Marcel Pagnol

Playwright-turned-screenwriter Marcel Pagnol (1895-1974) was raised in Marseilles, the son of a schoolteacher and a seamstress. An early practitioner of sound cinema, he founded his own production company in 1933, and became one of the few French directors of the period to control virtually every aspect of film production. Perhaps best known for his "Fanny" trilogy (Marius, Fanny, and César), Pagnol's films are marked by their naturalistic style and authentic regional settings. He directed many screen adaptations of his own work, including César (1936), Harvest (1937), The Baker's Wife (1938), The Well-Digger's Daughter (1940) and Manon of the Spring (1952), and was the first filmmaker to be elected to the Académie Française.