The first of Claude Berri’s two-film adaptation of Marcel Pagnol’s novel The Water of the Hills, Jean de Florette begins in the aftermath of World War I, though it would be easy not to realize it. The Provençal countryside is a vestige of the Old World not yet swept away by the conflict. People still get around mostly by horse and wagon, wear clothes knit by locals, and engage in farming and craftwork methods that have surely remained unchanged for centuries. Even the film’s underlying plot, of farmer Ugolin Soubeyran (Daniel Auteuil) and his uncle, César (Yves Montand), trying to amass land in order to grow carnations, suggests a nod to the tulip mania of the 16th century.

The Soubeyans’ plan to maximize their land holdings rapidly spirals into the kind of hapless but grim crime wave worthy of the Coen brothers. Attempting first to buy out...