2: The Baker’s Wife (a.k.a. La Femme Du Boulanger – Original French title)

            Marcel Pagnol’s The Baker’s Wife (1938) is yet another title that screams out for the Criterion treatment, and, indeed, upon watching it I was shocked that it had not already been christened into that other great canon of titles.  My only speculation about the holdup of such a release: the audio on the version of the film that was sent to me through a private link is hampered by a significant motor hum, which I presume may be near impossible to remove.  No matter, Criterion should give it their all, as The Baker’s wife is a gem.  My only fear in recommending this film is that I didn’t have the benefit of subtitles to pick up on the details of the comic exchanges.  I don’t speak ten words of French, and I didn’t need to in order to appreciate the humor.  The timing and the rhythm were there, and any comedian will tell you that that’s 80% of any good joke.  A criterion print transfer with subtitles would be the oh-so-justified icing on the cake. 

            The reason this film flies so high is the performance of Raimu in the role of the cuckolded baker, Aimable Castanier.  The humor and humanity he conveys is miraculous from the movie’s opening.  The middle-aged man has moved with his young wife (Ginette Leclerc) to a provincial village in southern France to open his bakery.  He produces magnificent loaves of bread, but he’s no sooner finished his first run out of the oven then his wife is struck smitten with a handsome local shepherd.  She leaves in the night after the young man serenades her by moonlight.  Awakened the next morning by the excess smoking of the ovens, Aimable finds her bed stuffed with pillows. 

After a frantic search of the village, it becomes clear to where, and to whom, the wife has gone.  Incensed but still composed, Aimable is, at first, tempted to explain her absence and carry on, not knowing that the villagers have already begun to mock him behind his back.  Their laughter turns soon though to desperation, when after a sermon from the pulpit on the virtues of marriage – which is clearly aimed squarely at the baker – drives him to drink and to swear off lighting the ovens again until his wife returns.

Hunger begins to drive the villagers toward the cause of the cuckold, and even old squabbles between the village’s opposing moral and political factions are set aside to assuage the desperation and aid in the return of the wayward wife.  Arguments are had about the best plan of action, enemies forge friendships in support of the cause, and Aimable is driven slowly mad by the thoughts of his lost love in the arms of another man.

The ease with which Raimu seems able to move in and out of anger and despair, into blind rage and then energetic reason is the true magic of this film.  The actor, large in stature and personality, is kept small in the confines of the screen by DP Georges Benoit, and this ironic approach brings to his performance both profundity and basic decency.  He is not unaware of the power of love to make us do crazy things, but he is dismayed at the audacity of love to perform its cruel tricks on him.  Part Chaplin, part Oliver Hardy, and with a touch of his contemporary Michael Simon, Raimu creates here a character that feels somehow both ubiquitous and unique; comfortable and yet constantly surprising.

Simon is of course remembered so well for his work with Jean Renoir, and retrospect has placed that director’s work among the greatest films being made anywhere in the world during the 1930s.  While Renoir’s masterpieces The Grand Illusion (1937) and The Rules of the Game (1939) aren’t likely to be usurped in their placement as some of the finest movies ever made, I believe that this comic work by Pagnol far exceeds Renoir’s Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932), and that Raimu’s work here has a leg up on the Simon performance in that film.  A Criterion double feature of the two pictures would likely convey that point better than any words that I could commit to type, but it appears we will have to wait for such a an opportunity.

Language: French (NST)

Runtime: 133 Minutes

Grade: 3.5 Hats Off