''Fanny'' is a

1932 Events January * January 4 – The British authorities in India arrest and intern Mahatma Gandhi and Vallabhbhai Patel. * January 9 – Sakuradamon Incident (1932), Sakuradamon Incident: Korean nationalist Lee Bong-chang fails in his effort ...

French romantic

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. The drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular ...

directed by

Marc Allégret Marc Allégret (22 December 1900 – 3 November 1973) was a French screenwriter, photographer and film director. Biography Born in Basel, Basel-Stadt, Switzerland, he was the elder brother of Yves Allégret. Marc was educated to be a lawyer in ...

and starring

Raimu Jules Auguste Muraire (18 December 1883 – 20 September 1946), whose stage name was Raimu, was a French actor. He is most famous for playing César in the 'Marseilles trilogy' ('' Marius'', '' Fanny'' and '' César''). Life and career Born in T ...

Pierre Fresnay Pierre Fresnay (; 4 April 1897 – 9 January 1975) was a French stage and film actor. Biography Born Pierre Jules Louis Laudenbach, he was encouraged by his uncle, actor Claude Garry, to pursue a career in theater and film. He joined the company ...

, Orane Demazis, Fernand Charpin, and Alida Rouffe. Based on the 1931 play of the same name by

Marcel Pagnol Marcel Paul Pagnol (, also ; ; 28 February 1895 – 18 April 1974) was a French novelist, playwright, and filmmaker. Regarded as an auteur, in 1946, he became the first filmmaker elected to the . Pagnol is generally regarded as one of France's ...

, it is the second part of the Marseille Trilogy, which began with '' Marius'' (1931) and concluded with '' César'' (1936). The film was shot both at the Billancourt Studios in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

and on location in

Marseille Marseille (; ; see #Name, below) is a city in southern France, the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Departments of France, department of Bouches-du-Rhône and of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur Regions of France, region. Situated in the ...

, with sets designed by the

art director Art director is a title for a variety of similar job functions in theater, advertising, marketing, publishing, fashion, live-action and animated film and television, the Internet, and video games. It is the charge of a sole art director to supe ...

Gabriel Scognamillo. Like ''Marius'', ''Fanny'' was a box office success in France and is still considered a classic of French cinema.

Plot

, Marius, the son of barkeeper César, has had a romance with Fanny, his childhood friend and the daughter of the fish saleswoman in the harbor, before following his dream by taking a job on a boat going on a five-year scientific expedition. Shortly after Marius leaves, Fanny discovers she is pregnant with his child, so, to avoid bringing shame on her family, her mother encourages her to reverse her earlier refusal of the marriage proposal of Honoré Panisse, a wealthy middle-aged widower. Fanny talks to Panisse about wishing to marry him and that she is with child, and she is surprised to find that he still wants to marry her, as he is excited by the prospect of finally having the child that he was unable to have with his first wife. César finds out about the pregnancy, but even he is convinced that it will be best for his grandchild to be raised as Panisse's child. The wedding takes place, and Fanny gives birth to a baby boy, named Césariot after César (who is also made the boy's godfather). They say the baby was born prematurely, and, although this does not fool anyone, everyone is willing to act as though they believe it. Several months later, Marius surprises César by showing up at the bar one night—there are issues with the boat he was on, and he has volunteered to bring some scientific instruments back to Paris for retooling while the ship is repaired. Soon suspecting Césariot is his son, Marius goes to try to win back Fanny. He says he is homesick and offers to stay in Marseille, and he has almost succeeded in getting Fanny to leave Panisse when César arrives and convinces the couple that it will be best for Césariot to continue to be raised by Panisse, who is, after all, a kind and generous father. César takes a dejected Marius to catch his train to Paris, leaving Fanny in tears.

Cast

André Gide André Paul Guillaume Gide (; 22 November 1869 – 19 February 1951) was a French writer and author whose writings spanned a wide variety of styles and topics. He was awarded the 1947 Nobel Prize in Literature. Gide's career ranged from his begi ...

and Pierre Prévert make uncredited

cameo appearance A cameo appearance, also called a cameo role and often shortened to just cameo (), is a brief guest appearance of a well-known person or character in a work of the performing arts. These roles are generally small, many of them non-speaking on ...

s in the film.

Cast recordings

An audio

cast recording A cast recording is a recording of a stage Musical theatre, musical that is intended to document the songs as they were performed in the show and experienced by the audience. An original cast recording or OCR, as the name implies, features the ...

of select scenes, with minor rewrites, was made at the studios Pelouze in Paris on 2 and 14 December 1933 for

Columbia Records Columbia Records is an American reco ...

by most of the main cast (Raimu, Fresnay, Demazis, Charpin) and Henri Vilbert; Escartefigue was played by , who had played the role in ''Marius'', and M. Brun was played by , who had stood up for Dullac as Escartefigue in the film. It was later re-issued on

compact disc The compact disc (CD) is a Digital media, digital optical disc data storage format co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. It employs the Compact Disc Digital Audio (CD-DA) standard and was capable of hol ...

. In 1961, Pagnol’s distribution company, the Compagnie méditerranéenne de films, released the film soundtrack on disc, interspersed with narrative comments and descriptions spoken by Pagnol. In complement came a reading of Pagnol's

preface __NOTOC__ A preface () or proem () is an introduction to a book or other literature, literary work written by the work's author. An introductory essay written by a different person is a ''foreword'' and precedes an author's preface. The preface o ...

to the play, which was written for the publication of his complete works and was later collected in the 1981 volume ''Confidences'', and of recollections about the production of the film, which were later published as part of the augmented edition of his 1934 essay . The album was re-issued on CD by Frémeaux & Associés, in their “Librairie sonore” series.

In popular culture

Alice Waters Alice Louise Waters (born April 28, 1944) is an American chef, restaurateur, food writer, and author. In 1971, she opened Chez Panisse, a restaurant in Berkeley, California, famous for its role in creating the farm-to-table movement and for ...

, the famed restaurateur and founder of California cuisine, was so taken by the Marseille Trilogy that she named her Berkeley restaurant " Chez Panisse". The café upstairs from the restaurant is decorated with posters from the films ''Marius'', ''Fanny'', and ''César''. * The main characters of the Marseille Trilogy make a cameo appearance in the

Asterix ''Asterix'' ( or , "Asterix the Gauls, Gaul"; also known as ''Asterix and Obelix'' in some adaptations or ''The Adventures of Asterix'') is a Franco-Belgian comics, French comic album book series, series about a Gaulish village which, thanks ...

comic book '' Asterix and the Banquet''. The

pétanque Pétanque (, ; ; ) is a sport that falls into the category of boules sports (along with Raffa (boules), raffa, bocce, boule lyonnaise, Bowls, lawn bowls, and Crown green bowls, crown green bowling). In these sports, players or teams play thei ...

-playing scene in the comic book is a reference to a similar scene in ''Fanny''.

References

External links

* *
''The Marseille Trilogy: Life Goes to the Movies''
an essay by Michael Atkinson at the

Criterion Collection The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films". A "sister company" of arthouse film distributo ...