Adapting Pagnol and Provence

This chapter examines Marcel Pagnol’s L’eau des collines and its film adaptations Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources (Dir. Claude Berri, 1986). Methodologically, its principal innovation in revisiting these films is an engagement with theories from the critical literature of Travel and Tourism Studies to elucidate the desire of readers and viewers to visit places associated with cherished texts. The films’ role in the subsequent explosion of tourist interest and second-home ownership in Provence is discussed in terms of the proposed concept of ‘adaptation tourism’, and the sometimes fraught relationship between incomers and locals is framed as analogous to the key themes of Pagnol’s story. Combining tourism-oriented analyses with ideas drawn from critiques of heritage film, Provence is examined as a ‘cultural landscape’, its meanings constructed in part by books and screen texts and its ownership – both literal and interpretive – contested across fault-lines of belonging.