Jean De Florette (1986)

Jean De Florette (1986) (DVD) (*)

~~$22.99~~ $16.97

Screened, competed or awarded at:
BAFTA Awards
Ceasar Awards
Golden Globes
Moscow International Film Festival
Other Film Festival Awards

Language Selections:
English ( Subtitles )
French ( Dolby Digital 2.0 )

Product Origin/Format:
United Kingdom ( PAL/Region 2 )

Running Time:
116 min

Aspect Ratio:
Widescreen (2.35:1)

Special Features:
Interactive Menu
Scene Access
Trailer(s)

Movie filmed in 1986 and produced in:
France ( France, Benelux )
Italy ( Italy, Greece )

Directed By:
Claude Berri

Written By:
Claude Berri
Gérard Brach

Actors:
Yves Montand ..... Cesar Soubeyran/'Le Papet'
Gerard Depardieu ..... Jean de Florette (as Gerard Depardieu)
Daniel Auteuil ..... Ugolin
Elisabeth Depardieu ..... Aimee Cadoret
Margarita Lozano ..... Baptistine
Ernestine Mazurowna ..... Manon Cadoret
Armand Meffre ..... Philoxéne
André Dupon ..... Pamphile
Pierre Nougaro ..... Casimir
Jean Maurel ..... Anglade
Roger Souza ..... Ange
Didier Pain ..... Eliacin
Pierre-Jean Rippert ..... Pascal
Marc Betton ..... Martial
Clement Cal ..... Méderic

Synopsis:

City dweller Jean de Florette (Gerard Depardieu - Cyrano De Bergerac, Green Card) moves his family to the Provence countryside in the 1920s to forge a new life as a farmer. But his proud, cocky neighbouring rival Le Papet (Yves Montand - Wages Of Fear, Manon Des Sources) schemes with his simple-minded nephew Ugolin (Daniel Auteuil Queen Margot, Manon Des Sources) to acquire some nearby land ensuring the novice owner never discovers an all important natural spring on the property. Claude Berri's stunning adaptation of the acclaimed Marcel Pagnol novel is the winner of numerous international awards and one of the world's most popular foreign language films.

The plot of Jean de Florette is as melodramatic as any soap opera, but its treatment is just a little askew, just off-center enough for the film to evolve into a moving and powerful pastoral tragedy. The film is a naturalistic story about the dehumanizing effect of greed on a community and on the human soul. Watching the hunchbacked Jean de Florette (Gérard Depardieu) struggle against all odds to keep his small farm alive, maintaining to the bitter end his optimism and naпve faith in his reference books, is like watching Sisyphus make his daily toil up the hill. Only here, it is not the gods who have trapped the victim, but the xenophobia and covetousness of his neighbors. Director Claude Berri shoots the countryside in grand scope, dwarfing the human figures whose daily exertions hardly make a mark on it. As the story moves inexorably to its tragic conclusion, the wicked plotting of the simultaneously likable and vicious father (Yves Montand) and son (Daniel Auteuil) leaves the audience pleading for divine retribution. However, humans created this cruel world in Provence, and they will have to mete out their own justice. The sequel, Manon of the Spring, realizes this desire for revenge with perfectly poetic magnitude. Nominated for nine British Academy Awards (BAFTA) in 1988, Jean de Florette took home three awards.

In a rural French village an old man and his only remaining relative cast their covetous eyes on an adjoining vacant property. They need its spring water for growing their flowers, so are dismayed to hear the man who has inherited it is moving in. They block up the spring and watch as their new neighbour tries to keep his crops watered from wells far afield through the hot summer. Though they see his desperate efforts are breaking his health and his wife and daughter's hearts they think only of getting the water.

This product was added to our catalog on Tuesday 06 April, 2021.

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