Love & Lust in March

Winter was finally drawing to an end! Branches with new green leaves and flower spikes of Bengal almond (Terminalia catappa) can be seen at Daan Forest Park in Taipei. Hooray! Spring is approaching! Everything comes to life, cherry blossom, caterpillars, bugs, birds! Very soon, butterflies will burst out of the cocoons and fly among the flowers!

The weekly movie and dinner gathering resumed Saturday, March 2nd. The movie theme of the month is Love and Lust. Eight movies are suggested by Instructor and Movie Critic Mr. Hung Guang-yuan. Fanny was the first in the line. Mr. Hung was thrilled to share with the precious DVD in his collection. With the daring theme, we attracted a full house of people, mainly young women!

Fanny (1961) directed Joshua Logan was adapted from Marseilles Trilogy by Marcel Pagnol, the original six-hour French-language trilogy—Marius (1931), Fanny (1932) and Cesar (1936). Logan's Fanny earned Oscar nominations for best picture, actor (Charles Boyer), cinematography and music in 1961.

The movie is full of positive energy. All characters speak English with French accents. They are sweet to wish the best for others. When Fanny found her pregnancy with Marius the night before he sailed to the sea. Fanny married Panisse, a wealthy merchant who had never been able to have children and was happy to have a "seven-month baby."

How can we blame a young man with a dream, to long for the sea, to see the world? Between an exciting life at sea, and a boring life with the childhood sweetheart he loves, Marius (Horst Buchholz) was torn on the Marseilles waterfront. Likewise, Fanny (Leslie Caron) must choose between keeping the man she loves, and letting him live the life he seems to want in a small and conservative town of Catholic tradition.

I like the movie comment written by John Hartl. Did Fanny do the right thing by helping Marius chase his dream? Knowing how driven he is, was she being selfless or selfish — or a little bit of both? We make so many crucial, life-altering decisions when we're young. Pagnol leaves us with the feeling that there is no "correct" answer to Fanny's dilemma. Marius is so caught up in his romanticized vision of exploring "the isles beneath the winds," yet in the end he finds only "volcanic ash." How could she deny him that discovery?

Fanny 1961 was actually filmed in a harbor town in Rome. It reminded me of  the beautiful beach in Fiumicino when I lived in Rome in June 2013. I ventured to the beach with my landlady. It was a noisy gathering with many Italian families under colorful umbrellas on the white sand. The warm ocean water and the sea breeze made the trip unforgettable!

Talking about Marseilles, I could think of bouillabaisse at first! When I lived in Cannes in June 1995, I ventured to Marseilles several times just for a good bowl of the traditional seafood stew. Then, of course, the Song of Marseilles, the national anthem of France, the French National Convention adopted it as the Republic's anthem in 1795.

PS: It was the first time in my life to see a movie with one third of the translation missing, if not half. There were many lines in "Fanny" lost in translation. On top of that, some lines were mistakenly translated! It reminds me of a lecture equipped with a simultaneous translation. The speaker said one thing, the interpreter said another. It was a total crime, in my opinion, if the interpreter made up the story when he or she missed the gist!