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While he has just sign the lively opening of Joker 2the French director Sylvain Chomet is preparing his new, highly anticipated film, Marcel and Mr. Pagnol.
This summer, First had met the creator of Belleville Triplets so that he can present his new work with an innovative concept to us:
“The child Marcel goes back in time to meet the adult Pagnol, who became a renowned filmmaker and one of the major literary figures of the 20th century, he teased. Marcel Pagnol's films are outside of time and beyond borders, a bit like Charlie Chaplin's films. He originally hated cinema! He couldn't stand the idea of being silent. He therefore became a great playwright, and it was when he wrote Marius that he discovered talking cinema.”
“Without Pagnol, there would have been no Audiard and the New Wave, he also confided to us. He brought something very special to the world of cinema. I think that The Marseille Trilogy has a real connection with authenticity. The Provençal characteristics of his work represent a color. But behind it, the form is universal!”
Wild Bunch has just revealed the first photos from the film, which will be released precisely October 15, 2025 in the cinema, and we find there the very particular style of this artist who has been nominated several times for the Oscars and the Césars for The Old Lady and the Pigeons, Les Triplettes de Belleville And The Illusionistanother animated biopic, this time by Jacques Tati.
While waiting for its trailer, the studio also delivers its official synopsis: At the height of his glory, Marcel Pagnol receives an order from an editor-in-chief of a major women's magazine to write a literary serial, in which he will be able to tell about his childhood, his Provence, his first loves…
While writing the first pages, the child he once was, little Marcel, suddenly appears to him. Thus, his memories resurface throughout his words: the arrival of talking cinema, the first major film studio, his attachment to the actors, the experience of writing. The greatest storyteller of all time then becomes the hero of his own story.
Asked this week about the progress of his film, Sylvain Chomet told us:
“We have just finished the animation. The colors are already there, the music too. We will soon record the voices because, unlike Tati's world, Pagnol speaks all the time! The scenario is directly inspired by several autobiographical works by Pagnol including Cinematurgy of Paris around his dual career as a writer and filmmaker. Here I tell the story of the little 10-year-old Pagnol in short pants who gallops through the scrubland and meets his 62-year-old alter-ego just as he is about to begin writing his novels about his youth and his loves. .
What few people know is that Pagnol was first an English teacher. He went on to write plays to become one of the greatest playwrights of the era. In 1927, he discovered talking cinema and decided to abandon theater to become a director. My film therefore tells the story of these different transitions from one art to another. I want us to find Pagnol's music, the banter… I want it to be joyful… I hope it will give kids the desire to create, to write…”
To find out more about this ambitious project, find below our interview with its producers, Aton Soumache (president and founder of On kids & family) and Ashargin Poiré (What The Prod), met at the 2021 Annecy festival.
Annecy 2021 – Marcel and Monsieur Pagnol: “The life of Pagnol is a history of cinema”