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Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Crappy film

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Yesterday night, while I was fueling my body with the refreshing coldness of a glass of water, one simple thought got me back to the film I had just watched: Claude Berri's "Jean de Florette", adapted from the novel by writer, director and Academician Marcel Pagnol. See, I always drink water before going to sleep, but for the first time, I could value it, it even tasted better. Water, and subsequently land, suddenly became the stuff dreams were made on, or nightmares in their absences, or echoing Pagnol' story, their apparent but no less agonizing absences.It seems logical that in a rural setting, water and earth would be the pillars of two-part novel "Water of the Hills" whose first chapter is "Jean de Florette", followed by "Manon of the Spring": but once you're immersed in what seems to be an epic family drama, spanning four generations of deceptions and lies, you realize nature was only an accessory to the film's real theme, which is the relentlessness of human greed and the level of cruelty it can push even the most benevolent persons, in that case, Ugolin (Daniel Auteuil), an ugly farmer whose dream is to grow carnations and his uncle, César aka Le Papet, Yves Montand in one of his last and best roles as the patriarch of the decimated Soubeyran dynasty. César understands the profitability of flowers and for the sake of family whose remaining heir is his dim-witted nephew, he plots an evil scheme in order to buy at a very cheap price the only land that can provide enough water, thanks to an unknown spring of fresh mountain water.A chain of events going as fluidly as seasons and sun leads us to the land being inherited by Jean, the son of Florette, a girl from the country César "knew" in the past. Jean is played by Gérard Depardieu and even a non-French ear would notice that he doesn't have the same singing accent than the people of Provence. But if he doesn't sing, the man is overwhelmed by happiness, believing he's just inherited a parcel of heaven on Earth (and from the beautiful cinematography of Bruno Nuytten, we can hardly disagree). Jean has a devoted wife (Elizabeth Depardieu) and a delicate infant girl named Manon, the characterization from Depardieu leaves no doubt that he's a good father, husband and man, but from an outsider's eye, he's a hunchback, a tax collector and a city slicker. Ugolin makes sure everyone knows his father belongs to the rival village, which deepens the shift of suspicion between Jean and the rest of the town.But Jean is too excited to pay attention, the man knows how to be practical, he wants to make profits out of the land, to raise rabbits and plant a species of cucurbits that grow fast, to feed them. He trusts the existence of a spring of water not far from the hill and the rains of summer to do the job; it's a hazardous mission that could have easily been solved had César told him about the spring. But both Soubeyrans had stopped the spring already by loading it with cement, and not to unveil suspicions, César tells Ugolin to befriend Jean so he never needs any other contacts. "Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer" seems to be the motto of this slow and infuriating scheme, operated by a mastermind who spends his time spying behind the trees, as César, Yves Montand is a peasant-like version of Noah Cross with a water-scheme of equally Machiavellian proportions.But Jean never sees his enemy and when weather stops being cooperative; he keeps going back and forth from the distant spring, fastening heavy barrels of water on his hunch. Villagers suspect something but there's a sort of Sicilian Omerta going in this part of France, Jean doesn't even know he didn't plant his vegetables at the right side of the valley and only discover it when it's too late. It comes down to the vital moment where all it takes to solve his problem is Ugolin's mule but then the nephew puts the final nail in Jean's coffin. Driven by madness and a furor against God who disgraced him enough with the hunch, Jean accidentally dies after trying to dynamite a well. And the film closes with the two men having succeeded in buying out the family and making a mock baptism with the unloaded water from the spring, under the shocked eyes of little Manon.Does she know that they knew from the start about the spring? What matters is that we know and that beyond the death of Jean, what they did was killing his happiness, sacrificing the spirit of a good man on the altar of greed and selfishness. r. This is how fascinating "Jean de Florette" is, it works like John Huston's "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" where a quest for gold says more about greed and paranoia than any study, when universal themes can be summarized through simple and palpable objects. This is what Cinema is about; using visuals to convey messages that can speak for many humans. Pagnol, by using a world that is unique within France itself, rural Provence, with its sepia and green landscape, its Mediterranean countryside, its lyrical accent, colorful population and grasshoppers in the background recreated a universe that could speak a language any foreigner could understand, because there's no need to be a farmer to understand how important water could be, it's not about the water but to which corner its importance can drive someone.Indeed, take the spring in "Jean de Florette", for Jean, it would have been the Holy Graal, for Ugolin and his uncle, a coveted treasure and for Manon, it was the weapon that killed her father, and in all poetic justice, the instrument of her coming vengeance in second opus "Manon of the Spring".

I wonder, or can possibly try to visualize, if Yves Montand literally lept for joy when he got the script for Jean de Florette (and by proxy Gerard Depardeiu and Daniel Auteuil, but more on them in a moment). He was in his 60's by this point, but many of the roles that he was made famous for (Wages of Fear, Z) were years behind him. Here the role of the Monseiur Soubeyran, aka "Le Papet", is one of those major, awesomely commanding roles for an older actor to take on, even as it's not the most complex character of the lot. He basically gets to be conniving and cunning, and yet I think that's not the tough part to play; the hard part, I'd wager, is to make a human being out of someone who lacks empathy, or even basic sympathy. This is where all of the troubles lie for Jean (Depardieu) when he inherits a farm that was left to him by his mother, which in turn was an inheritance from her brother... I should also mention that he was "accidentally" killed as Le Papet was there, and sort of, you know, let it happen.How does he have some human quality to him? What can Montand play? I think the part of the intelligence is one thing, and of course one can see this man as a villain in a similar respect to the great villains who puppet-master their greed - the summary line refers to Daniel Plainview from There Will be Blood, but also Noah Cross from Chinatown (also a movie where water - how it's drained, where it flows to, how it's "plugged" counts more than anything and to where). He has a plan - plug up the water spring that is there on the property so that Jean has to resort to a much father spring, without the help of a mule (which his nephew could give him, but he won't by instruction) - and goes for it, hook line and sinker.Something about these men, who are the sort of very real monsters who ruin lives in everyday life, keep us watching, and with Montand I think it's that he imbues him with some odd, continuous form of dignity, at least from his perspective. He sees who owns what as just formalities - if you want something, you just take it, even if it takes years of plotting (not that a little bad luck, like a lack of rain, can't help along the process). Montand very likely didn't *like* this character, but understands him and certainly knows how to make him come alive and, of all things, make the audience see what he'll plot for his nephew to do next.Jean de Florette is a very rich film in how Claude Berri presents the story and characters since this theme of who cares and who shows what to one another, what it means to be a "good" neighbor (or not) and how everyone just wants to try to get what's theirs, or do from day to day, month to month. Depardeiu gets to play someone who is the opposite of Le Papet - Jean is someone who has grown up in a city, not a farm, but sees the possibilities and hopes (or just knows) that he can overcome things through having knowledge from books. A story like this might be tougher to pull off set in the 21st century just due to how many things have changed (better transportation, better weather prediction, loans), but there's still a resonance to the themes completely because Jean is a dreamer and yet at the same time puts in a lot of hard work - he deserves what he's working hard for. Shouldn't he get it, if not just for himself his wife and daughter? If I had to nitpick the film (it's great but not perfect, if that makes sense) some of the music is a little on-the-nose in some parts, like when Jean is running outside as a storm may (or may not) come to answer his prayers, and I wondered why the townspeople, shown occasionally, have such an immediate animosity to Jean just due to his hunch and being a "city" person. But these are minor, or I can let that go as far as 'it was the time/small towners', in the grand scope of what the film is trying to accomplish. You have a force of good (making one's own place prosper for oneself and family) and a force of not so good (total meddling to do a take-over, which one can see in action in major ways every day with corporations taking over small businesses and so on).But when it comes to Auteil, he has the best character to play, the one with the most conflict. He's not shown as someone very handsome, on the contrary Manon, Jean's daughter, calls him ugly and judges him. Maybe she can sense through some intuition something is fishy about him (and at times the wife doesn't like him either, only Jean is fine with him). Auteil has to play a character who is having to be the "friendly" neighbor, the cordial type, one who can help and give advice and be conversational and hear out Jean's ideas about how to do this or that with his crops and rabbit breeding. But what happens if he gets some empathy, which he has deep down? How does he reconcile it? I loved seeing this actor deal with this character on screen, and it's a shame Auteil missed out on some acting prizes for his work (or rather, I should say, in America).Beautifully shot (it looks like it was made recently with its solid 35mm film stock) and acted to such a high degree, this is a quality drama about success, failure and manipulation of people and land.

A greedy landowner and his backward nephew conspire to block the only water source for an adjoining property in order to bankrupt the owner and force him to sell.Roger Ebert commented on Berri's exploration of human character, "the feeling that the land is so important the human spirit can be sacrificed to it". Is human character in this sense shaped by the land? Of course. Is it always? Maybe not."Jean de Florette" and "Manon des Sources" have been interpreted as part of a wider trend in the 1980s of so-called 'heritage cinema': period pieces and costume dramas that celebrated the history, culture and landscape of France. And good on them for that.

This is a beautifully told tale of a hunchback who moves from the town to the country when he inherits a farm. The cinematography is brilliant and the languid pace of the movie suits this perfectly. The acting is out of the top drawer especially from Yves Montand and Daniel Autiel who are mesmerising as the farmers intent on grabbing Gerard Depardieu's land. Depardieu is also in fine form as the hunchback who although bombastic and stubborn eventually evokes a deal of sympathy. It is hard to fault this film on any level and it absorbs you from the start to the finale. Although you can watch the film on it's own the subsequent Manon Des Sources ( another fine film) concludes the story in full. I have known a fair few people who don't like foreign language films who have watched this and every one has enjoyed it. This is a French classic not to be missed.