Pagnol

Written and directed by Marcel Pagnol, it also told the story of a teacher tending to students at a boarding school, and though Payne saw it just once, at the Telluride Film Festival, it left a lasting impression on him.

This particular year, Payne watched “Merlusse” a little-known 1935 film by beloved French director Marcel Pagnol, concerning an unpopular boarding school teacher forced to babysit students with nowhere to go during Christmas break.

And it was Mr. Luddy who introduced Alice Waters, his girlfriend at the time, to the work of Marcel Pagnol, the French filmmaker, in particular “Marius,” “Fanny” and “César,” the trilogy he produced in the 1930s about a group of friends finding their way in Marseille.

Away from the screen, Luddy played a key role in the 1971 opening of then-girlfriend Alice Waters’ famed Berkeley restaurant Chez Panisse, conceiving the name as an homage to French filmmaker Marcel Pagnol.

At the moment, this includes “Buddenbrooks,” which we’re reading with a group of friends, “Le Château de Ma Mère,” by Marcel Pagnol, which my husband and I are reading with our French tutor, a collection of novellas and short stories by the Portuguese writer Maria Judite de Carvalho, who I’m keen to translate more of.