Parky at the Pictures (DVD 12/3/2015)

Some time in the 1920s, César (Daniel Auteuil) runs a bar in the Old Port of Marseilles. Among his regulars are ferryman Frisepoulet (Jean-Louis Barcelona), Albert Brun (Nicolas Vaude) and chauffeur Félix Escartefigue (Daniel Russo). However, while his son Marius (Raphaël Personnaz) helps out from time to time, he has a wanderlust that beckons him out to sea. The only reason to remain is Fanny (Victoire Bélézy), who works on the shellfish stall owned by her mother Honorine (Marie-Anne Chazel). However, the local sail-maker, Honoré Panisse (Jean-Paul Darrousin), has been paying court to the 20 year-old, even though he is over twice her age.

Deciding not to reveal his passion, Marius seeks a passage on a ship in the harbour. However, Fanny rejects Panisse and tearfully informs Honorine that she is hopelessly in love with a man who will never reciprocate her feelings. Determined to help her daughter, Honorine consults César, who readily agrees to help her matchmake the pair. But fate has already brought them together, as the sailor Marius had been engaged to replace declares himself fit for the voyage and Marius and Fanny become inseparable.

But temptation is never far away and seaman Piquoiseau (Rufus) introduces Marius to the mate of the Malaysia (Charlie Nelson) and he offers him a berth on a long voyage. Marius declines, as he knows his departure would break Fanny's heart. They spend the night together and Honorine is so surprised to find them in bed that she complains to César about his son's morals. Aware that Honorine's sister, Claudine (Ariane Ascaride), resorted to prostitution after her honour was compromised, César urges Marius to make an honest woman of her.

However, Fanny knows that Marius will never remain on land for long and she tells the mate that he will be aboard the Malaysia the following morning. Moreover, she pays a visit to Panisse and promises to marry him as soon as Marius has sailed. Thus, when Marius insists that he wishes to wed, Fanny tells him that she is already engaged and she helps him slip out of the café and down to the waterfront. When she sees the ship leave the harbour, however, she passes out and César realises what has happened when he calls up to Marius and receives no reply.

The story continues several months later in Fanny, as Honorine and Claudine come to César's bar with the news that Fanny is pregnant. The women are keen for her to tell Panisse the truth about the situation and hope that he will agree to provide for the child and raise it as his own. But César is keen for Fanny to avoid hasty decisions, as he knows Marius adores her.

Needs must, however, and Panisse sets a date for the wedding. He soon proves to be a caring husband and father and César watches the family interact when they visit Panisse's chandler's shop. Thus, when Marius returns from his voyage and declares that he intends winning Fanny back and claiming the child as his own, César opposes him and explains that Panisse will be able to provide them with the security that he could never hope to offer. Sufficiently chastened, Marius takes the first ship out of Marseilles and peace is restored to the waterfront...at least, for now.

Sadly, there seems to be no indication if or when Auteuil will complete the triptych with his remake of César (1936), which Pagnol directed himself after much clamour from audiences wanting to know the final fate of the characters played with such charm and authenticity by Raimu (César), Charpin (Panisse), Pierre Fresnay (Marius) and Orane Demazis (Fanny). According to the gossip when the first episodes were released in 2013, work would begin in a matter of months. But the project is simply listed as `announced' on release schedules and there is no guarantee that Auteuil's trilogy will ever be finished. This is a shame, as, while the remake seems pretty redundant, there is no doubting the care and affection that Auteuil has lavished upon it. The reviews have been lukewarm at best, but this exercise will have served its purpose if it coaxes a new generation into seeking out the monochrome originals, as well as Pagnol's other pictures (too few of which are available on disc in this country).

Although many of the cast (with the notable exception of Auteuil) have been criticised for failing to nail the Marseillaise accent, those unfamiliar with French regional inflection will enjoy the performances and the craftsmanship involved in Christian Marti's production design, Jean-François Robin's photography. Pierre-Yves Gayraud's costumes and Alexandre Desplat's score. Auteuil might have resisted the temptation to end the first film with Charles Trenet's signature tune, `La Mer', but its inclusion reinforces the sense that every i and t have been dotted and crossed in order to appeal to the widest possible audience. Perhaps the biggest disappointment is that Auteuil has stuck so closely to Pagnol's scenarios that he has left no room for retroperspectival interpretation and, consequently, has introduced an element of nostalgia to what would have originally been contentious developments, like a man accepting another's son as his own. So, apart from paying sincere tribute, its hard to see what Auteuil was hoping to achieve with such a faithful rendition that calcifies rather than celebrates the source material and the society that inspired it.

Luca Zingaretti is known to audiences across the world for playing Salvo Montalbano, the Sicilian inspector created by Andrea Camilleri whose cases have been shown on television in Italy since 1999. However, as the five films in The Luca Zingaretti Collection demonstrate, he is also a versatile actor who specialises in playing historical characters. He heads back to 1925 in Alberto Sironi's fact-based thriller, Calling Inspector Marotta (2000), where a serial killer of young girls is on the loose in Mussolini's Rome, and follows the married Zingaretti's undercover bid to prevent a robbery at the Vatican while falling for troubled gang member Meret Becker.

Moving forward 18 years, he plays an artillery sergeant billeted on a Greek island in Riccardo Milani's Cefalonia (2005), which was inspired by the same events that informed Louis de Bernières's bestseller, Captain Corelli's Mandolin. It's September 1943 and Zingaretti has developed a crush on café owner Luisa Ranieri, who has raised daughter Jasmine Trinca alone since husband Claudio Amendola left for America. However, cruel reality is about to intrude upon this idyllic posting, as General Ermanno Grassi has learned that the Wehrmacht is set to invade the island and reclaim it from its former ally.

Lieutenant Fausto Paravidino gathers the troops and asks them to vote on whether to fight the Nazis or surrender and, even though they are inexperienced and badly equipped, they agree to take a stand. Unfortunately, their forces are seriously depleted during the initial engagement and Trinca is worried that her beloved, Corrado Fortuna, will be killed. She joins forces with a local doctor to tend to the casualties, as Zingaretti rallies a band of survivors that includes Flavio Pistilli, Paolo Setta, Fabio Balasso and Antonio Milo. But they are quickly driven back and Ranieri and army medic Valerio Mastandrea do what they can to patch up the wounded at the café.

Defeat is inevitable and the German commander declares the captured Italians traitors to the Axis and gives orders for them to be executed. Zingaretti manages to escape, however, and forms a partisan band who earn the nickname the Bandits of Acqui. Thus, exactly a year after Cephalonia was captured, the unit combines with the Greek Resistance to launch an attack on the retreating Germans, as they await ships in the port of Argostoli.

Running to mini-series length, this is no more engrossing than John Madden's leaden 2001 adaptation of Captain Corelli, which co-starred a miscast Nicolas Cage and Penélope Cruz. Zingaretti cuts his usual dash and there is no denying the quality of Stefano Ricciotti's photography, Luciano Ricceri's production design and the peerless Ennio Morricone's score. But screenwriters Sandro Petraglia and Stefano Rulli struggle to define the secondary characters and frequently allow melodrama to seep into the quieter moments. Nevertheless, Milani stages the action sequences competently enough and while this may not be as spectacular as J. Lee Thompson's The Guns of Navarone (1961) or as thoughtful as Gabriele Salvatores's Mediterraneo (1991), it is a worthy tribute to the fallen.

Alberto Negrins Perlasca: The Courage of a Just Man, for example, chronicles the exploits of Giorgio Perlasca, who was dubbed `the Italian Schindler' for saving over 5000 Jews during the Holocaust, this is an earnest adaptation of Enrico Deaglio's biography, The Banality of Good. However, this is very much on a par with some of Negrin's earlier small-screen outings, including Mussolini and I (1985) and Voyage of Terror: The Achille Lauro Affair (1990), which had respectively teamed Susan Sarandon and Anthony Hopkins and Burt Lancaster and Eva Marie Saint.

In his youth, Giorgio Perlasca (Luca Zingaretti) had been an enthusiastic supporter of Benito Mussolini and had fought in both the Second Italo-Abyssinian War and the Spanish Civil War. At the end of the latter, he was presented with a document from Generalissimo Francesco Franco granting him safe passage in any Spanish embassy and this comes in useful when he finds himself trapped in Budapest in 1944. He had been sent to Hungary to procure meat for the Italian army, but the defeat of Il Duce in October 1943 had made him an enemy in the eyes of the country's notorious Arrow Cross militia. Aided by Contessa Eleanora (Mathilda May), Perlasca had been able to avoid the clutches of SS captain Bleiber (György Cserhalmi) and Hungarians Major Glückmer (Ferenc Borbiczky) and Lieutenant Nagy (András Stohl) and found sanctuary with Professor Balázs (Jean-François Garreaud), who risks his life to keep his Jewish neighbours out of the death camps.

Having helped Magda (Amanda Sandrelli) and her daughter Lili (Titanilla Varga) escape a brutal round-up conducted by Nagy, Perlasca uses his letter to secure a meeting with Spanish ambassador Ángel Sanz Briz (Géza Tordy), who instals him in a safe house, along with Eva (Christiane Filangieri) and Sándor (Marco Bonini), who help him gain the trust of his fellow refugees. Thus, when Sanz Briz is transferred to Switzerland, Perlasca is able to pass himself off as new consul Jorge Perlasca and he convinces Arrow Cross Interior Minister Gábor Vajna (Zoltán Bezerédy) that the Jews under his protection are diasporic Sephardis who are entitled to citizenship under Spanish law.

However, Perlasca is not content with forging over 5000 Schutzbriefs and pleads with Vajna to spare the Budapest ghetto that Bleiber is so keen to cleanse. Knowing that the Red Army is rapidly approaching, Perlasca plays for time and, while he fails to save Sándor and others from execution on the banks of the Danube, he is helped to smuggle many more to safety by the reformed Glückmer, who disregards an order to arrest Perlasca because of his Fascist past and allows him to slip out of the city.

Scored by Ennio Morricone and closer in look and feel to Lamont Johnson's Wallenberg: A Hero's Story (1985) than Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List (1993), this is a well-meaning, but melodramatic tribute to a genuine hero. Zingaretti conveys Perlasca's charm and courage, but lacks the presence that made Richard Chamberlain and Liam Neeson's performances so compelling. Similarly, Negrin deserves credit for the unflinching depiction of Nazi cruelty and censure for allowing a regrettable soap operaticism to seep into some of the human interest storylines, which robs them of both poignancy and inspiration.

Zingaretti was back on biographical duty in Roberto Faenza's By the Light of Day, in which he plays Don Giuseppe Puglisi, a priest from a Cosa Nostra-dominated district in Palermo, who was murdered on his 56th birthday, 15 September 1993, for trying to convince young boys that there was more to life than crime. Opening with a savage dog fight, the action recalls the kind of Hollywood movie in which a Roman Catholic priest played by the likes of Spencer Tracy or Pat O'Brien wins the hearts and minds of the innocent scamps who were being lured off the straight and narrow by hardened hoodlums. But, Faenza, who earned a degree of infamy by incurring the ire of the Christian Democrat Party with his scathing 1970 satire, Forza Italia!, is too astute a director to play this for pure hagiography and makes a few bold pronouncements of his own about the corruption and violence dominating life in southern Italy.

Born in the working-class Brancaccio neighbourhood, Pino Puglisi was ordained in 1960 and returned to his home city three decades later when he became the parish priest of San Gaetano's church. From the outset, he denounced the Mafia from the pulpit and opened a centre for orphaned and under-privileged children to give them a start away that owed nothing to the pernicious operations that were paralysing Palermo. Despite warnings from his bishop not to provoke the leading families, Puglisi urged his flock to forget the fearsome code of omerta and not only forbade so-called `men of honour' from participating in religious festivities, but also declined their donations and refused to choose the company they recommended to repair the church roof.

Zingaretti plays the part with a pugnacious piety and he is capably supported by Corrado Fortuna as his lay pastor Gregorio Porcaro and Alessia Goria as Sister Carolina Iavazzo, who helped run the centre for the last two years of Puglisi's life. As so often in Italian films, the juvenile cast manages to be both pitiable and spirited, although the script written by Faenza and his son Giacomo does have its rose-tinted moments. Similarly, cinematographer Italo Petriccione overdoes the use of bright light to suggest the effect that Puglisi is having on his benighted community. But the sincerity of the tribute cannot be doubted and it is significantly more courageous than the Church's initial response, as Cardinal Archbishop Salvatore Pappalardo (who had been among the first clerics to condemn organised crime in the 1980s) opted not to indict the Cosa Nostra at Puglisi's funeral. Subsequently, however, he started the process for Puglisi's beatification (which was granted in May 2013) and reinforced his contention that if everyone under the yoke of the Mafia does something, then a great deal can be achieved.

Completing the bio trio is Alberto Negrin's Paolo Borsellino: The 57 Days (2012), a TV-movie that follows an Italian judge as he tries to come to terms with the murder of his predecessor and the fact that, by asking awkward questions about his close friend's death, he is putting himself and his family at risk of a Mafia reprisal.

Having grown up in the same Kalsa part of Palermo, Borsellino and Giovanni Falcone were aware of the Cosa Nostra and saw classmates lured into their ranks. But it was only after the pair became magistrates that they learned about the group of dedicated investigators led by Rocco Chinnici. Together with Leonardo Guarnotta (Ferruccio Ferrante), Falcone and Borsellino became key members and they were joined by Antonino Caponnetto (Antonio Giordano) after Chinnici was assassinated by a car bomb in 1983. Another detonation accounted for Falcone, his wife and three bodyguards on 23 May 1992 and inquiries have since been made into whether there was any collusion between the Cosa Nostra and the Italian government in order to prevent a full-blown crisis.

Despite not placed in charge of the Falcone case, Borsellino announced at a public meeting in Palermo that he had crucial information about possible motives and tried to goad the Carabinieri into checking links between the Cosa Nostra and some important public works contracts. He also met with informer Gaspare Mutolo (Antonio Gerardi), who warned him against trusting high-ranking members of the Flying Squad. the judiciary and the Ministry of the Interior. Amidst all this, he tried to reassure mother (Aurora Quattrocchi), wife Agnese (Lorenza Indovina), their three children Manfredi (Davide Giordano), Lucia (Marilù Pipitone) and Fiammetta (Claudia Gaffuri) that nobody would dare harm him with the spotlight shining so brightly on Sicily.

Sadly, he was proved wrong when an explosion destroyed his car in Via D'Amelio and he was killed along with officers Agostino Catalano (Peppe Pellegrino), Emanuela Loi (Silvia Francese) and Vincenzo Li Muli (Francesco Casisa). Ultimately, Salvatore Riina of the Corleonesi Family was jailed for life for ordering the executions of Falcone and Borsellino. But screenwriter Francesco Scardamaglia is less interested in the conspiracy and supposition surrounding the killings and Zingaretti responds with a performance that says much more about Borsellinos humanity than his heroism. Those new to the case might find the action a bit confusing in places, as the names mentioned will be readily familiar to Italian viewers. But anyone who saw comedian Pierfrancesco Diliberto's The Mafia Kills Only in the Summer, will glean from this meticulous teleplay just how inspired his striking debut feature really is.