Pros: An epic tragedy, great performances, beautiful Manon, great cinematography, fine score and plot twists
Cons: Viewer must have tolerance for subtitles
The Bottom Line: Highly Recommended. This pair of fine French films is just about as good as cinema gets!
NOTE: This review contains NO spoilers for the plot twists!
metalluk's Full Review: Jean de Florette/Manon of the Spring
Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.
The relationship between Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring is very much like the relationship between foreplay and climax. You can have either one without the other, but the enjoyment will be less than in combination. The first by itself leaves one with a frustrating lack of fulfillment while the other alone entails too little build-up. The emotion at issue for this pair of films, however, is “revenge” rather than sexual gratification.
Now, I’m a big fan of emotions – especially in movies. An Epinion reviewer of another film recently wrote that “war is best left to the movies” and I’m one hundred percent in agreement with that observation! I have to say, on the other hand, that revenge is not one of my favorite emotions. I can’t say that I can respect a person who takes satisfaction, for example, in a criminal being put to death. If there are times when it has to be done (and I say if), my view is that it’s something that should be done soberly and only because it has to be done, not with any sense of gratification. But that’s just me. I will add, however, that there is a variation on the notion of “revenge” that I find more acceptable to my palate – the kind called “poetic justice.” Poetic justice typically occurs without human intent. It is the kind of comeuppance that occurs in the natural course of events or, if you like, masterminded by fate.
The film Manon of the Spring, otherwise known as Manon des Sources, is effectively the second half of the film Jean de Florette. Both were directed by Claude Berri and were produced as one project, though Manon was released six months after Jean. Talk about delayed gratification! This method of releasing the films was something of a box office experiment, and it proved successful. The first of the films, Jean de Florette focused on wrong-doing while the later film provided the poetic justice.
To digress for just a moment, it is interesting to compare this pair of films to other series of films that have been produced, especially focusing on the issue of the degree of relatedness vs. independence. Some film series, such as the recent Lord of the Rings sequence are fully integrated and continuous – in the manner of a mini-series (though LOTR hardly qualifies as “mini” in any respect). The entire set of films is required to create a whole experience. At the other end of the spectrum are series like the James Bond films, where each film stands on its own and leaves the viewer with a sense of completeness when it has concluded. There is a small exception in the Bonds series for the group of films beginning with Thunderball and ending with Diamonds Are Forever (with a brief reprise in For Your Eyes Only) where Bond requires four plus films to dispose of a particularly stubborn nemesis. The Bond series is a series in the same kind of sense as, say, the Nancy Drew mysteries in literature. Likewise the Indiana Jones films or the modern Batman movies. Then, there’s a third kind of “series” -- all too common in film these days – created usually by gratuitous afterthought: the sequel (or prequel) phenomenon. In this kind of series, the original film in usually one that can stand on its own as a complete experience, but the sequels and prequels, if they work at all, depend on the viewer having seen the forerunners. The relationship between Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources is closest to the integrated mini-series concept, but more for the first film than the second. Watching only the first film will inevitably leave the viewer feeling less than fully satisfied, despite its cinematic quality, because it ends with evil in the ascendant position. By contrast, Manon is fully comprehensible and provides a reasonably complete experience without previous viewing of Jean de Florette, but the poetic justice that bursts forth at the end is less fully appreciated without the buildup of indignation provided by the first film. Like I said – foreplay and climax!
For some reason that I can’t fully fathom, reviewers seem intent on rating Manon of the Spring in comparison to Jean de Florette. To me, that seems somewhat like rating one chapter of a book against another. Or, the three installments of The Lord of the Rings against one another. Each section of the story has different business to accomplish! The beginning is the beginning; the middle is the middle; and the end is the end! Duh! Both halves of this film sequence share outstanding performances by Daniel Auteuil as Ugolin (he won the French equivalent of an Oscar for it) and Yves Montand (a leading man type in his younger days) as Cesar Soubeyran. Both films are as close to perfect in cinematography (gorgeous rural French landscapes), direction (this project is considered Claude Berri’s masterpiece), and musical score (based largely and appropriately on Verdi’s Forza del Destino) as one could reasonably require. The two films differ mainly in two respects: the place in the overall story (the crime vs. the revenge) and the presence of Jean vs. Manon. Jean, played marvelously by the incomparable Gerard Depardieu, is the central figure in the first film, but dies near its end. Manon, a child and a minor character in the first film, becomes the focal figure in the second film. In Manon of the Spring, the lead character is played by Emmanuelle Béart, a woman with the kind of beauty that makes men’s knees buckle (among other physiological effects). One review that I came across, written in 1987, pans Béart’s acting talent, “Her obvious beauty is in inverse proportion to her acting. . . . Béart was destined for hair conditioner ads.” Now that’s a bit harsh! No one in their right mind would set Béart’s talent level against that of Depardieu, but, then again, Depardieu’s character, Jean, is a hunchback and not too many male viewers, at least, are going to rank Depardieu’s physical appeal in this film very favorably against Béart’s untamed beauty – especially after watching a scene where she splashes around in a grotto pool au naturel. For the record, Béart’s career proved a good deal better than merely hair conditioner ads. She starred opposite Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible in 1996 and had other nineties gigs in Un Coeur en Hiver and Time Regained. Béart is gorgeous to look at and I have no compunction about asserting that she sometimes acts as effectively with her expressive eyes as others do with their voices.
I have to forego, in this review, talking too much about plot elements because one of the strengths of Manon is some exceptionally clever plot twists in the end. Part of the poetic justice! The story was based on a book by a highly regarded French novelist, Marcel Pagnol. In brief, in the first film, Cesar Soubeyran (Yves Montand) is an aging wealthy landowner in a small rural town. He is proud of his ancestry and is dismayed that he has not fathered children. His nearest relative is a nephew named Ugolin (Daniel Auteuil), who is somewhat slow minded, gnomish in facial appearance, and slovenly. Soubeyran takes Ugolin under his wing in the hopes of directing him toward success so that he can take a wife and continue the Soubeyran lineage. Ugolin’s dream is to grow carnations. Soubeyran, skeptical at first, is won over by what the florist is willing to pay for them. The problem, however, is that carnations require a lot more water than Soubeyran’s well can generate. There is a spring located on the neighboring property but the owner refuses to sell. In a scuffle, Soubeyran “accidentally” kills the neighbor. He and Ugolin now expect to be able to purchase the adjoining property cheaply. To further that end, they plug up the spring and cover it over. Without the spring as a water source, the land will be un-farmable. Soubeyran and Ugolin are thwarted by the arrival of the inheritor, Jean (Gerard Depardieu), and his family, and their plans to live on the land and raise rabbits. It’s a risky plan, dependent of water supply. When the inevitable dry spell comes, Jean and his family struggle heroically to haul water from the nearest source, but the extremity of the effort culminates in Jean’s death. All the time, Ugolin, while feigning friendship with Jean, has kept silent about the spring. The rest of the villagers, who view Jean as an outsider, are complicit to the extent of also keeping silent. The first film ends with young Manon getting just a hint of what has transpired when she sees Soubeyran and Ugolin digging up the hidden spring.
The second film, Manon then takes up where the first left off, except ten years later. Manon, now a shepherdess, has grown from little girl into ravishing beauty. One day Ugolin spots her bathing naked in a pool and is utterly love struck. Barely able to speak of it, he gingerly reveals his desire, in a remarkable scene, to Soubeyran, from behind a door so that he will not have to look his uncle in the eye. To his surprise, Soubeyran encourages him, still intent on extending the family line. Manon is quite naturally disgusted by the ugly Ugolin and has fixed her eye, instead, on a new arrival, the scholarly Bernard Olivier (Hippolyte Girandot). Manon’s dislike of Ugolin is transformed into utter hatred when she accidentally learns about his sealing and hiding the spring. She now knows that he and Soubeyran were instrumental in her father’s death, along with the rest of the villagers in lesser degree. The rest of the film follows her revenge, beginning with her discovery of the source of the town’s water supply and sealing it off. Water is the life blood of this rural community and the instrument of both the wrongdoing in Jean de Florette and the revenge in Manon of the Spring. In the end, however, the poetic justice that befalls Ugolin and Soubeyran proves more telling than Manon’s efforts at revenge.
What most distinguishes this pair of films from the soap opera that they might otherwise have devolved into is the complexity of the characters – both the good guys and the bad guys. It is a complexity that resonates all the way through, from the script, through the directing, and in three remarkable performances. Ugolin (Auteuil) commits a heinous injustice against Jean, but not without some compunctions and soul-searching. Cesar Soubeyran (Montand) is greedy, self-centered, and inhumane in most respects, but his ultimate motivation is continuation of his blood line, which is something that viewers can at least respect. Jean (Depardieu) is irrepressible and good-hearted, but sometimes naïve and obsessive. The grayness of these characters is what raises this story from soap opera to epic tragedy.
This extraordinary pair of films received much recognition from both the French and the British awards agencies, including Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Score, Best Cinematography, and Best Sound! The production cost for the pair was $17 million, a record for French films at the time. This is a highly rewarding viewing experience for most film-lovers that can be conveniently spread over two nights. You could hardly do better!
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