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May 02, 2008
"Regain" : puzzling. (5/5)
Above all, « Regain » is a puzzling film, because Giono, more than Pagnol, was a puzzling man, easy to mis- or over-interpret and probably a greater novelist than thinker.
Giono’s family had come to Manosque from Italian Piémont. His father was an anarchist. Giono fought during WW1 -Pagnol was exempted for « weak health »-. He returned a pacifist and disgusted with the world, not unlike Garis in « Les enfants du marais ».
When the bank in which he worked went bankrupt, he devoted his full time to writing.
Like « Les enfants du marais », « Regain » is full of nostalgia for an older world ; hard to watch it today without thinking it is an ecological manifesto, but Giono’s Nature is not all sweetness : it is beautiful, but you must fight with it for your life.
According to Giono, it is worth it, as evidenced by the final sequence, a Marcel Pagnol-made striking and potent moment of cinema : a field in the sun, Arsule and Panturle spread the seeds for the next harvest ; over their heads, a family climbs its way up to the village, pushing the carts of their few belongings, like Western pioneers. Arthur Honneger’s music underscores the epic solemnity of the scene.
Arsule suddenly feels dizzy, Panturle runs to her : she is pregnant. Everywhere, it is « le regain ».
This is moving and disturbing. We are in 1937. It looks like, three years later, the scene could have served as a propaganda clip for Pétain’s newly established regime : under the « Travail, famille, patrie » motto, « Etat français » pushed for a return to traditional values and the land, which founded them all.
It would have been unfair : the family climbing to the village is the railway employee’s : he returns to his roots to be again his own master and not an employee. This is a move of personal independence, away from society, the decision of a maverick, if not an anarchist -the film has shown the character believes strongly in his paterfamilias powers-.
Similarly, we could believe we watch the final scene of a Soviet film paying homage to Sovkhozes elite workers who claim new lands for agricultural development.
This could also be the start of a kibboutz. Or Mao’s favourite film during the Cultural Revolution when so many Party members were sent to rice fields for political reprogramming. Or the inspiration, watched in a Quartier Latin art house theatre during his Paris student years, for Pol-Pot’s mad plan that would take Cambodians away from corrupting cities to the « killing fields ».
Giono’s audience was far from as large as Pagnol’s, but many of his readers saw the writer like a kind of guru. Some came to visit him, each year, for what became known as « les rencontres de Contadour ».
Giono might easily have become some sort of sect leader, had he not been first a true loner, even if not adverse -who is ?- to a few shows of public admiration.
A pacifist, Giono lived through WW2 without taking sides. As the war ended and the « who was not with me was against me » logic prevailed, he was temporarily prohibited from publishing, but never officially accused of any wrongdoing.
In 1960, he experimented with cinema directly rather than by proxy. Like Pagnol for « Regain », he chose Fernandel to top the bill of « Crésus ». There would be no other Jean Giono film : maybe he only wished to reassure himself that trusting the screen adaptation of his books to Pagnol had been the right choice.
Giono also followed Pagnol’s cinema footsteps to Cannes : he presided over the jury of the 1961 festival, six years after Pagnol. In 1966, they would even be together in the Festival jury, as mere members, under Sophia Loren’s presidency : had the Festival such a hard time filling its jury positions that it was forced to recycle, over and over, the same obliging celebrities ?
Giono’s and Pagnol’s relationship had returned to normal, i.e. as friendly as envy and admiration permitted : when Pagnol offered to have him elected to Académie Française, Giono chose Académie Goncourt instead.
Having chosen not to become an « Immortal », Giono died earlier, in 1970, while his Immortality privilege allowed Pagnol four more years on earth, but a price was attached to it : he died in Paris.
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