Jean Giono Série-Collection : Un siècle d'écrivains

Claude Santelli
1995 - 45 min - Vidéo - Couleur et Noir & Blanc - France

Claude Santelli who had had the privilege of filming Jean Giono about thirty years ago revisits the world of the novelist. His film is not constructed in a strictly chronological order. Through the key events of Giono's life, it tries to enter into an understanding of the personality of the author and into the depth of his works by combining different ways of approaching him : calling up the landscapes of the Provençal hinterland of his youth, filmed documents recreating the historical context (the traumatic experience of the Great War which left a lifelong mark on him), extracts of texts read by Pierre Arditi and of films inspired by his works, souvenirs of those nearer to him. [...]
In this way we get away from the portrait of a regional novelist to get near to the great writer, the heir of Homer and Virgil whose works he read as a child, and to the moralist who considers man in all his aspects, his capacity for happiness as well as his tragic one for doing evil. Monique Laroze.