High art, we are taught, resides in the lower depths. Misery breeds profundity, the argument goes, and it has a corollary: anything cheery is a gilded lie. Drizzle is real, sunlight a sham. To focus on the sunny side, and to find resonance there, is to engage in a kind of aesthetic Reaganism. Every smile is a commercial for a product destined to be recalled: Life Lite.
Every once in a while, though, an artist refutes this gloomy view. Here it is two artists: the late French author and filmmaker Marcel Pagnol and the French director Yves Robert, who have collaborated...
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