French film-maker’s family fight to keep link to chateau that inspired his stories

Marcel Pagnol based his famous movies on a Provencal manor he'd known as a child. Now his legacy is at risk, says his grandson

In 1941 the French novelist, playwright and film-maker Marcel Pagnol bought a chateau in a Provencal valley outside Marseille on the advice of his solicitor without even seeing it.

He proposed to transform the property into a cinema city", a French Hollywood set in the hills and lavender fields of southern France where he had holidayed as a child.