La Femme du Boulanger

'Lucky people who will be seeing La Femme du Boulanger for the first time', said the New Statesman's William Whitebait when Pagnol's movie was on one of its periodic reissues in l944. One only hopes that today's audiences will feel equally lucky: if they've no objections to seeing something flagrantly unfashionable, but bursting with bucolic vigour and sly satirical wit, they ought to be happy enough. Raimu, a French clown sans pareil, plays a baker in Provence who refuses to bake another loaf until his flighty wife (currently in the arms of a local shepherd) is returned to him. Pagnol's direction has been described as 'elaborately unobtrusive', whatever that means.