passion according to Bertrand Tavernier

MYCANAL / CINÉ + – ON DEMAND – DOCUMENTARY SERIES

Bertrand Tavernier, who just died on March 25 at the age of 79, regretted that his documentary series was taken Journey through French cinemas (2017), lasting around 7:30 a.m., for the ” long version ” of his film (3:12) from 2016. These two ultimate opuses certainly share the same title and the same credits; but they have indeed almost nothing to do with each other and complement each other perfectly.

The film immediately took on an autobiographical turn, starting from the childhood of the Lyon director and his “ first cinematographic shock “ – a scene from Last trump card (1942), by Jacques Becker – to explore French cinema in the light of his cinephilic and professional training, by focusing in particular, and rather at length, on the figures of Jean Gabin and that of Eddie Constantine.

If, in the series (eight alluring thematic episodes of sometimes eccentric erudition), Tavernier reaffirms his passion for actors – and in particular for these supporting roles in the films of the 1930s of which he sometimes seems to be the only one to have remembered – , it focuses above all on directors: My bedside filmmakers, Foreign filmmakers in pre-war France, The New Wave of the Occupation, The forgotten, etc.

An over-enlightened amateur rather than a licensed historian, Tavernier thus composes his landscape of cinematographic fantasy, as selfish as it is sharing, commented with rare finesse and delicious humor. Sometimes reading on a teleprompter, seeming at other times to improvise or conversing with his friend Thierry Frémaux – at theLyon Light Institute, that Tavernier presided since its creation in 1982 -, the filmmaker here also looks back on his training and his first job as press attaché in the exclusive service of the films he loved.

Contagious jubilation

In the 2016 feature film, Bertrand Tavernier insisted on the importance of composers of film music, in particular that of Maurice Jaubert, whom he considers to be “The greatest at that time”. Period which will be confined to the 1930s: Jaubert died at the front on June 19, 1940, a few months after having delivered his last score, for The day begins (1939), by Marcel Carné, with whom he had also collaborated for Funny drama (1937), The Quay of Mists (1938) and Hotel du Nord (1938).

In the series, film music takes an even greater place. Tavernier celebrates great names (Jaubert again, Arthur Honegger, Georges van Parys, etc.) but also others, less known, such as Jean-Jacques Grunenwald, famous organist but forgotten author of scores for Robert Bresson, Jacques Becker and Michel Deville . Tavernier also recalls the case of Jean Grémillon, a professional musician who discovered cinema by accompanying silent films on the piano, and devotes half of an episode to “Dramaturgical importance” of the movie song.

Bertrand Tavernier had to reluctantly wrap up the content of these eight episodes: “It never ends (…) : I have just discovered two films by Jean Boyer and one by Jacqueline Audry ”, he said during a public meeting in 2017. So that the cinephilic jubilation so contagious of this Journey into French cinema is melancholy tempered by the fact that – except unreleased material made public -, this series probably should not know a sequel.