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(out of 5)
Marcel Pagnol’s touching stories, previously filmed as a trilogy in France in the 1930s, were transformed into a hit Broadway musical in the fifties. When the production reached the big screen, all the songs had been excised and left as background music, but the story itself was still just as delightful as ever before. Leslie Caron is wonderful as the title character, a seaside fish-seller in Marseilles who loves idealistic Horst Buchholz but loses him to his lust for adventure on the high seas. Trouble comes when she finds out that she is carrying his child after he has set sail, leaving her no choice but to marry a local merchant (Maurice Chevalier) whom she does not love in order to uphold the respectability of her father (a spirited Charles Boyer). Her lover returns and things get messy, but the candy-coloured photography is beautiful, the romance is sweet, and though there are no songs it strangely feels like a musical all the same.
Warner Bros., Mansfield Productions
USA, 1961
Directed by Joshua Logan
Screenplay by Julius J. Epstein, based on the play by S.N. Behrman, Joshua Logan, from the Marseilles trilogy by Marcel Pagnol
Cinematography by Jack Cardiff
Produced by Joshua Logan
Music by Harold Rome
Production Design by Rino Mondellini
Costume Design by Anne-Marie Marchand
Film Editing by William Reynolds
