The Baker's Wife

Many years ago, I sought out The Baker’s Wife, a comedy from 1938 by Marcel Pagnol, because I read that Orson Welles at one time named it his favorite film. I rented a rather worn VHS copy, and I remember enjoying it and being pleasantly surprised that Welles would love a movie so different in temperament from his own work. It was simple, theatrical in structure, no razzmatazz. Well, I’d long forgotten most of what I’d seen. But upon watching it again recently, I realized it’s a remarkably enjoyable film, and much better presented in Criterion’s lovely restoration.

A baker, played by Raimu (I love this old French tradition of single name movie stars) moves to a little village and opens an establishment, replacing a previous bakery considered unsatisfactory by local residents. He has a young pretty wife (Ginette Leclerc) who draws a lot of attention. She appears to be at least twenty years younger than her husband, perhaps more. On the first day of the new business, Aurélie (the wife) sees a handsome local shepherd whom she instantly falls for. That night, she runs away with him.

The unusual idea here is that when the baker wakes up to find her gone, he refuses to believe that she has left him. Eventually it becomes clear that he loves her so much that he can’t bear to even think bad things about her. Evidence accumulates from all the nosy neighbors about what has really happened, but he finds ever more ingenious (and funny) reasons not to believe. In many ways he’s a fool, but his loyalty to Aurélie is unshakeable. He is a cuckold who can’t and won’t see his cuckolded condition.

This central situation is simple enough, but the treatment becomes increasingly elaborate. Pagnol takes a sharp view of the villagers, who indulge in gossip and voice negative judgments of the wife. The local priest is a conceited and repellent phony sucking up to the aristocratic town landlord despite the Marquis keeping four young women on his estate that he pretends are his nieces. The villagers are exhorted to help the new baker by searching the countryside for his wife, but some of them just get drunk and they all fail to be of help. One old man is incapable of conveying information without adding a multitude of irrelevant details, and it’s hilarious.

Above all, there is Raimu, a beloved actor at the top of his game. Love, satire, despair, drunkenness, poetic utterance: he does it all. I was continually surprised at how far Pagnol was willing to go in his depiction of human ignorance, delusion, and selfishness disguised as dignity. A key recognition, which may have seemed radical at the time, is that the young wife had not experienced passion with the old baker, so he, unlike everyone else, doesn’t judge her as immoral.

The Baker’s Wife is Pagnol’s best film, and the criticisms that it’s not “cinematic” enough are silly. The picture is so well written and acted that the director’s simple style seems like the only way the movie could have reasonably been made.

And by the way, Orson Welles had good taste.