Pagnol is generally regarded as one of France's greatest 20th-century writers and is notable for the fact that he excelled in almost every medium—memoir, novel, drama and film.

In July 1904, the family rented the Bastide Neuve,[3] – a house in the sleepy Provençal village of La Treille – for the summer holidays, the first of many spent in the hilly countryside between Aubagne and Marseille.

[5] About the same time, Augustine's health, which had never been robust, began to noticeably decline and on 16 June 1910 she succumbed to a chest infection ("mal de poitrine") and died, aged 36.

[7] During this time, he belonged to a group of young writers, in collaboration with one of whom, Paul Nivoix, he wrote the play, Merchants of Glory, which was produced in 1924.

[3] Exiled in Paris, he returned nostalgically to his Provençal roots, taking this as his setting for his play Marius, which later became the first of his works to be adapted into a film in 1931.

In 1929, on a visit to London, Pagnol attended a screening of one of the first talking films and he was so impressed that he decided to devote his efforts to cinema.

On 4 April 1946, Pagnol was elected to the Académie française, taking his seat in March 1947, the first filmmaker to receive this honour.

As a pictorial naturalist, Pagnol relies on film as art to convey a deeper meaning rather than solely as a tool to tell a story.

Using interchangeable symbols and recurring character roles, such as proud fathers and rebellious children, Pagnol illuminates the provincial life of the lower class.

Pagnol appeared before a review committee of the Parisian Comite Regional Interprofessionnel d'Epuration on 27 November 1946 for three charges of collaboration.

Pagnol defended himself as the Germans banned The Well-Digger's Daughter in 1941 and only unbanned it after the Pétain scene was removed and that the Vichy government seized his studios, personnel, and distribution services.

His boyhood friend, David Magnan (Lili des Bellons in the autobiographies), who died at the Second Battle of the Marne in July 1918, is buried nearby.