Fanny: Warner Bros. Pictures, June 28, 1961

New York Times, July 7, 1961

Screen: 'Fanny' Captures Charm of .Marseilles Folic!

By BOSLEY CROWTHER

We can all breathe more easily this morning—more easily and joyously, too—because Joshua Logan has turned the stage show, "Fanny," into a delightful and heart-warming film.

The task of taking the raw material of Marcel Pagnol's original trio of French films about people of the waterfront in Marseilles and putting them again on the screen, after their passage through the Broadway musical idiom, was a delicate and perilous one, indeed. More than the fans of Pagnol's old films and of their heroic star, the great Raimu, were looking askance at the project. The fans of the musical were, too.

But now the task is completed and the uncertainty resolved with the opening of the English-dialogue picture at the Music Hall yesterday. Whether fan of the Pagnol films or stage show, whether partial to music or no, you can't help but derive joy from this picture if you have a sense of humor and a heart.

For Mr. Logan, with the aid of expert craftsmen and a cast of principals that we do not believe an act of divine cooperation could have greatly improved upon, has given the charming Marseilles folk play a stunning pictorial sweep, a deliciously atmospheric flavor and a flesh-touching intimacy. And, embraced by these graphic, sensuous virtues are the rich human, comic elements that flowed out of Pagnol's little pictures and glimmered upon the Broadway stage.

Oh, don't begin to think Charles Boyer as the waterfront bar proprietor even tries to duplicate the Provence rumblings of the massive Raimu in the role, any more than he tries to sing the numbers that Ezio Pinza sang on the stage. (Nobody sings in this picture; the melodious Harold Rome score of the musical "Fanny" is effectively used as background music in the appropriate places, and that is all.)

Neither does droll Maurice Chevalier even slightly imitate Charpin, the fine French actor who played the round sailmaker in the Pagnol films, or Walter Slezak, who played him Germanically on the Broadway stage.

That is a beauty of this picture. It is a fresh and sparkling correlation of a group of superbly portrayed people who are individuals in themselves. Mr. Boyer is a raffish, cunning Cesar, but he is also a bit subdued in the face of the jovial, dominating Panisse of Mr. Chevalier. At the same time, Mr. Boyer is full of tenderness and quiet sympathy as the father of the wanderlusting Marius who loves and leaves Fanny to go to sea, and Mr. Chevalier is wonderfully gentle when it comes to wooing and marrying the pregnant girl.

Together these two magnificent actors develop a lovely, subtle sense of the unity of two old codgers in their understanding of the miracle of love, the vagaries of passion and the satisfaction of being parent to a son.

As the girl, Fanny, Leslie Caron is lithe and luminous, expressive of all the inner yearnings and inborn patience of a gentle, sensitive girl. Her performance of the little dockside maiden who becomes a mother fast is by far the fullest and most emotional of any that we have seen. Horst Buchholz is bluntly boyish and intense as the troubled Marius, and Georgette Anys is hugely maternal and amusing as Fanny's fishmongering mama.

Baccaloni as the portly ferry captain, Raymond Bussieres as the mooncalf Admiral and Lionel Jeffries as a prissy cafe patron do well in their character roles.

To be sure, there are flaws in the compound. The cutting is often too abrupt, some scenes are confused by intercutting, and the tempo in the early phases is much too fast. Also, occasionally the actors are costumed too prettily, and the domestic magnificence of the Panisses in the last part is tasteless and absurd. Indeed, the bourgeois removal from their native waterfront and their priggish son, played by Joel Flateau, are two very bad distractions in the film.

But the right mood is ultimately recovered with the tear-pulling death of Panisse and, on the whole, the appropriate atmosphere of Marseilles is literally and colorfully conveyed—in excellent color, by the way.

Perhaps there will be some prim objection to the lush emotionalism of it all and to the frankness of the musical nudging, but we loved it. We loved it all—except for that big house in the suburbs. It made us feel sad and full of joy.

Fanny: Warner Bros. Pictures, June 28, 1961