Bertrand Tavernier looks back at his life and career by analyzing French cinema in unique ways in thrilling documentary
MY JOURNEY THROUGH FRENCH CINEMA (Bertrand Tavernier, 2016)
Quad Cinema
34 West 13th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Opens Friday, June 23
212-255-2243
cohenmedia.net
quadcinema.com
Auteur and film historian Bertrand Tavernier takes viewers on a fascinating, deeply personal trip into the world of early French movies in the extraordinary My Journey through French Cinema. Inspired by Martin Scorsese’s 1995 A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese through American Movies and 1999 My Voyage to Italy, the French auteur recounts how he believes that going to the theater as a child helped him survive a serious illness and led to a lifelong love of cinema; he even battled and beat cancer while making this documentary. In more than three hours that fly by surprisingly quickly, Tavernier examines dozens and dozens of French films, not looking at them as a historian or a fan but as a fellow director; in addition, the film unfolds neither chronologically nor thematically but in a delightfully charming stream of consciousness as Tavernier shares personal anecdotes that lead him from film to film and director to director. He begins by describing the first movie that had a major impact on him, Jacques Becker’s Dernier Atout, and moves on to his days working with Volker Schlöndorff for Jean-Pierre Melville, who thought he was a terrible assistant and turned him into a publicist; Tavernier also wrote for Les Cahiers du cinema and Positif. Through voiceover and onscreen appearances, Tavernier spends a lot of time discussing Melville (Bob le flambeur, Le Doulos) and Claude Sautet (Classe tous risques), whom he considers his cinematic godfathers; Becker (Casque d’Or, Le Trou); Jean Renoir (A Day in the Country, Rules of the Game); Marcel Carné (Le jour se lève, Hôtel du Nord); Jean-Luc Godard (Contempt, Pierrot le fou); composers Maurice Jaubert (Port of Shadows, L’Atalante) and Joseph Kosma (Le Chat, House on the Waterfront); and actors Jean Gabin (La Bȇte Humaine, Grand Illusion) and Eddie Constantine (Alphaville, Cet homme est dangereux). Also garnering significant mention are Jean Sacha, Gilles Grangier, Henri Decoin, Jean Delannoy, Edmond T. Gréville, Lino Ventura, and Pierre Schoendoerffer.
What makes My Journey through French Cinema so special is that Tavernier, who has made such films as The Clockmaker, Coup de Torchon, and ’Round Midnight, approaches his subjects from the point of view of a director, examining camera angles, sound, script writing, music, dialogue, and performance; it’s not so much a crash course as a master class that only Tavernier could give, adding insightful stories of his vast experience in the industry, alongside archival footage of some of the people he is discussing. And oh, the clips; there are hundreds of scenes of well-known and under-the-radar films that fans are going to want to revisit or see for the first time after watching Tavernier wax eloquent about their subtle joys. (Be aware: He sometimes goes right to the ending.) “I would like this film to be an expression of gratitude to all those filmmakers, screenwriters, actors, and musicians who have erupted into my life,” Tavernier notes in a statement. “Memory keeps us warm: This film is a piece of glowing charcoal for a winter night.” In the documentary itself, he pays tribute to “filmmakers who believe that movies could change things a bit, who believed, as Renoir told me one day, you have to make a film thinking that you’ll change the course of history. But you also must be humble enough to think, if you touch two people, you’ve done something extraordinary.” In My Journey through French Cinema, Tavernier has done something extraordinary indeed here, becoming “what every French creator should be: a French ambassador to France,” as his mentor Melville once said to him of Jean Cocteau. And like Scorsese, Tavernier is a film preservationist; because of the documentary, many of these old works are now being restored. My Journey opens June 23 at the Quad, with Tavernier participating in a Q&A after the 4:45 show on June 24. The Quad is also presenting “Tavernier Treasures,” four films selected by Tavernier by other directors, as well as “Film & Nothing But: Bertrand Tavernier,” a retrospective that continues through June 29. Tavernier will be at many of the screenings to talk about the works. (And there’s more to come, as Tavernier is making an eight-hour series for French television that continues his cinematic adventure.)