JEAN DE FLORETTE is the first of two parts of the classic Marcel Pagnol story set in southeast France in the mid 1920s. In a small Provenal village, where water is scarce and the earth dry, only one piece of property possesses an underground spring to irrigate the soil--and the wily, greedy Csar (Yves Montand) will do anything to get hold of it. His dreams seem on the verge of coming true when the owner dies unexpectedly. But then Jean Cadoret (Gerard Depardieu), an outsider who inherits the farm, arrives with the intention of settling down and cultivating the land with his good-hearted wife, Aimee (played by Depardieu's real wife, Elisabeth Depardieu), and his young daughter, Manon (Ernestine Mazurowna). Jean, a hunchback and sensitive dreamer, glories in his new life while Csar and his nephew Ugolin (Daniel Auteuil) secretly decide to stop up the spring so his plans will fail. The good-hearted Jean, too naive to imagine that anyone would sabotage him, struggles fruitlessly to make his garden bloom. His continual failure erodes his spirit, setting the stage for a tragedy with consequences for all. Director Claude Berri focuses a well-trained eye on the heart-stopping scenery of the rural Provenal landscape in this beautifully filmed tragedy, establishing a farmer's reverence for his land and native soil.
