Jean de Florette

The other day Miss B. handed me my copy of Zagat's Movie Guide and as I flipped through it, I saw the review of "Jean de Florette". The review mentions that it's not to be missed with it's companion piece "Manon of the Spring". Since 1986 (when these two films were released) never having seen the actual French title of "Manon of the Spring" I thought it was about a woman named Manon and the season, "Spring". Little did I realize it is actually "Manon des Sources" aka Manon of the [natural water] spring. But, I digress. I read the review and then oddly enough both of these flicks were on HDNet movies the other night. Of course I realized this at about 2am (while the Husband was mysteriously downstairs snacking) and I ended up watching the end of Jean de Florette and the begining of Manon of the Spring until about 3:19am when I finally had to go to sleep. The title character in Jean de Florette is played by (as about 65% of all French films are) Gerard Depardieu. In this flick he's a hunchback "born loser" (as one of the other characters describes him) who ends up dying at the end of the first film when a rock from an explosion hits him in the head. Not a winning description, but it was a well done movie and I'd certainly be interested in seeing it from the beginning and seeing the rest of Manon of the Spring. Of course, neither appears to be coming back on to HDNet anytime soon, but you never know. When I do come across it again, though, it will be quite a time investment-- kind of like when I watched all 3 hours of Camille Claudel (also a Depardieu flick) in subtitles.