Renoir shot Toni in Provence as a production of Marcel Pagnol's studio in Marseille, using only real backgrounds and mostly nonprofessional actors, among whom the crew lived for a period of time. The story concerns an immigrant Spanish farmworker, Toni, and his relations with two women, one who loves him, one whom he loves. Made in 1934 on the eve of the Spanish Civil War, Toni captures the spirit of fraternity and fatalism with which Renoir viewed the working classes of the thirties. François Truffaut noted, “Renoir likes to point out that Toni . . . is the first neorealist film. In fact, what is striking about Toni is its dreamlike quality, the fantasy-like atmosphere surrounding a rather ordinary drama. Toni is . . . a tragedy in which the sun takes the place of fate.”