saquigley@watdaisy.UUCP (Sophie Quigley) (12/04/83)
My apologies if this reply show up twice. I am not sure really whether it did go or not, so I am posting it again. I was surprised to hear about the movie Fanny played by Leslie Caron. I had never heard of this version. Fanny is the second of a set of three plays written by the french author Marcel Pagnol. It takes place in Marseilles, and the story is as you described. The plays are Marius, Fanny, Cesar in that order. Marcel Pagnol first wrote his plays in the 20's I believe, but I am not sure at all, then later on decided to direct movies of those three plays. He had his own wife playing the role of Fanny in all three plays and some famous french actors (whose names are slipping out of my mind right now) play the roles of Marius, the father of her child and Cesar, his father. The three plays are excellent. They are considered by french people as classics. Marcel Pagnol was a member of the french academy until his death sometime in the seventies and wrote quite a number of plays and books. His best work, along with Marius, Fanny, and Cesar, is a set of his autobiography, which he unfortunately did not manage to complete. They are called "La gloire de mon pere", "Le chateau de ma mere", "Le temp des secrets", and "Le temp des amours". They are wonderful books which will make you laugh and cry at the same time. Comming back to the movie Fanny, I do not know anything about the Leslie Caron version, but Marcel Pagnol's three movies are excellent and are also "classics" that every french person has seen. The first one is the best. It is extremely funny, but some of the humor will be lost on non-french people as it deals with the way french people view each other depending of where they come from in France. I think there are subtitled versions of them, and I do recommend them. You will be pleasantly surprised to hear that the story does have an ending, and this ending is in "Cesar", but I will not say anymore. Go see the movie, or if you can't, check the french section of your local library. I am sorry, I do not know about the english titles of any of the books I have just mentioned as I read them in french.