The Southerner by Jean Renoir (1946)

I was watching the Southerner last night for the first time. Halfway through, a little light bulb (ampoule électrique) went off in my head: Jean de Florette! Consider, a young man brings his wife and small child to a hardscrabble farm where he hopes to make a living. He is thwarted at every turn by a rotten neighbor with an idiot assistant who denies him water and attempts to sabotage his work because the rotten neighbor hopes to buy the land cheap.

One would not have expected Jean Renoir to have been the director of this story of the rural poor in America. But he was, and back in France, Marcel Pagnol was probably very much aware of Renoir's work.