This article proposes a reading of the latest film adaptation of Maria Chapdelaine (2021) by Quebecois director Sebastien Pilote (Le Vendeur, 2011; Le demantelement, 2013; La disparition des lucioles, 2018). Pilote places this new screen transposition within the continuum of previous adaptations of the novel (by Julien Duvivier in 1934, Marc Allegret in 1950 and Gilles Carle in 1983), but chooses several different approaches. The filmmaker's project can and must be understood as an attempt to defolklorize Hemon's text-a claim also made by Gilles Carle, but in a very different sense-around which an ongoing myth and imagery have been created. This countercurrent reading of a work and its heritage by a contemporary medium, done here in line with literary anthropology, underscores the narrative and ethical tensions of the story and the role of the characters, starting with that of Eutrope Gagnon, historically mishandled by the seventh art, who is now the unexpected but undeniable "hero" of Pilote's film.
