César (1936)
Directed by Marcel Pagnol

Film Review

The final instalment in Marcel Pagnol's famous romantic trilogy provides a fitting conclusion to a remarkable and entertaining series of films.  Raimu gives one of his best screen performances as the film's central character, the café owner César, capable supported by Pagnol's familiar troupe which includes Pierre Fresnay, Orane Demazis and Fernand Charpin.

Ironically, César was the only film in the trilogy to be made on film before being performed on stage (it was also the only one to be directed by Pagnol himself).  This reflected Pagnol's own view that cinema had overtaken the theatre as the primary medium for dramatic art.

Film Synopsis

Twenty years after her first sweetheart Marius abandoned her to seek adventure on the high seas, Fanny is still married to Panisse and her son Césariot remains ignorant as to the identity of his real father.  Now a young man with a bright future ahead of him, Césariot has completed his education and contemplates how he should begin his adult life.  After Panisse's death, Fanny feels obliged to make known to her son that his real father is Marius, a man she has not seen since he parted from her in such unhappy circumstances twenty years ago.  Césariot is surprised to learn that he is the son of a man who is spoken of as a scoundrel and renegade.  To form his own impression of Marius, he travels to Toulon and passes himself of as a journalist with an assumed name.  The Marius that Césariot gets to know is nothing like the selfish cad he had been expecting.  In fact, he soon develops a fondness for the man and cannot understand why he felt he had to leave his mother all those years ago.  With Panisse's passing, Marius feels the time has finally come for him to return to Marseille and try to heal the rift with his father César and former lover Fanny.  It is only when the old enmities and misunderstandings have been laid to rest that Césariot will discover the tragic circumstances that led his mother and father to part before he was born...