Harvest

A mountain village in Provence has emptied out; the young have gone to the city and what remains are a few old people and Panturle, who lives by poaching. Panturle dreams of putting the village back on its feet, working the land and starting a family. One day a travelling knife-grinder arrives with Arsule, the young woman he keeps with him. Arsule puts up with that life because she has nowhere else to go. Once she meets Panturle she leaves the grinder and stays; the two of them begin sowing the field together. Marcel Pagnol's adaptation of Jean Giono's novel shows rural life without decoration: the whole labour is laid out step by step, from sowing the wheat to the bread coming out of the oven. Seeing Fernandel outside his comic roles, in a part as coarse and uncomfortable as the grinder, is a surprise. Arthur Honegger wrote the music. Of Pagnol's Provence films of the thirties, this is reckoned the hardest and the least sentimental.