My Father's Glory

My Father's Glory (La Gloire de mon Père, 1990) is a French family drama you can watch online on iFILM. Director Yves Robert adapted the first book of Marcel Pagnol's autobiographical series — a memoir of a childhood spent in turn-of-the-century Provence.

Young Marcel is raised by his schoolteacher father Joseph, a committed rationalist, and his seamstress mother Augustine. When the family escapes the city for a summer in the Provençal hills, Marcel gets his first real taste of the wider world: a new friend named Lili who knows every path through the garrigue, the rituals of a local hunt, and a single moment when his quietly reserved father suddenly becomes something larger than life in the boy's eyes. That moment is what the whole film is really about.

Warm without being saccharine. Philippe Caubère is quietly perfect as Joseph. This is the kind of film that rewards the audience willing to watch a story that is mostly people being decent to each other in beautiful countryside. Stream My Father's Glory (1990) online on iFILM.