One of my all time favorites.

A Major Disappointment

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

This is a movie with a very warm and pleasant atmosphere. It has a childish innocence over it, like basically all these typical genre movies from the '30's seem to have.It's atmosphere, story and characters make this a very pleasant and entertaining movie to watch. It has a very simple concept, in which a French baker's wife run of with a shepherd, after the first night they moved in to a small village, in the middle of the countryside. After this the baker refuses to make bread anymore. The villagers of course want their daily fresh bread so they together come up with a plan to get her back to the bakery. It all sounds very simple but thanks to its fine storytelling from director Marcel Pagnol it all works out real well. There also is of course more to the story, courtesy of some fine input from the movie its characters and actors portraying them.It's a well cast movie, with French character actor Raimu in the main lead. The other cast members all have some very characteristic look over them, the way only the French can look. I'm not too happy about the casting of Ginette Leclerc though. She is supposed to be a very pretty woman in the movie but just look at the way Leclerc look...she is no natural beauty. Or perhaps her looks just were the idea of a true beauty, in the France of the 1930's.It takes a while for the movie to pick up its pace and the movie also tends to drag on a bit in its middle part but in the many parts that the movie finds its right pace, the movie is a great one. It's a real enjoyable comedy, that is not the type of comedy that has some hilarious moments that will make you laugh out loud in it but it's more the type of comedy that tries to constantly entertain. It doesn't fail at that, thanks to the movie its very pleasant atmosphere, simplistic story and likable characters. Especially the movie its last halve, in which the villagers start to undertake action, is just great.A fun and warm little movie.8/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

Along with Marius, La Femme du boulanger is at the top of the list of Pagnol's films, which is to say that it is among the best films ever made. (This is not just my opinion; evidently Orson Welles said the same thing.) It is a "typical" Pagnol film, in that the plot is rudimentary at best. All the interest is the characters and their dialogue. And, despite very good performances by several of the supporting characters, this film achieves greatness because of the dialogue Pagnol gave Aimable (the baker) and the way Raimu delivers it. A mixture of the most moving pathos and the funniest comedy, the Baker is one of the great characters in film. (Trust me, the chapter in Giono's novel that served as the ostensible "inspiration" for this story is negligible. The genius is all Pagnol's.) The scene that every Frenchman knows is the last one, when Aimable takes out his anger at his wife's infidelity on their cat, Pomponette, but that is an atypical moment in this movie. It is all about Aimable's suffering, at the hands of his wife but also as a result of the way the town treats him. And Raimu conveys that suffering as only the greatest actors have: with understatement.Marius is funnier and has greater variety of character. But La Femme du boulanger shows what a great director and screenwriter can do with great actors. Movies get no better than this.

This one comes with a rep that almost dares you NOT to like it for none other than the Great Orson Welles declared it the greatest movie ever made and star Raimu the greatest actor. Welles is no slouch himself and many there are, including myself, who consider his own Citizen Kane to be in the all-time No #1 spot but, let's face it, old Awesome knows a thing or two when it comes to judging celluloid. This is, of course, a Marcel Pagnol production which presupposes several things; it will be set in the South of France barely a Long Shot from Marseille and it's twelve to seven to feature Raimu heading an ensemble cast of Pagnol regulars. So it is here with Raimu as the eponymous baker who has barely sold his first batch than his wife takes it on the Jesse Owens with the local stud. The smiles, if not outright belly laughs, on the faces of the villagers freeze pretty damn quick once they realize that no wife equals no bread which means that they set about locating and returning the wife. End of (very simple) story. But as someone once said it's the way you tell them and Pagnol has Scherezade beat seven ways from the middle; once again as in his celebrated trilogy (Marius, Fanny, Cesar, in case you just got here via a wormhole) he evokes an entire community with just a few strokes of the pen or, in this case, lens, so that what we have is a lovingly painted portrait of a small town not a million miles from the one Jack Ford devised for The Quiet Man and complete with a richly assorted set of residents. The closing scene where the errant wife ignites the fire in the oven may be a tad symbolic but when it occurs in such a warm film who cares.

My favourite of all the Pagnol films, including the recent ones, due to the timeless, moving performance by the great Raimu as the lovelorn baker. The French stars of that period have never been surpassed as character actors, and for this film the writer was a great character author.