"The plot of Jean de Florette is as melodramatic as any soap opera, but its treatment is just a little askew, just off-center enough for the film to evolve into a moving and powerful pastoral tragedy. The film is a naturalistic story about the dehumanizing effect of greed on a community and on the human soul. Watching the hunchbacked Jean de Florette (Gérard Depardieu) struggle against all odds to keep his small farm alive, maintaining to the bitter end his optimism and naïve faith in his reference books, is like watching Sisyphus make his daily toil up the hill."

"Daniel Auteuil - Ugolin"

"Gérard Depardieu as Jean Cadoret / "Jean de Florette""

"Élisabeth Depardieu - Aimée Cadoret"

"Yves Montand - César Soubeyran, "Le Papet""

"If you start to strangle a cat, finish it off!"

"In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, I hereby name you King of Carnations!"

"It's not me that's crying. It's my eyes."

"Ernestine Mazurowna - Manon Cadoret"

"He'll sell. A pen makes less blisters than a pickax. A farmer may grow a hump, but a hunchback rarely becomes a farmer. Who would have thought that Florette would give birth to a hunchback?"

"Yvonne Gamy - Delphine"

"Gabriel Bacquier and Eve Brenner - Singers at the wedding"

"Revenge, love, and the shocking irony of a hidden family relationship highlight this sequel to the acclaimed Jean de Florette. Although Manon des Sources can stand alone as a separate motion picture, viewers will gain a deeper understanding of it if they view Florette first. Both films, masterpieces of modern French cinema, owe their plots to Marcel Pagnol's novel L'Eau des Collines."

"In the middle of a drought, a farmer is desperate to borrow a mule to help haul water from a nearby spring. He asks his neighbor for the loan of the animal. The neighbor is filled with compassion and sympathy, but simply cannot do without his mule, which he needs in order to farm his own land and provide for his own family. As the neighbor rejects the request, his face is so filled with regret you'd have little doubt he is one of the best of men. Actually, he is a thief. And what he is stealing is the joy, the hope and even the future of the man who needs the mule. Jean de Florette is a merciless study in human nature, set in Provence in the 1920s. It's the story of how two provincial French farmers systematically destroy the happiness of a man who comes out from the city to till the land."

"I'll never sell the house where my mother was born, and where I hope to live forever until I die as a rich man! We can get by quite well on four thousand francs! I'll buy a mule, a load of miner's tools, and some dynamite to blast this damn rock! In a year I'll pay off the mortgage, and we'll be set!"

"There is something to be said for a long story that unfolds with an inexorable justice. In recent movies we've become accustomed to stories that explode into dozens of tiny dim-witted pieces of action, all unrelated to each other. Cars hurtle through the air, victims are peppered with gunshot holes, heroes spit out clever one-liners, and at the end of it all, what are we left with? Our hands close on empty air. Manon of the Spring, which is the conclusion of the story that began with Jean de Florette, is the opposite kind of movie. It moves with a majestic pacing over the affairs of four generations, demonstrating that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children. Although Manon is self-contained and can be understood without having seen Jean de Florette, the full impact of this work depends on seeing the whole story, right from the beginning; only then does the ending have its full force."

"It's over here. See. The spring was by the fig tree. Don't look back! Old man Camoins dug a trench that went down to the end of the field there. That way, the water just ran downhill. Understand? Look by my foot. See how soggy the ground is? The water's blocked, but it'd be easy to release it. That slob let it all go to waste!"

"Montand's plot against the hunchback was incredibly cruel, but the movie was at pains to explain that Montand was not gratuitously evil. His most important values centered on the continuity of land and family, and in his mind his plot against Depardieu was justified by the need to defend the land against an "outsider." As Manon of the Spring opens, some years later, the unmarried and childless Montand is encouraging his nephew to find a woman and marry, so that the family name can be continued. The nephew already has a bride in mind: the beautiful Manon (Emmanuelle Beart), daughter of the dead man, who tends goats on the mountainside and lives in poverty, although she has received a good education."

"Emmanuelle Béart - Manon"

"Yves Montand - César Soubeyran, "Le Papet""

"Papet, I'm leaving because I can't go on. It's not the carnations. It's because of my love. I realize she'll never want me. I suspected it because her ribbon burned my flesh. And when I told her in public I wanted to marry her she spat at me in a fury. What's more, she fled towards the teacher. When he talks to her, she lowers her eyes. When he stops, she lingers until he continues. And he takes her love for granted. He's unaware of his happiness, but I know my misery. I can't stand it. I'd like to kill him. But it would hurt her, and I'd never hurt her. I leave her my farm and all that's hidden — you know where — to the left of the fireplace. Don't make any trouble. It's not her fault or yours. It's fate. Arrange a Mass for me, because up there, I'll have to explain about the spring. Adieu, my Papet. I'm sorry to leave you, but I can't stay."

"Dear little Manon, The notary will tell you that I'm leaving you my whole estate. It may surprise you, but it's the truth. The lawyer will give you all the documents because your father was my son. He was the Soubeyran I'd hoped for all my life, whom I tormented to death because I didn't know who he was. If I had told him about the spring, he'd still be playing his harmonica, and you'd all be living in our family home. No one knows it, but I'm too ashamed to face anyone, even the trees. In the village, there's a person who knows. She will tell you everything. It's Delphine, the old blind woman. She'll explain that it's all because of Africa. I don't deserve to kiss you, and I never dared speak to you, but maybe now you can forgive me and even say a little prayer for poor Ugolin and me. I'm so pathetic, I even pity myself. Out of sheer spite, I never went near him. I never knew his voice or his face. I never saw his eyes, which might have been like his mother's. I only saw his hump and the pain I caused him. Now you understand why I want to die, because next to my torments, even hell would be a pleasure. Besides, I'll see him up there. I'm not afraid of him. Now he knows he's a Soubeyran. He's no longer a hunchback because of me. He knows it was all a foolish mistake. I'm sure that instead of blaming me, he'll defend me. Farewell, my darling girl. Your grandfather, César Soubeyran"

"Daniel Auteuil - Ugolin"

"Hippolyte Girardot - Bernard Olivier"

"What a terrible mixture between my remorse and the happiness I'd like to bring you. Don't you know how I'll slave for you, my love?"

"There are not a lot of highly charged closeups, to turn the story into a series of phony high points. Instead, so many of the shots are surrounded by the landscape and the sky, and there is one enormously dramatic set piece when the sky fills up with rain clouds, and the thunder roars and the rain seems about to come. And then, as Depardieu and his family run outside to feel it against their faces, the rain falls elsewhere and Depardieu shakes his fist at the heavens and asks God why he has been forsaken. But God has not double-crossed him, his neighbors have. And the enormity of their crime is underlined by the deliberate pace of this film, which is the first installment of a two-part epic … We realize here that human greed is patient, and can wait years for its reward. And meantime daily life goes on in Provence, and neighbors pass the time of day and regret that it is impossible to make a loan of a mule."

"Margarita Lozano - Baptistine"

"There's no gold here. It's Jurassic cretaceous from the second Quaternary era."

"I won't help those who stole my father's water! … The truth is the spring was always there! The truth is you blocked it off!"

"Aren't you Manon, the daughter of Monsieur Jean? I see you don't remember me. That's because I've changed a lot. I'm Ugolin — your poor father's friend. You've changed too. You're a real young lady. I hardly recognize you."

"I love you, Manon. I love you with all my heart! Manon! I want to marry you! I'm all alone! I've got no-one! My grandparents are dead. My father hanged himself when I was little. My mother died of the flu. There's only Uncle Papet! He's rich, he's old. He's going to die. He's going to leave me all his money. It'll be yours, because I love you. I love you! I am sick for the love of you. It's suffocating me! I saw you bathing in the rainwater. I watched for hours. You were so lovely. I was tempted to commit a crime!"

"I don't menstruate, so I don't know how I could smell like I'm menstruating."

"So I'm reading The Trial [...] I'm such an idiot for not knowing about this book. It's famous, as it turns out."

"[on the radio] What was once before you - an exciting, mysterious future - is now behind you. Lived; understood; disappointing. You realize you are not special. You have struggled into existence, and are now slipping silently out of it. This is everyone's experience. Every single one. The specifics hardly matter. Everyone's everyone. So you are Adele, Hazel, Claire, Olive. You are Ellen. All her meager sadnesses are yours; all her loneliness; the gray, straw-like hair; her red raw hands. It's yours. It is time for you to understand this. Walk. As the people who adore you stop adoring you; as they die; as they move on; as you shed them; as you shed your beauty; your youth; as the world forgets you; as you recognize your transience; as you begin to lose your characteristics one by one; as you learn there is no-one watching you, and there never was, you think only about driving - not coming from any place; not arriving any place. Just driving, counting off time. Now you are here, at 7:43. Now you are here, at 7:44. Now you are...Gone."

"Elizabeth Marvel - Warehouse Realtor"

"Daisy Tahan - Ariel"

"Caden Cotard is a man already dead, living in a half-world between stasis and antistasis. Time is concentrated and chronology confused for him. Up until recently he has strived valiantly to make sense of his situation, but now he has turned to stone."

"Cliff Carpenter - Old Man"

"[voice over] Now it is waiting and nobody cares. And when your wait is over this room will still exist and it will continue to hold shoes and dress and boxes and maybe someday another waiting person. And maybe not. The room doesn't care either."

"Amy Spanger - Soap Actress Nurse"

"I've watched you forever, Caden, but you've never really looked at anyone other than yourself. So watch me. Watch my heart break. Watch me jump. Watch me learn that after death there's nothing. There's no more watching. There's no more following. No love. Say goodbye to Hazel for me. And say it to yourself, too. None of us has much time."

"Dear diary, I'm afraid I'm gravely ill. It is perhaps times like these that one reflects on things past. An article of clothing from when I was young. A green jacket. I walk with my father. A game we once played. Pretend we're faeries. I'm a girl faerie. My name is Laura Lee. And you're a boy faerie. Your name is Tita Lee. Pretend, when we're faeries we fight each other, and I say "Stop hitting me I'll die!" And you hit me again and I say, "Now I have to die." And then you say, "But I'll miss you." And I say, "But I have to. And you'll have to wait a million years to see me again. And I'll be put in a box, and all I'll need is a tiny glass of water and lots of tiny pieces of pizza and the box will have wings like an airplane." And you'll ask, "Where will it take you?" "Home." I say."

"Nick Wyman - Soap Actor Doctor"

"Dan Ziskie - Leg Tremor Doctor"

"Claire Keen: Knowing that you don't know is the first and most essential step to knowing, you know?"

"Alice Drummond - Actress Playing Frances"

"Michael Higgins - Actor Playing Man With Nosebleed"

"Christopher Evan Welch - Pastor"