César

César, directed by Marcel Pagnol, is a French film, the third and final entry in the Marseille trilogy following Marius and Fanny, about Césariot, who sets out to track down his real father, Marius, twenty years after the death of his mother's husband, Panisse. The trilogy's first two films had been directed by others, Alexander Korda and Marc Allégret; César, however, was written directly as an original screenplay for the screen (Pagnol only adapted it into a stage play a decade later, reversing the usual order), giving Pagnol full control over a production in this series for the first time. Director Jean Renoir once said of Pagnol, "Speech is as vital to him as color was to Michelangelo." The famous Berkeley restaurant Chez Panisse takes its name from a character in this trilogy and displays posters from all three films on its walls. Who it's for: anyone curious about a writer directing the final chapter of a trilogy he had entrusted to others, later adapting it into a stage play in reverse of the usual order. Who it's not for: those wanting to start without seeing the trilogy's first two films, since César is the closing act of a story picking up twenty years later.