The city of Marseille will recover the management of the Château de la Buzine, the supposed “Castle of my mother” by Marcel Pagnol, until now piloted by his grandson Nicolas, who cries out for “cultural expropriation”.
It all starts in mid-June with this title from Figaro : “The town hall of Marseille fires us“ : Pagnol fired from “My mother’s castle”. This castle, in an eclectic style, is located on the heights of Marseille, a stone’s throw from the hills that Marcel Pagnol traveled as a child. When he bought it in 1941 to build his new studios there, he saw the famous castle that his mother was afraid to cross.
Occupied by the Germans during the war, sold to a promoter in the early 1970s, it then fell into disuse before the town hall bought it in 1995 to make it a House of Mediterranean Cinematography. For the past five years, an association chaired on a voluntary basis by Nicolas Pagnol has managed it. But Printemps Marseille, a left-wing and environmentalist union that took over the city in June 2020, had actually decided to entrust the public service delegation to another structure, the Center de Culture Ouvrière (CCO), in particular because it was cheaper.
Right and far right headwind
The outcry is immediate and a petition (“Return Marcel Pagnol to La Buzine“) was launched. To date, it has recorded more than 60,000 signatures, including that of actor Philippe Caubère, who played the father of Marcel Pagnol in The glory of my father And My Mother’s Castle. Heirs of Raimu and Fernandel have publicly supported him: “If we agree to kick Pagnol out of La Buzine, we might as well blow up Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde to turn it into a tea room!“, For example, Franck Fernandel got carried away in Nice-Matin.
And quickly, the subject turned into a political controversy, against a backdrop of the defense of Provençal culture by the right and the extreme right. President of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region, Renaud Muselier, on Twitter, says to himself “scandalized by the treatment reserved for Nicolas Pagnol“.”It’s Pagnol’s soul that’s on the line“, engages the LR president of the Aix-Marseille-Provence metropolis Martine Vassal.
Marion Maréchal, executive vice-president of Reconquête!, the party of Eric Zemmour, tweets: “When heritage is not abandoned, it is requisitioned by the left to carry out “social” projectsimplying even the possible installation of “a migrant center“.
“It’s not the Wild West Marseille”
“Our fight must be politically neutral“, reframes Nicolas Pagnol, specifying: “The castle will not be transformed into a reception center or a social center but into a popular education center through cinema“. For the town hall, it was mandatory to put the public service delegation in competition. “It’s not the Wild West Marseille“, retorts the mayor Benoît Payan in front of journalists. Finally, the town hall decided to recover the management of the place in municipal management. Friday, the City Council will be called to vote for the end of the delegation of public service in mid-September. Then , at the start of the school year, he will have to record the recovery in municipal management.
Officially this decision is not due to the outcry but to “a micro-subject of publication on a specialized journal that has not been respected“and could have broken the procedure, assured the assistant to Finance Joël Canicave to the press. The twenty employees will be automatically taken over and the place will remain devoted to popular cinema, with a focus on information on cinema professions. “Nicolas Pagnol was offered to be honorary president of the castle, which he refused“, he added.
Cultural institutions singled out
This controversy will in any case not help to restore the image of Marseilles cultural institutions, regularly singled out. Friday, the City Council will also be informed of a report from the regional chamber of accounts damning for the municipal opera, “equipment that goes down the drain” recognized Joël Canicave. After 25 years of Gaudin management, “we recovered this file like many others in a deleterious state“, noted the deputy, stressing that his majority had other priorities to manage, in particular the state of the schools. In 2022, the municipal museums had already been pinned by the Regional Chamber of Accounts.