. He did a film version in the 50s. The guy that wrote the novels or novels did a film version in the 50s, which that's really close to World War II and The Resistance.
We think about his culpability and the fact that people siding with the Nazis.
And the thought that everyone has their reasons doesn't mean so therefore just let everybody do whatever they want to do. It's more to do with there's not much purpose served by dehumanizing or monsterizing people who do monstrous things.
The understanding and motivation for some things can play an important part in helping us discern what can we do to intervene to stop these things from happening. The flip of that is that everyone is my neighbor.
And if I'm asking myself how to embody in the little way that I might be able to in my lifetime, what it means to love my neighbor, I've got to ask myself who is my neighbor. And the film's answer here is that everyone is my neighbor.
This actually has implications for contemporary politics. I don't know if you picked up on this, Jett, but there's been a debate among some of the kind of religiously inflected MAGA people and progressive Christian theologians.
And JD Vance was at the center. There's JD Vance literally, he either said something in an interview or tweeted something invoking theological, say what?
Like a hierarchy of love. Yeah, a hierarchy of love, which is an appalling. What's the whole point of love is?
Not the point, but the thing about love is that it's not a finite resource. No, it's not. You're not going to say, if I love my daughter, doesn't mean I can't love my son because it's a finite resource.
What the hell, JD Vance?
The challenge then is, how might we love JD Vance and people holding to this view if there is no hierarchy of love? And the first way to do that is to be generous regarding, okay, what's the best possible thing he could have meant by that?
And I think, or the best possible thing that Thomas Aquinas could have meant that, because it's Aquinas theology that was being called upon there. A hierarchy of love is not about who is worthy of love.
It's simply about what is psychologically possible in terms of the amount of me that I can give to other people in that particular way. But it does not mean that some lives are worth less than others.
It does not mean that I should, that it's an excuse for being cruel to other people.
Let's get back to the movie. Let's get back to the movie.
No, this is all connected because the film is partly about this hierarchy. Papé and Oogaloo believe that only their blood, right? Only their blood is worthy of their full attention.
They could have gone into a deal to share the resources and still make a lot of money.
It would have taught the whole valley and everybody would have loved them.
It would have been a great deal.
Ooglaam might actually have been able to marry the woman that he loved because she might have felt like, I like this guy.
I feel like you're throwing Ooglaam.
To be nice to my family.
You're throwing Ooglaam under that dilapidated bus because he is a simple person really just being manipulated by his elder.
He's one of the great tragic figures in cinema.
He has a moment where he is weeping. These are real tears. This is great acting.
He's weeping and he's ashamed. He's embarrassed by his weeping and he says, it's not, it's crying. It's my eyes.
The film, strangely enough, I think like a lot of the greatest tragedies, its ultimate feeling that you're left with is not this thunderous sense of awful.
It's more of a sense of calling forth, well, I want to be a little bit more generous to people. I want to be a little bit more caring to people.
And I want to ask myself, what am I doing on in the minds and the lives of the people I don't like, or who might be kind of, you know, might not be the nicest people to me.
And one thing that sets it apart makes it very unusual is that even there really isn't a villain in this film in the end. You know, there's a character who has set in motion terrible things.
And frankly, I don't, I mean, this maybe is a bit of a spoiler.
People should watch these films.
Let's just say it advocates the possibility of regret once we face the impact of what we've done. And then of course, the point of that is so that we might not do those things in the future. We might actually pause.
Here's the thing.
I would like to actually watch that scene again. This is the end where this person who has done such great evil is trying to atone by giving the farm to somebody that he has wronged.
And I would like to see different translations of that, like I talked about earlier, because in the end, I mean, he says that when he goes up to heaven, which is really interesting, two characters say that.
And like, why do they assume they're going up there? It's really interesting. They say when he goes up there, even though he's a murderer and done these terrible things, that he thinks that his son...
His primary victim...
.
will forgive him. And he doesn't, in the subtitles that I saw, I didn't say, I hope he'll forgive him. He says he thinks he'll forgive him, which says maybe this guy hasn't learned...
I think he will defend me.
Is that what he was on your translation?
So it's, I don't know if he has learned anything at all. He's just making himself feel better by giving the farm away. I don't feel there's been a transfer.
Maybe you're not arguing there's been a transformation there.
Oh, I definitely think there's been a transformation. The guy is faced with the awfulness of it. And it's like, I think there was a...
I can't remember what century, there was a Chinese philosopher, Mozi, I believe, who's one of the many people who said something like, if everybody could imagine the pain of other people as being their own pain, nobody would harm each other.
And sometimes it takes a lifetime to tune into that reality. And I think he is tuning in to that reality.
And of course, the problem with the Ordo Amoris, which is the name given to this misinterpreted hierarchy of love, is that it's a step in the right direction if we expand our notion of family beyond the nuclear family to the extended family.
It's even better if we expand that notion to everybody that we encounter. It doesn't mean that we can give equally or receive equally from every person.
But there's no logical or moral reason to not want to treat or want to treat others as we would want to be treated.
But we also need to have drama. Has there been a film in which a stranger comes to town, a small rural place, and the townspeople are not awful? Has there been and they're not awful?
One of my favorite scenes is when a character does admit, oh yeah, we're awful. We all knew. We didn't do anything.
Something's coming to mind.
Is Pleasantville not like that?
I don't have to see. It's been a long time. I feel like it's got to be a comedy.
It's got to be a comedy where the townspeople, it's not that they're awful, they're wacky.
Everybody's hiding behind a bush.
They're wacky. Listen, you want flowers or friends, right?
I want Emmanuel Bayard and I want Yves Montand and I want Diela Toi to be recognized as being part of one of the most wonderful ensemble casts, wonderfully balanced performances. It's an integrated film.
Other than the fact that you've now ruined it for me by pointing out too many people behind too many bushes.
It's actually, it's extraordinary. And the thing I think it's got, it's like a running joke. And so again, I feel like maybe I'm missing, there's something to do with like French sex forces or something like that.
The film, dear listeners, this film is really, the films, I'll say films, film, whatever, really something in that it also works so well on a visual level, not just because it's beautiful.
I just want to bring this, I just want to reiterate this again, because I don't want to feel like I'm crapping on your love of this movie, because these are really solid motion pictures.
But the fact that you would have, you know, Gerard Depardieu become like this beast of burden, right? So he has a hump and then he, these excruciating scenes of him.
Doing the work of the mule.
Hauling the water as if he is a literal beast of burden is just extraordinary. And the film's relationship with nature, right? They must have shot in different seasons.
As you can tell, there's a whole section. The second film, The Skies, are totally different. We're in a different time of year.
We have the passing of the seasons. This would be a great double quadruple build with John Borman films like Excalibur and Emerald Forest that are also infused and Zardoz that are infused.
Just feeling like the texture of the landscape.
There really is a sense of, but you feel the place here and you feel even the sense of, the farms are a fair distance up the hill and so you could imagine, Pape sometimes he just stays in his farmhouse with his housekeeper who is deaf and she's there
Well, but interesting, he does not have a physical affliction, but he is the nominal villain of the piece, whereas everybody else you have someone who's blind, someone who's deaf, someone who has a hunchback, Oogalan with a terrible teeth.
You might say like they could be certainly in some mythological traditions, those would be the people who have like they have the reason to behave badly.
They've got like the wound that creates the trauma response and actually they're the compassionate people.
All right, we do need to say retroactively that there's spoilers in this episode or perhaps you should go back and delete that point when you give away. The big secret of the film a few minutes ago.
I want to talk about the movie. Folks can go watch. They can go watch the movie.
Well, let's say it at the start.
Let's let's let's let's let's retroactive. Let's go back in time and say there's a major spoiler in this episode.
And last thing I'll say about it, it does have one of the all time great two people sitting on a bench, one person telling the other person everything that they didn't know up to that point that if they had known it would have changed.
Everything seems in all of fiction and I believe in this film. And I'm so grateful to have had 30 35 years of my life. It feels like it's been part of the fabric of thinking.
And I like that whether it's as good as The Godfather isn't really that important. It's no one. If you hold out, what if you got that make me want to live better, make me want to be a better person.
What if the Godfather, Robert Duvall, always found things out because he's hiding behind a couch.
He's got his ear to the key.
Well, every five minutes.
Well, there is that scene where I think it's got to be in part two, where Michael says to Duvall, Tom, if you don't mind, you need to step outside the room, which is also a kind of a compassion thing because he doesn't actually want, I think he
But what if he was outside the door?
Big close up.
With an ear trumpeter, like a yogurt pot on some nylon that's attached underneath the big desk that Michael sits at. Godfather is a pretty great film. Jean de Florette, Manon des Sources, pretty great films.
They look fantastic. I encourage you to see them.
Absolutely. Jean de Florette is this naïve, innocent, enthusiastic character who says, I'll only be truly happy if I return to nature. I'm here to cultivate the authentic.
He's so joyous and you see him getting beaten down. Then he says, there's no God. It's an incredible scene where they don't get rain and there's nobody up there.
There's nobody up there. That theme too is like, is there anybody up there? It's fantastic.
There's a great scene where the drought stricken village, they have no water and the water comes back at just the point in which the villagers are trying to call out for water. And they think, oh, it's a holy miracle.
And other films would end with that, like, look at these villagers think it's a miracle. But instead, as soon as they start to kneel, the mayor comes out and yells, it's just a coincidence. Sure, sure.
Well, the film is not answering questions for you.
And this is a circular argument anyway. I mean, is it is it possible that Manon is actually God's hands and feet in that moment? Who knows?
You know, I want to talk with that last scene for a second where the big secret is revealed, blind woman revealing the secret.
Just in case any of the listeners haven't figured it out yet.
That scene only works if our nominal villain can sell it.
And Yves Montand does a fantastic job. And while that scene is being revealed, I'm just watching him going, we're waiting for him to put it together. Because I don't think the film is subtle.
I think the film is not a twist for us in the audience. It's a twist for this character. So we know in advance what's going to happen.
But I'm just watching him and how does he sell it? What a movie star. This guy is a, he was in the great 50s film, Wages of Fear, huge star in the 60s.
And he sells it beautifully. In the American version, would it be like, you would have Sean Connery maybe. I think that was this film shot by the same guy that did Name the Rose.
I want to say it is, I could be wrong. He did Possession, which is an astonishing motion picture to a cinematographer.
I would have liked to, you know, Rod Steiger, if this film had been made in 1973. Rod Steiger. Rod Steiger in this role.
Anyway, thank you for watching it.
These are good films. And I always feel bad when I find out these are like, you know, foundational texts for your cine going experience.
No work of art, politics, sculpture, music, or reality has ever touched me as much. But other than that.
I feel if things are put on too high a pedestal, you open yourself up for falling. So I'm trying to get a balance between the sacred and the profane. There's nobody up there.
Or is there?
You literally text me, you literally text me and say that you watch Eyes Wide Shut once a month.
I do. Do you want flowers or friends?
Pretty good movie. Pretty good movie.
I've enjoyed talking with you. I feel like watching these films again.
Well, I'll certainly watch them again. I hope you will as well, dear listener. We'd love to hear from you.
How can people contact us?
Or they can email us info at thefilmtalk.org. We're on Facebook. Just type in The Film Talk on Facebook.
Watch these films and tell us what you think. Because there's so much content out there, Gareth. I need a show like The Film Talk to tell me what to watch.
Because I don't have time. Nobody's got time for this.
We'd appreciate it, friends, if you would let other people know about the show, if you like it, feel free to let them know. And as you know, you can support us through patreon.com/thefilmtalk. There are a couple of big movies coming up soon.
We don't usually trail episodes in advance, but I think we're pretty confident that we'll do an episode about a particularly big film involving a particularly big star hanging off the side of a helicopter, or jumping off a train, or climbing up a
The word's not good on this one.
The word is not good.
I know. You know, I've gone back and watched, I watched the first four of them in bits. Did you watch this?
The second one is rough.
Oh, no, I didn't.
I only watched a few minutes of the second one.
It's difficult.
Watched a good bit of the first. I watched all of the third, which is the first film that you and I recorded a podcast episode about. Mission Impossible III for your old podcast.
I remember, for Letter to America, I remember that it being, I haven't seen it for years, we have to rewatch all leading up to this new Mission Impossible.
I remember being like, this is good, slick commercial entertainment, right?
It's very bleak. It's very bleak.
You're up, Seymour Hoffman.
It's very bleak. And on that note, can you play us out? If you could, if you want to play us out with the music from Jean de Florette.
And the Stella Artois campaign.
I've been Jett Loe. We'll keep talking next time.