Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Cinema & the Arts
The artistic pace in this pocket of southern France has always been fast and furious, fuelled
by a constant flux of new arrivals who brought with them new ideas, traditions and pre-
cious know-how. Such creative energies have in turn found expression in a variety of medi-
ums and often become international references.
Cinema
Provence and cinema have had a thing going on for more than a century: one of the world's
first motion pictures, by the Lumière brothers, premiered in La Ciotat (between Marseille
and Toulon) in September 1895. The series of two-minute reels, entitled
L'Arrivée d'un
Train en Gare de La Ciotat (The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station)
, made the audien-
ce leap out of their seats as the steam train rocketed forward.
Films Starring
Provence
»
To Catch a Thief
(1956)
»
Et Dieu Créa la Femme
(1956)
»
Le Gendarme de St-Tropez
(1964)
»
Taxi
(1998)
»
A Good Year
(2006)
Early Days
French film flourished in the 1920s, Nice being catapulted to stardom by Hollywood direct-
or Rex Ingram, who bought the city's Victorine film studios in 1925 and transformed them
overnight into the hub of European film-making. A big name in the 1930s and '40s was
Aubagne-born writer and film-maker Marcel Pagnol, whose career kicked off in 1931 with
Marius
, the first part of his Fanny trilogy, portraying pre-war Marseille. Pagnol's work was
famous for his endearing depiction of Provençal people and he remains a local icon.
