S/D: French filmmaker BERTRAND TAVERNIER

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