César

Pagnol himself clambered into the director's chair for the final instalment of his trilogy (taking over from Alexander Korda, who directed Marius, and Marc Allégret who made Fanny), and things move at a slower, more theatrical pace - luckily entirely suited to events, which are full of remembrances of things past and regrets at the passing of time. A new character stands in the spotlight: Césariot, son of Marius and Fanny, who has to learn the awful truth about his parentage. This is the trilogy's least funny, most affecting, part. 'What a pity that there aren't more of them,' an anonymous critic sighed when it was reissued in 1951; today the modest charms and graces of the Pagnol trilogy seem more precious than ever.