(Marseille) Release of renovated films and comics, animated biopic or musical comedy projects, future museum: the festivities for the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Marcel Pagnol begin Thursday, against a backdrop of bickering with political echoes, in Marseille, a city in which he is often identified.
On April 18, 1974, the academician, playwright, writer and filmmaker died in Paris, far from his native Provence, which marked his work. To the point of being often reduced to the “regionalist” label.
On Thursday, a tribute will be paid to him at the Treille cemetery, in the east of Marseille, where he is buried, and a new bust of the author will be inaugurated in Aubagne, his birthplace, bordering the great Mediterranean city.
The same day, a comic strip adaptation (published by Michel Lafon) of a previously unpublished text will be released, Gaby, or beauty and money.
Exhibitions and tributes are planned in Provence, with a conference in Aubagne in October. And the La Rochelle Film Festival and then the Cinémathèque in Paris will offer a retrospective of ten restored films in July, in theaters on July 24. A musical, Manon of the sourcesis also planned.
In 2026, a Pagnol museum is due to open in Allauch, a small town at the foot of Garlaban, one of the massifs dominating Marseille. Young Marcel spent his holidays there, recounted in the famous The glory of my father Or My mother’s castle.
But one site is missing from these celebrations: Marseille, setting of the trilogy Marius, Fanny And Caesarwhich had established the success of the young author at the turn of the 1930s.
“End of quay”
Since last summer, a heated controversy has pitted Nicolas Pagnol, Marcel’s grandson and president of the companies managing the rights to the author’s works, against the left-wing municipality of Marseille.
The latter in fact refused to renew to grandson Pagnol the management contract of the Château de la Buzine, “my mother’s Château”, located in the east of the city, between Aubagne and Allauch.
A “cultural expropriation” coupled with “insults” as the controversy escalated, according to Nicolas Pagnol, who threatened the municipality with legal action. The city finally took over the castle under direct management, to make it a “city of cinema”.
Between Pagnol (the writer) and Marseille, it is an old story of disappointed love, continues his descendant.
“I mourned Marseille a very long time ago, it doesn’t go back to Benoît Payan,” the current various left-wing mayor, he told AFP. “In 50 years, what has Marseille done? There is not a museum, not a house, not a square, not a bust, not a festival that bears his name. Nothing. Oh yes, a piece of quay at the end of the Old Port, but in fact it’s a parking lot. Thank you very much ! »
Radiation
The local right, the majority in the metropolis, the department and the region, took up the cause of the grandson.
The president of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region, Renaud Muselier regularly denounces “a cultural, literary and political scandal”. And the region launched a three-year program of celebrations, which Nicolas Pagnol agreed to sponsor.
Lionel de Cala, the mayor of Allauch, a member of the right-wing departmental majority, hopes for 80,000 to 100,000 visitors per year for his four million euro museum project, “a tool of influence for all of Provence” . The “unfortunate” turmoil around La Buzine “reinforced” his project, he admitted to AFP.
But Nicolas Pagnol rejects any political recovery: “Marcel’s work is a territory. It’s not Aubagne, or Marseille, or Allauch. It’s all of that at once.”
On the Marseille side, “a whole completely free program” of commemorations is also planned, Jean-Marc Coppola, deputy for culture, assures AFP, without further details at this time.
“Pagnol is linked to Marseille through his work,” continues the elected official, who promises to “avoid controversies and quarrels”.