Les Lettres de Mon Moulin

Alphonse Daudet leaves Paris for Provence, where he moves into a windmill and sets about recycling the local scene for his short stories. There follow adaptations of three of these. Two are whimsical tales about lovable priests, the other tells how Daudet helped out an obstreperous miller. A lot of this is so rambling it hardly seems to have been directed at all, but occasionally the affection and humanity of Pagnol's early work shines through. The version released on video omits the prologue but adds Le Curé de Cucugnan, another Daudet adaptation which Pagnol directed for TV in 1967. The original was released in the US (shorn to 132 min) with subtitles by Preston Sturges.