<DIV><P>Though long ignored or dismissed by film critics and scholars, Marcel Pagnol (1895-1974) was among the most influential auteurs of his era. This comprehensive overview of Pagnol's career, the first ever published in English, highlights his unique place in French cinema as a self-sufficient writer-producer-director and his contribution to the long-term evolution of filmmaking in a broader European context. In addition to reassessing the converted playwright's controversial prioritization of speech over image, the book juxtaposes Pagnol's sunny rural melodramas with the dark, urban variety of poetic realism practiced by influential peers such as Jean Renoir and Marcel Carné.</DIV>