Set in the countryside of Provence, the film is based on three tales from Alphonse Daudet's 1869 short story collection Letters from My Windmill: "The Three Low Masses", "The Elixir of Father Gaucher" and "The Secret of Master Cornille".

[1] In 1968 Pagnol made a television film based on another story from the same collection, Le curé de Cucugnan.

[2] Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote: "Like everything done by M. Pagnol, this collection of three little tales is full of the meat of human characters and the wine of the land from which they spring.

It is spiced with the sharp and earthy humor that M. Pagnol has distilled from his long association with the Frenchmen who draw their life from her bare and rolling hills.

And because of the way he shoots his pictures, in the buildings, streets and country of Provence, it has an air of authenticity about it that makes one feel an immediate participant in his scenes.