Marcel Pagnol, budding film-maker" guided tour

From the moment I set foot on the Domaine de la Font de Mai, I knew that this walk would be different from any other. Here, every stone, every path seems to tell a story. Our guide invites us to walk “in the footsteps of Marcel”, that child of Aubagne who became a giant of the cinema. Under the morning mist, the hills gently awaken – and with them, memories of an eternal Provence.

La Font de Mai… “Font” for “spring“, “Mai” for “abundance” in Provençal. A name that already sounds like a promise. Once an agricultural estate until the end of the First World War, the site was then abandoned before being reborn today as the gateway to Pagnol’s hills.

Further up the hill, we stop off at an old threshing floor – a Provençal calade, once used to separate the grain from the straw. Our guide tells us about the writer’s family: Joseph, his father, a teacher at the Lakanal school in Aubagne, then at the Chartreux monastery in Marseille, and his mother Augustine, whose frail health led them to seek the “pure air” of the hills. It was here, at La Bastide Neuve, that the tender, mischievous world of La Gloire de mon père and Le Château de ma mère was born.

We follow small paths lined with thyme and rosemary. The guide punctuates the walk with anecdotes and dialogues from books.
“Adults lie just as well as children,” he smiles, recalling the episode at Parc Borély, where little Marcel discovers that his Uncle Jules is not really the owner.
Provence rustles with these simple, sincere stories, both funny and moving.

The wind blows gently, and the view opens out onto an imposing panorama: on one side Aubagne and the pink roofs of its old town, on the other Marseille and the Mediterranean in the distance. We can also see that the area has been developing and industrialising for decades, by the extent of the buildings that have sprung up in the valley. The guide jokes, pointing to the quarry at La Bédoule: “The people of Aubagne are digging to get a view of the sea, and that’s no easy task!

We then stop for around twenty minutes on a promontory, facing Tête Rouge, Tête Ronde and Taoumé. These three emblematic peaks, along with Garlaban and the Bars of St Esprit, form the natural backdrop to Pagnol’s stories. The guide transforms himself into a storyteller: he “plays” several iconic passages for us, with the tone and gestures of theatre. Under the autumn skies of Provence, the words come to life. It’s easy to imagine Marcel and his friend Lili running through the hills, taking refuge in the Grosibou cave on a stormy day, or Joseph and Uncle Jules enjoying their famous hunting parties. Everything seems so close, almost real, as if the characters had simply crossed the next hill.