S/D: French filmmaker BERTRAND TAVERNIER

i would probly take a shot on anything w/ Philippe Noiret

That Gordon nomination remains One of the order bits of Oscar trivia.

Death Watch is creepy.

loved his adaptation of james lee burke's in the electric mist with confederate dead with tommy lee jones

i don't even remember ever hearing about that one!

went straight to dvd in the us. it's very good! john goodman has a great part.

Dearh Watch uses Glasgow and environs as its desolate backdrop and has a big following in Scotland as a result.

I remember Round Midnight being good but I haven't seen it since I was at an influential age.

By big I obviously mean cult-big although I wouldn't be surprised if more scots had seen it than others.

He did a big Scorsese-style doc on classic French cinema a year ago that's super worth checking out, my letterboxd:

What Scorsese did for classic Hollywood with his "Personal Journey", Tavernier has done for (mostly) pre-Nouvelle Vague French cinema with this engrossing three hour documentary. The focus, predictably, is on directors, with long chapters on Becker, Renoir, Melville, Carné and Sautet (amongst others), but there is also time for a prolonged appreciation of actor Jean Gabin, anecdotes about the cinemas Tavernier used to frequent and - most surprisingly - quite a lot on the composers active during this period of French cinema (Tavernier makes a compelling case that music scoring in France was frankly superior to that employed by Hollywood at the same time). Hopefully this film will inspire some reissue labels to dig deeper into this era - starting, perhaps, with a good box set of Eddie Constantine movies, a franchise which, Tavernier demonstrates, had gotten self-referential and experimental way before Godard got his grubby hands on it.

The Princess of Montpensier is worth watching for Michel Vuillermoz' performance as the scheming father-in-law.

yeah the French cinema doc is just opening in NYC, per the links above.

One of my fave living filmmakers. "Capitaine Conan", "L'Appat", "L.627", "Beatrice", "Spoiled Children"... all worth seeing.

'Happiness is a nice wet Rico reed.'

L'Horloger is a classic.

L.627 is a solid gritty cop movie.

Bought a cheap copy of this Top 100 Movie list book in a charity shop today:

http://alumnus.caltech.edu/~ejohnson/kobal/kobal.html

Tavernier contributed a list:

1. The Rules of the Game
2. L'Atalante
3. I Walked With a Zombie
4. The Earrings of Madame De ...
5. Ugetsu Monogatari
6. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
7. Casque d'Or
8. The Crowd
9. Sunrise
10.Fury
('Bertrand Tavernier extended his top 10 to include: Pursued; The Searchers; Make Way for Tomorrow; Singin' in the Rain; Heaven can Wait (Lubitsch). He deliberately excluded films made after 1960.')

Saw the documentary today. Excellent except for TWO Tarantino mentions.

given that Tavernier worked as an assistant to Melville, that seems inevitable.

Tavernier sat next to me for about 20 seconds, just before he introduced Becker's It Happened at the Inn (1943).

Nice list, although I might have preferred a different Lubitsch (and Lang)
Lots of Becker on Mubi right now!
/streetteam

The Judge and the Assassin is a remarkable serial-killer social satire/black comedy, with a pair of galvanic titular performances (plus 22yo freckled Isabelle Huppert, who is -- same as she ever was).

(It's playing at the Quad again Thursday night.)

A dozen or so Tavernier films hit Criterion Channel this month and came here looking for advice from Morbs because I knew he'd be good for it. rip

I've seen Coup de Torchon and Daddy Nostalgie, both worthwhile. I also recall seeing some of Sunday in the Country but not finishing it, it might be more my pace now.

Messidor is fantastic

Bertrand Tavernier, celebrated writer and director known for his work across five decades, has died at the age of 79. https://t.co/Jr5Dgc1zQH pic.twitter.com/siYkD2XWuC

— Notebook (@NotebookMUBI) March 25, 2021

Messidor is fantastic

― or something, Saturday, 2 January 2021 15:33 (two months ago) bookmarkflaglink

And not by Bertrand Tavernier. One for the 'people you always mix up' thread

Oh no :( his journey into french cinema was great

I did end up seeing Sunday in the Country a couple of months ago, and appreciated it more than I might have at 20 or so.

watching the journey into cinema r/n: BT just told his version of the "this mf eating beans" story (peas, at the cinéma pathé-journal)

where are you watching that mark? (as in which platform not “in my house in plymouth friendliest town in northwest europe apart from the tombstoning”)

love tavernier but haven’t seen this.

studiocanal+ streaking is doing a seven-day free trial thing

lol i mean streaming

oh lol i got that trial because of BOÎTE NOIRE which i think you also watched and i also got because of Max Read.

and thx. all in favour of more french streaking.

we are totally max's playthings

^

Apparently Tavernier actually had two of these: the long movie (which I saw) and a separate tv show (which I haven't seen, but apparently gets into René Clair quite a bit so I really need to).

i watched half so far (up to where he starts to talk about music, c.90 mins worth) and was struck by how much of it has been abt jean gabin* -- like more than an hour mainly on JG (and various directors, esp.renoir and carné, mainly explored thru their relationship with gabin)

it's taken at a very amiable pace! his temperament is not scorsese's!

*(incidentally my dad's favourite male actor; with carné maybe his favourite director)(typically i have not really chased this up: i had a bad habit when young of thinking "well dad knows all about that stuff, i can always just ask him" -- except now i can't and all trees look alike to me 😔 )

Gabin rules, well worth exploring.

Yeah Tavernier dedicating a chapter to an actor and one to soundtracks is def a break from Scorsese's all auteur all the time thing.

I saw an interview with Tavernier where he said the main thing he took from the Scorsese doc was the cut off date - stop talking when it starts to be stuff made when you were already active.

He also said he was asked a lot why he didn't include an actress and his (somewhat questionable) justification was that he included Gabin because he had the pull at the time to have projects made around him, to get films sold based on his name alone, and no actress of the era had that stature.

watched it all now and the last point seems p pertinent: this kind of exercise always risks being a bros club i guess and BT is of course partly recapping the evolution of his own entry into his wing of the auteur gang, which is what it historically is (or was) (viz male and a wee bit square)

good anecdotes, good eye, a few contrarian mini-tweaks (renoir's politics; sautet's politics), some uncanonic material nicely rescued, mild mannered, absolutely worth checking out