Lost for 83 years, the rarest film of this legend of French cinema has finally been found!

Director of Schpountz, Manon des Sources, La Femme du boulanger and of course the famous Marseille trilogy, Marcel Pagnol is among the first legends of the talking cinema in France. The man we know more easily today as the author did indeed play a role in the development of the industry on French soil.

The creator of his own film studios (which he had the ambition to turn into a real “Provençal Hollywood”), Paniol therefore made many feature films.

• This line will soon be 100 years old, but it still works just as well to shut anyone up.

However, one of them never got a chance to hit theaters because it simply disappeared… 83 years ago.

It is about that FlorenceThe first part of the trilogy, which Marcel Pagnol called “Prayer to the Stars” and whose script was particularly inspired by his passionate love story with his then companion, Josette Dame, who was also to play the main role.

The film followed the tumultuous relationship and stormy romance between a young film actor and a music composer.

“It was his most ambitious project”– Nicolas Paniol confided in the columns good morning About grandfather Marcel. He wanted to make three films, a new trilogy after Marius, Fanny and Cesar, this was his most personal project.

Unfortunately, during the occupation, Paniol was approached by a German company that wanted to appropriate his new film. Then he would rather get rid of it than hand it over to the enemy:

“We never saw it because I had to destroy a large part of it because the Germans wanted to take the film from me and distribute it.He said about it In the documentary The Treasures of Marcel Pagnol, which will be broadcast on France 5.

So I smashed it with an ax in front of the bailiff to tell him it was true and I didn’t finish the movie. I told myself that I would finish after the war. J I have finished. The first movie, but it was supposed to be three, and then it all went away.”

Nevertheless, hoping to resume filming Star Prayer after the war, Paniol eventually abandoned the project after the death of lead actor Fernand Sharpen (in 1944) and when his relationship with Josette Day ended.

Discover a rare excerpt from “La Prière aux Etoiles”:

But against all odds, as recently announced Article from Nice-MatinA copy of this film that everyone thought was lost forever has been found.

Indeed, last December, a man named Valesien Bono-Gallucci, a Corsican art history student, asked to look into the CNC archives and was surprised to find 8 complete reels (or about 80 minutes of film) of La Prière aux yeux (Prayer to the Stars ) in very good condition.

Amazed by the discovery of the young researcher, Nicolas Pagnoli, who today manages his grandfather’s rich inheritance, is already working on a way to make this unique treasure available to the public. So it’s a safe bet that in the near future we’ll be able to go to the cinema to discover Marcel Pagnoli’s last lost work.

(Re)discover the ‘Marius’ trailer…