Sleeper Films: “Jean de Florette”

I thought it might be interesting this week to bring to the attention of the GITS community favorite movies of ours that might have slipped beneath the radar. They could be indie features, foreign movies, or older films, but while they may not have achieved much in the way of notoriety, something about them clicked with you — memorable characters or scenes, compelling plots or dialogue. What are some of your favorite ‘sleeper’ films?

My recommendation today is the 1986 French film Jean de Florette. Written and directed by Claude Berri (with Gérard Brach from a novel by Marcel Pagnol), the movie stars Yves Montand, Gérard Depardieu, and Daniel Auteuil. Here is the IMDB plot summary:

In a rural French village an old man and his only remaining relative cast their covetous eyes on an adjoining vacant property. They need its spring water for growing their flowers, so are dismayed to hear the man who has inherited it is moving in. They block up the spring and watch as their new neighbour tries to keep his crops watered from wells far afield through the hot summer.

It’s the simplest of plots and the scope of the movie is, at least on the surface, a small one, but in it and the second part Manon of the Spring, we have a tragic story of enormous human drama.

Here is the movie’s trailer:

And a key scene:

Here is an excerpt from Richard Bernstein’s NYT’s review in 1987:

‘’Jean de Florette,’’ it can safely be said, is like no other film you’ve seen in recent years, perhaps not since you last visited your favorite rerun house and saw one of Pagnol’s old masterpieces. Mr. Berri, speaking of the two-part novel by Pagnol, said that it is ‘’on the level of the Greek tragedies.’’ Its main characters toil and scheme, cheat and betray -and are then crushed by a fickle, unavoidable, ironic and tragic fate. But, being Pagnol, the novels, and Mr. Berri’s movies, are Greek tragedies done in southern French style, set amid the pressed-flower landscapes and the dark, cluttered interiors of the parched hill country behind Marseilles, whose truculent, rude, individualistic peasants provided Pagnol with his best material.

Tomorrow I’ll feature the sequel Manon des sources. The two films are truly an exquisite cinematic experience. Absolute must-see movies.

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