Word: pagnol
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...DAYS WERE Too SHORT (335 pp.) -Marcel Pagnol-Doubleday...
...happy childhood. Still, there must be some adults who were happy kids, and occasionally a writer is bold enough to stand and be counted. English Poet Laurie Lee made no bones about the joy of his poverty-stricken youth in The Edge of Day (TIME, March 28). Now Marcel Pagnol, a French Academician and man of film and theater (Fanny, The Baker's Wife), writes with uninhibited pleasure of a Provence boyhood. By his account, it was so lacking in bitterness that, to Freudian critics, it will seem downright square...
...Pagnol may seem to suffer a bit from total recall, but the simple charm of his story is ingratiating enough to suspend disbelief. Chiefly, Pagnol recalls his vacations in the Provence countryside with a mother and father who loved him and a brother and sister who seemed never to arouse his resentment or cruelty. Their rundown, rented "villa" stood on a hillside in wild country that was a hunter's paradise. With his father, who had an antique shotgun, Marcel and a local Huck Finn type bagged enough birds to feed a battalion. They roamed the dramatic forests like...
...Baker's Wife can be summed up in four words: a Marcel Pagnol production. It has the usual kindly, middle-aged fat man and the usual beautiful young thing who strays from the straight and narrow; after alarums and excursions, the fat man forgives the young thing, and all is well again. Romantic love and romantic pride sustain another defeat at the hands of the gentler virtues...
This time the fat man is a baker, and once again he is played by Raimu. He is the perfect Pagnol hero, being the arch-type of the French provincial middle-class, and a fine comedian as well. Without Raimu, The Baker's Wife would be bad beyond any telling...