French Cinema was launched at Portsmouth High School in January. A series of evenings dedicated to three films based on Provence and the works of Marcel Pagnol were shown at the beginning of the year and were attended by an audience of pupils, parents, old girls and local residents. The evenings proved such a success, that there will be two more evenings of films on 7 and 14 March.

Marcel Pagnol was a twentieth century playwright, film director and author whose books “Jean de Florette” and “Manon des Sources” were made into two of France’s most celebrated films by Claude Berri in 1986.  These were two of the films that were shown, although the event was started with “La Gloire de Mon Père” which recounts the childhood of Pagnol at the turn of last century.  All three films are beautifully shot with excellent music scores and superb performances from some of France’s most reputed actors, including Gerard Depardieu, Emmanuelle Béart, Daniel Auteuil and Yves Montand.  The themes dealt with in the films ranged from the innocence and magic of childhood in “La Gloire de Mon Père” to the malevolence of adults and revenge that it engenders in “Jean de Florette” and its sequel “Manon des Sources”. 

The overriding comment from those who came to our French Cinema evenings was that these films were beautiful to watch and to listen to from the point of view of both the language and the musical scores.  All had English subtitles so that everyone could understand them and people were swept along so much by the dénouement of the films that the fact that they were reading subtitles did nothing to detract from their enjoyment of them.

We hope in the future to show films in Spanish and German and we are currently putting together a series of films from South America to show next term. 

Following the French cinema success, we are showing “La Gloire de Mon Père” again on 7 March at 7.30pm in the Drama Studio and for the first time, its sequel “Le Château de Ma Mère”, also about the childhood of Pagnol.