Jean De Florette / Manon of the Spring (Double Feature)

Highly recommend!Love Pagnol, love the music. Superb actors.

I'm so glad to have found this double-item available. The two movies need to be seen together, back-to-back. I didn't think I'd find it, but there it was. Obscure French language film. Favorites from long ago. Watching it once a year takes me away. Highly recommended.

I'm editing my review. In my case, I'm an obsessive fan of these movies, and maybe nothing would've met my expectations. If you haven't seen these films, buy this DVD IMMEDIATELY! You will not be sorry, and more than likely you'll find my criticisms baseless and nit-picky.I wrote the original after skipping around the discs and being extremely disappointed by what I saw. Since then, I've sat down and watched both movies on this disc and my opinion has changed somewhat. The problem was my expectations, not the actual product.On the whole, these films DO look fantastic when compared to every other DVD release available (MGM and the R2 Pathe discs from France). However, they don't look nearly as good as I believe possible. I think this film deserves the royal treatment, an all new, high definition transfer by seriously skilled people.Unfortunately, while the resolution is good, it is anamorphic, and appears to be a straight NTSC transfer (and not a PAL-to-NTSC conversion as I previously thought), there is just something not right. The colors are way too hot when compared to the actual film, and there just seems to be a layer of fuzz or blur over the whole thing that is not present on the big screen.I give it 5 stars because the films are fantastic. The two greatest foreign films I've ever seen. I've watched them each about 15 times, and never grow tired of them. I pretty much learned French watching these movies.However, this DVD seriously lacks. This movie is in dire need of a new and improved subtitle translation. While the subtitles make sense on the whole, I've studied the French script, and there is a great deal missing in the translation.There are no special features.For YEARS, these films have been out of print in America, the originals going for upwards of $50 a piece on ebay. Clearly someone was paying attention and realized there's enough people who enjoy this movie to make it available again. But slapping this set together, while allowing new viewers the opportunity to see the films, is an insult to fans who've waited a LOOOONG time for a proper American release. But a cheap release is better than none at all.Caveat: Perhaps if enough people buy this DVD, MGM will wake up and release a proper special edition. For $14, it's a great deal for two masterpieces, but we could've done better than this.

This is a great 2 part French movie with English subtitles, that shows the simple village life and a great story. In part 1 ,a family moves to a remote farm from the city to try a different life, but soon find out that farming is very hard with little water and a drought. This part ends sadly when the young girl's father loses his life trying to find a spring with explosives . She later finds some neighbors, who knew the spring's location, digging it up after her father's death. In part 2, It's hard to believe a spring, which is the only source of water for the village, could make a big impact, when it's stopped by a beautiful blond French woman, getting revenge against her neighbors , who had kept the secret. . The drama begins when a man stalks this beautiful woman, trying to get the courage to ask her for marriage. But the woman remembers him from part 1 of the series, and how he and his uncle , who knew the location of the spring, dug it up. There's no love at all, and she hates this man for that very reason. The man commits suicide when she refuses him. The uncle finds out that the beautiful woman is his grand daughter, and when he dies , leaves his farm to her after feeling much guilt about he way he had treated his relatives. A great movie, and great French acting. Highly recommended !!

This film is a wonderful story of greed, fate and survival set in Provence, France. The film, Jean de Florette and the sequel, Manon of the Spring will be sure to captivate you from beginning to end.The films have such a stellar French cast: Yves Montand, Gerard Depardieu, Daniel Auteuil and Emmanuelle Beart.The first film is the story of Jean Cadoret (Gerard Depardieu) who inherits a farm in Provence from his mother. He is, however, unaware that his neighbor, Cesar Doubeyran (Yves Montand) covets his farm for his godson (Daniel Auteuil) and plots to steal it from him no matter the cost.Manon of the Spring picks up the story 10 years later with Jean Cadoret's daughter (Emmanuelle Beart) realizing that Cesar was directly responsible for her father's death and then plots her revenge.This film is not just for lovers of French films. The film is in French but does have subtitles in English and Spanish. Well worth the price for any film buff!