Six films and a book to salute Bertrand Tavernier

MORNING LIST

The reactions to the death, on March 25, at the age of 79, of Bertrand Tavernier celebrate, beyond the work that had touched the hearts of the public, the very special place that the director had conquered: that a memory of cinema that has become in itself a treasure, a passion and a generous handover for an art that we know today is under threat.

Several of his films are currently visible on the various platforms: we offer you a selection. A film enthusiast with great film culture, Tavernier had also conducted major interviews with Hollywood masters, gathered in a beautiful book which had benefited from a rich reissue in 2019.

“L’Horloger de Saint-Paul” (1974): a father, a son, a town

The watchmaker of Saint-Paul east of Lyon, like the rosette, the sapper’s apron, Guignol, the traboules, the galleries in the courtyards of Renaissance buildings. A real feature film stamped AOC, controlled designation of origin. Moreover, as soon as the opening credits have passed, a card thanked Louis Pradel (1906-1976), then forgotten mayor of the capital of Gaul, and certifying that the scenes “Were entirely filmed in Lyon”, the hometown of the director.

But the Lyon de Tavernier is not that of the Presqu’île, this town center traced with a line, nor of the bourgeois districts of the Tête d’Or park. For his first film, the filmmaker sets up his watchmaker, suddenly discovering how foreign his son is to him, on the banks of the Saône, on the Italian side of the city. The cobbled streets are more winding, narrower.

It is no exaggeration to say that Tavernier tries to film his city as Bernardo Bertolucci (his exact contemporary) then filmed Parma, his own. Like a cocoon, a microcosm, a place of desire and rejection can be.

Well established in its setting, the film is also anchored in its time. The political turmoil of the post-68 years (repeated failures of the left in the elections, terrorist outbreaks, factory occupations), even if they may seem a little exaggerated to the witnesses of that time and to the inhabitants of this prefecture then a little dozing , have for first merit to twist the neck to the clichés “peace and love” of the years 1970. They were also sad and foggy, like the city of Lyon sometimes. Philippe Ridet

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