Mining French Novels for a Gem : ‘Deep personal reasons’ led director Claude Berri to take on ‘Germinal,’ the story of coal miners’ lives.

With “Jean de Florette” and “Manon of the Spring” in the late ‘80s, the prolific French producer-director Claude Berri reached a new plateau in a film career that began in 1967 with the semi-autobiographical “Two of Us,” about an anti-Semitic old farmer who nevertheless loves the little Jewish boy he shelters during World War II.

In their power and simplicity, “Jean de Florette” and “Manon of the Spring,” tales of greed and revenge set in a harsh countryside, hearkened back to French screen classics characterized by masterful acting and storytelling, the era of Marcel Pagnol, who wrote the novels upon which the two-part saga was based. It did not seem possible that Berri could ever equal his Pagnol films, yet many critics believe he has with his rich and uncompromising film of Emile Zola’s “Germinal,” a bleak but tempestuous drama depicting the harsh lot of French coal miners. The film, which played a one-week run in December, began a regular run Friday.

“You could think that I take refuge in the great novels,” Berri said in a recent interview, conducted partly through an interpreter in his West Hollywood hotel, “but that is not the case. I had very deep personal reasons for filming ‘Germinal.’ It has to do with the lower-class environment of my childhood and especially my father. If I had not had the kind of father I had, I could not have made ‘Germinal.’

“My father had a great sense of injustice. He was a worker, a furrier, with a great sense of class consciousness. He was born in Krakow just before World War I but was raised in France. It was easier for him to be politically conscious because he always had to fight in his life; it has been a much easier life for me, in making films.

“There’s probably something deep down in my childhood that pushed me to do this film, but I’m not the only one involved in the film who felt that way. Gerard Depardieu (who plays the leader of a bitter miners’ strike) wanted to do the film because his father had been a union man, a metal worker. Miou-Miou, who plays his wife, wanted to be in it because her mother sold vegetables in Les Halles. They both came to me, but from the start I had wanted Renaud to play the young man, the newcomer to the mining community; I did not know that he was the grandson of a coal miner! Renaud, who had never been in a film before, is a singer very well known in France. I told him he ought to be making movies.”

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Berri, a small man with thinning hair and a graying beard who will turn 60 in July, exudes a youthful passion for the cinema. Had he never directed a single scene, he would still be one of France’s most successful and venturesome film figures, having worked as a producer with directors such as the challenging Roman Polanski (“Tess”), Milos Forman (“Valmont”) and Jean-Jacques Annaud (“The Lover”).

“I felt a great emotion in reading ‘Germinal,’ ” Berri says, “and thought it a good subject to reflect upon--that it would be timeless and universal. When I decided to do the film, I didn’t know the extent to which it was contemporary as well. I wanted a true film d’auteur even if I was not the original author. It is also not a producer’s film--no European producer could have taken on a budget that large--$30 million--which is enormous in France.

“I took the profits from ‘Jean de Florette’ and ‘Manon of the Spring,’ plus those of ‘The Bear,’ ” he continues, relating how he financed “Germinal.” “It was not as complicated to do as you might think because you’ve created a whole universe for the film. You don’t make a film alone, after all, and I had great set designers, Thanh At Hoang and Christian Marti.”

Contributing to the cost was Berri’s insistence on shooting in the coal-mining region of northern France, where mining stopped only several years ago, and in adhering to Zola’s cycle of seasons. This meant a staggering shooting schedule of seven months.

One suspects that Berri would rather not be cast in the role of an industry spokesman, yet he takes pains to explain his position on the perceived problem of American film overwhelming the European screen. He believes that the quotas imposed by French TV on the number of American programs aired is essential to preserving the French film industry because much of its financing comes from television. On the other hand, he places a great deal of the blame for the paucity of European films on both French and American screens to a general decline in the quality of European product.

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“It’s not the same quality as in the ‘60s or early ‘70s,” Berri says. “There is no more Bergman, Fellini or Bunuel, no early Demy, no great Italian comedies. Godard is a big influence on young filmmakers, but unfortunately there are not many young Godards. In Europe we are lacking entertainment films. Thanks to financing from French TV’s Canal Plus some 30 to 50 young filmmakers are able to make their debut films--but how many are good?”

Berri singles out Christian Vincent, director of “La Discrete,” and Bruno Nuytten, a top cinematographer who made his directorial debut with “Camille Claudel,” as young filmmakers who impress him.

Berri is already thinking about his next film. “I have an idea for a film about the French Resistance. It will be an original screenplay but based on a true story. I have to ask myself, ‘What would I have done if I had been 20 when World War II broke out?’ It is about the way a woman got her husband out of a Gestapo prison in Lyon. It is a love story, and it takes place during her pregnancy.”