Marius – Fanny – César

“You should write a Marseille play set on the Vieux Port.” This suggestion from Pierre Blanchard, a friend of Pagnol’s and a jazz performer, gave rise to Marius, the first part of the Marius-Fanny-César trilogy. Marcel Pagnol, then living in exile in Paris, was struggling with the writing of Topaze, at the time still titled La Belle et la Bête. He temporarily set the play aside to recreate, day after day, in his Paris apartment, the Provençal countryside. In Marius, the playwright created a Marseille truer than life, thanks to its southern speech. He gave his characters a natural, spontaneous tone, punctuated with Marseille expressions. Marcel Pagnol “noted down what was said on the quays, at the market, on the tram, everywhere, and that is how [he] made Marius.” Through his vivid characters and irony, Pagnol also gave the play real substance: “A perfect balance of sententious gravity and good humor is no doubt one of the well-kept secrets of this work, which was to travel the world” (Claude Beylie). Before traveling the world, however, Marius was turned down by the directors of the Théâtre de Paris, who were wary of staging a play “with an accent.” But the success of Topaze finally persuaded Simone and Léon Volterra to accept it. The premiere took place on 9 March 1929, and it was an immense success.

The work was later immortalized on screen in 1931 (1932 and 1936 for the other two), which allowed the play to find its most accomplished form. Pagnol, “the man of theater within French cinema,” who had worked with many directors of his time, achieved his goal: that cinema become “canned theater,” as he put it. The “Marseille trilogy” was directed by Alexander Korda and Marcel Pagnol, with Raimu, Pierre Fresnay and Orane Demazis in the three title roles.