Bertrand Tavernier

Biography: life and films

Bertrand Tavernier is one of France's most eclectic filmmakers, and also one of the country's most highly regarded. His films cover an unusually wide spectrum of themes and styles, ranging from tough social realist dramas and conscience-stirring war films to gentle comedy-dramas and lavish period pieces. A self-confessed cinéphile, he spends much of his time writing about and lecturing on cinema, as well as promoting the work of lesser-known film directors. Tavernier is the archetypal auteur, not afraid to deal with sensitive subjects such as adolescent delinquency, drugs trafficking and French colonialism, but most of his films have broad mainstream appeal and have been well-received both in France and abroad. Whilst he rejects the criticism that the directors of the French New Wave heaped on some of their predecessors, he also represents a continuation of la Nouvelle Vague, and is an inspiration for many of today's independent filmmakers.

Bertrand Tavernier was born on 25th April 1941 at Lyon, France. He was the son of the writer René Tavernier, who was active in the French Resistance during WWII and secretly published the works of the Communist poet and author Louis Aragon. After the war, Tavernier attended school in Paris, where he got to know the future filmmaker Volker Schlöndorff, who would later be the godfather of his son, Nils. From an early age, Tavernier was a compulsive film addict. He co-founded a ciné-club and, having trained as a law student, was employed as a press attaché and film publicist for the French New Wave producer Georges de Beauregard. Among his duties was to promote such films as Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Doulos (1962) and Jean-Luc Godard's Le Mépris (1963). He also worked as a film critic, on such distinguished review papers as Les Cahiers du cinéma.

Having started out as an assistant with Jean-Pierre Melville on Léon Morin, prêtre (1961), Tavernier made his directing debut in 1964 with sketches in two anthology films: Les Baisers and La Chance et l'Amour. He then worked as a co-screenwriter on Riccardo Freda's Coplan ouvre le feu à Mexico (1967) and Jean Leduc's Capitaine Singrid (1968). It wasn't until the mid-1970s that Tavernier properly began his filmmaking career. His debut feature, L'Horloger de Saint-Paul (1974), is an atmospheric adaptation of a Georges Simenon novel, filmed in the director's beloved hometown of Lyon. This not only won Tavernier considerable critical acclaim but also two prestigious awards: the 1973 Prix Louis Delluc and the Silver Berlin Bear at the 1974 Berlin International Film Festival.

L'Horloger de Saint-Paul marked the beginning of Tavernier's long and fruitful collaboration with the actor Philippe Noiret, who would appear in nine of his films, most notably Coup de torchon (1981) and La Vie et rien d'autre (1989). It was also the first occasion that Tavernier worked with screenwriters Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost, who had previously scripted numerous films of the 1940s and '50s, including several classics of French cinema. The reputation of Aurenche and Bost had been tarnished by a certain film critic (François Truffaut) who, in his famous article Une certaine tendance du cinéma français, cited them as two of the contributors to the decline of French cinema in the 1950s. Tavernier did not share Truffaut's view and allowed Aurenche and Bost to redeem themselves late in their careers by scripting many of his best films.

Tavernier's next film was Que la fête commence... (1975), the first of his big budget costume dramas in which he indulged his passion for French history at its most colourful. Another critical success, the film was nominated for seven Césars, winning awards for Best Director and Best Screenplay. Tavernier's subsequent forays into historical pageantry include La Passion Béatrice (1987), La Fille de d'Artagnan (1994) and La Princesse de Montpensier (2010). Tavernier's third film Le Juge et l'Assassin (1976) is also a period film, but one with a modern political subtext, the first occasion on which the director expresses his mistrust of institutions and those who occupy positions of authority. The film, one of Tavernier's best, won two Césars, for its screenplay (another Aurenche collaboration) and its lead actor Michel Galabru.

Of the ten films that Tavernier made over the next decade, there are three that particularly stand out, and they could hardly be more different. La Mort en direct (a.k.a. Death Watch) (1980) is a science-fiction drama which was intended to raise awareness of the threat of media intrusion into our everyday lives but which in fact turned out to be chillingly prescient of the rise in reality television. Featuring Romy Schneider in arguably her last great screen role, the film was a hit with both critics and audiences, and it remains one of Tavernier's most disturbing films. Coup de torchon (1981) is a front-frontal assault on France's shameful colonial past, an inspired black comedy that bolstered the international reputations of Philippe Noiret and Isabelle Huppert. The film's controversial subject matter could explain why it failed to win a single César, in spite of being nominated in ten categories. Tavernier would later return to the colonialist theme with his revelatory documentary on the Algerian War, La Guerre sans nom (1992). Another critical and commercial success was Un dimanche à la campagne (1984), a nostalgic drama that offers a thoughtful contemplation on the generational divide and mortality. The film is among Tavernier's most popular and was rewarded with three Césars, including an award for its screenplay. Another interesting work of this period is Tavernier's tribute to jazz saxophonist Dexter Gordon,'Round Midnight (1986).

La Vie et rien d'autre (a.k.a. Life and Nothing But) (1989) is the first of Tavernier's films in which the director evokes the horrors and futility of war. A sombre portrait of the aftermath of WWI, the film is easily one of Tavernier's finest, partly on account of its remarkable central performance from Philippe Noiret. A major critical success, the film attracted an audience of over 1.5 million in France and received 11 César nominations, although it only won in the categories of Best Actor (Noiret) and Best Music. Tavernier's subsequent war film Capitaine Conan (1996) would be even more uncompromising and is the first war film to realistically convey the psychological and emotional strains of modern warfare. This film won Tavernier his second Best Director César.

In the 1990s, Tavernier's cinema showed an increasing preoccupation with contemporary social problems, ranging from drug trafficking (L.627, 1992) and juvenile delinquency (L'Appât, 1995) to the failure of institutions to deal with real issues (Ça commence aujourd'hui, 1999). The realism that Tavernier brings to these films, particularly L.627, marks a distinct break from his earlier work and was part of a wider trend in French cinema in the 1990s to engage with important social problems. L'Appât took the Golden Bear award at the 1995 Berlin International Film Festival and is the most violent and shocking of Tavernier's films, a sobering reflection of a society that has lost its ability to instil moral qualities in its young.

Since 2000, Bertrand Tavernier has been less active as a filmmaker but continues to make films that are provocative, entertaining and of exceptional quality. Laissez-passer (2002) is his most epic film to date, a meticulously well-researched exposé of the French filmmaking industry at the time of the Nazi Occupation revolving around the screenwriter Jean Aurenche and the now all-but forgotten filmmaker Jean Devaivre. This was followed by Holy Lola (2004), a poignant account of a couple's struggle to adopt a child in Cambodia which is sensitively scripted by Tavernier and his daughter Tiffany. In the Electric Mist (2009) is Tavernier's first English language American film, a routine thriller which touches on another of the director's pet hates, racism. With his most recent film, the lavish period piece La Princesse de Montpensier (2010), Tavernier's career has virtually come full circle, although this latest historical romp is striking in its modernity. Despite his many other interests and commitments, Bertrand Tavernier shows no sign of wanting to hang up his clapperboard just yet.

Filmography

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