Unjustly sentenced to life imprisonment for forced labor for crimes committed by Jacques Garaud, who hid under another name, Jeanne Fortier escaped twenty years later and became a bread carrier.
"la porteuse de pain" belongs to the tradition
of French old melodramas of the nineteenth century serialized in newspapers .The most celebrated of them was Eugène Sue' s "Les Mysteres de Paris";Adolphe D'Ennery's "Les Deux Orphelines" was filmed by DW Griffith as "Orphans of the storm" in the silent era and remade by Maurice Tourneur in the thirties ) .
There has been a lot of adaptations of "la porteuse de pain" since the silent age ;this one is the first talkie version of Xavier De Montépin's tear-jerker .
It's construction is different from the novel : it begins when a distraught Jeanne is welcomed in a priest's vicarage ,and all the events that made the unfortunate mother of two a fugitive become a flashback during her trial ; as for the rest,it's not always successful :for instance the main character ,halfway through the movies , is absent during at least twenty minutes .As the part of the baker's boy was given to the most famous actor of the cast , Fernandel, it's fleshed out and he's is even given a joyous song (reprise in the finale);and the part of son Georges is reduced to the minimum.
