Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring are so tightly connected that they could be considered two chapters of the same film. Jean de Florette portrays the Soubeyran’s cruel treatment of Jean, an idealistic middle class man who has resettled his family on a farm he has inherited in Provence, France. The treatment eventually leads to Jean’s death, after which Cesar and his nephew, Ugolin Soubeyran are able to cheaply buy his property from his widow. Manon of the Spring takes place some ten or twelve years later.
Manon of the Spring is a tragedy in the truest understanding of the genre. It unfolds with a relentlessness usually witnessed in plots by Shakespeare or Sophocles. This tragedy, however, is set in a deeply Catholic culture. As Cesar’s tragedy becomes the catalyst for his return to faith, the film turns the the tragic genre upside down, reflecting Christian belief in the supremacy of hope and life over despair and death.
To bring out the ways in which Manon of the Spring fits into the tragic genre, it is helpful to view it in light of Aristotle’s Poetics, which gives a precise account of characteristics of tragedy. Now clearly the film is not a Greek tragedy simply speaking. It is a movie, not a play, and it lacks the characteristic chorus of the ancient tragedies as well as their elevated poetic language. These differences notwithstanding, however, the story fits solidly into the genre by way of what Aristotle himself considers the most important considerations: plot and character.
Aristotle calls plot the “life and soul” of tragedy (1). It is the single most important element of tragedy. A tragedy deficient in all other respects yet possessing a good plot is much to be preferred to one excelling in all other respects yet lacking in plot.
There are several elements of a tragic plot. Peripeteia (reversal of intention) occurs when a character produces an effect opposite to that which he intended and anagnorisis (scene of recognition) “is a change from ignorance to knowledge producing love or hate between persons.” (2) The best plots, according to Aristotle, are complex ones incorporating peripeteia and anagnorisis within a chain of cause and effect leading ultimately to the catastrophe (change of fortune).
These elements are all readily recognized in Manon of the Spring. Cesar’s deepest desire is the continuation of the Soubeyran family name, who have been an important and wealthy family in the region for generations. He believes that Jean’s death and subsequent purchase of the farm from Jean’s widow will enable his nephew Ugolin to finally settle down, get married and have children (reversal of intention). It is years after the fact that Cesar learns that Jean was actually his own son (scene of recognition). In fact, Aristotle even explicitly mentions the killing of a family member while ignorant of the relationship only to find out after the fact as a good tragic plot (3).
The second most important element of tragedy is character. Tragedies should deal with important or noble people. The Soubeyran family, as the oldest and wealthiest in the region, certainly fits that criteria.
However, as to the character’s fall, Aristotle says that it’s best if this is done not through some fault or vice, but rather through ignorance. A character who unknowingly brings misfortune upon himself is more tragic than one who receives deserved punishment. Here the film introduces a new element to Aristotle’s understanding of tragedy, for Cesar is clearly responsible to some extent his own misfortune. It is true that Cesar was not directly responsible for Jean’s death. Cesar’s objective involved pushing Jean off his land (bad enough), but not actually killing him (much worse). It was Jean’s own foolishness which directly resulted in his death. Running into a half-finished well sill completely obscured by dust and smoke just seconds after detonating dynamite is not a brilliant maneuver. Still, Jean was only digging the well because Cesar and Ugolin had stopped up the spring and refused to rent him their mule. Taking advantage of Jean’s grieving widow by underpaying her for the farm only adds to his guilt. The final scene of Jean de Florette shows a young Manon watching Cesar and Ugolin unplug the well and the injustice of the situation is palpable.
It is this moral strain through which the movie reinterprets the tragic genre from how it was understood by Aristotle. For him, tragedy was not a moral tale. Indeed, as stated above, tragedies deal with good characters who come to misfortune through no fault of their own, but only through ignorance. The feelings aroused by classic tragedy are pity, for undeserved misfortune, and fear, that some similar misfortune may strike at anyone (4).
The feelings aroused by Cesar’s suffering in Manon of the Spring are perhaps slightly more complex. As Delphi relates to Cesar the content of a letter written by Florette to Cesar many years ago, in which she told him of her pregnancy, which letter was lost and never read by Cesar, the full depth of his tragedy is revealed. There is no doubt that on a certain level his misfortune is just punishment for his treatment of Jean. But on another level, Cesar is certainly not culpable for the lost letter. In a significant sense he is ignorant of the ramifications of his actions, both in the distant past at having assumed Florette to be unfaithful to him, and in the recent past regarding the episode with Jean.
Cesar’s ignorance resulting from the lost letter provides ample ground for the traditionally cathartic emotion of pity. We pity him more for the lost opportunity to marry Florette and for the sudden realization that his life was needlessly empty and lonely. Our compassion for his other level of suffering, having driven his son and heir of the Soubeyran fortune to death, is tinged with a sense of justice. And it is this recognition that his suffering was to a large degree brought upon himself through his own misdeeds which gives the other cathartic emotion of fear new meaning. More than fearing an inscrutable fate, we fear the consequences of our own misdeeds. Within its Catholic context, then, the film portrays the tragedy of sin and its consequences through the generations.
If the tragic genre has, to this point, been reinterpreted as a moral story, Cesar’s return to faith at the close of the film reinterprets it yet again in light of Christian belief. Aristotle says that the last critical plot element of tragedy is a scene of suffering. Oedipus, for example, gouges out his eyes upon learning of his fate. Here, we see Cesar suffering to such an extent he knows he will die. This scene of suffering, however, is also a scene of redemption. In these final scenes, the film portrays the Christian belief that in suffering is found hope. As Christ claimed victory at the very moment of what appeared to be utter defeat, rising from the dead, so has Cesar found comfort and redemption at the moment of his greatest suffering.
In reinterpreting the genre of tragedy, this film becomes a statement about human suffering and tragedy in general. In light of faith, tragedy is not as tragic as it first appears. The ancient Greeks had no Christian concept of a paradisaical afterlife. For them, the hereafter was a bleak and dismal existence. A ruined life, therefore, snuffed out all hope for happiness. From a Christian perspective, however, there is nothing in this life which cannot find redemption in the next. Far from the dreadful finality feared by the ancient Greeks, suffering and tragedy represent not a terrible end, but, for the faithful Christian, an opportunity for grace.
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A note on the notes:
Aristotle’s writings are generally referenced by Bekker numbers – provided here in parentheses. The numbers correspond to Prussian Academy of Sciences edition of Aristotle’s complete works. They indicate the page (first group of digits), column (a or b), and line number (last group of digits) of the reference in question.
1. Poetics, chapter 6 (1450a39).
2. Poetics, chapter 11 (1465a22-32)
3. Poetics, chapter 14 (1454a2-5)
4. Poetics, chapter 9, (1465a1-6)
