Tavernier, Bertrand

(1941- )

   Actor, director, film critic, producer, and screenwriter. Bertrand Tavernier is one of France's most acclaimed directors. He began as a cinéphile and film critic for Positif and Cahiers du cinéma and as an assistant to Jean-Pierre Melville. His first feature film, L'horloger de Saint Paul (1974), won the Prix Louis-Delluc and a Silver Berlin Bear. The scenario for the film was written by Pierre Bost and Jean Aurenche, two writers who represented the tradition de qualité critiqued by François Truffaut. A crime or detective film, L'horloger de Saint-Paul stars Philippe Noiret, the actor with whom Tavernier would shoot several successful films.

   Tavernier's next feature, Que la fête commence . . . (1975), won Césars for Best Director and Best Screenplay at the inauguration of the César Awards in 1976. Tavernier also won Best Screenplay at the César Awards for his third feature, Le Juge et l'assassin (1976). In the 1980s, Tavernier became one of the most prominent directors of the heritage film. Some critics argue that his films tend to be nostalgic, while others detect more subversive representations of French history. His 1981 film Coup de Torchon was inspired by Jim Thompson's Pop.1280. Tavernier transported Thompson's crime novel, which is set in the American South, to colonial French West Africa of the 1930s. Lynn Higgins has also established that the film reproduces scenes from the legendary American Western The Virginian (1923).

   Another example of a Tavernier heritage film is his adaptation of Pierre Bost's novel, Un dimanche à la campagne (1984). The film won a César for Best Adaptation and the award for Best Director at Cannes. It was also nominated for a Golden Palm. Tavernier's interest in musical history is demonstrated in his documentary Mississippi Blues (1984), codirected with Robert Parrish in the United States, and Round Midnight (1986), a feature about an African American jazz musician (played by Dexter Gordon) in Paris in 1959. These films were followed by a historical feature set in medieval France, La passion Béatrice (1987). Tavernier's heritage film about World War I, La vie et rien d'autre (1989), won the British Film Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. Critics have argued that Tavernier's next film, Daddy Nostalgie (1990), consciously plays with the conventions of the nostalgia/heritage genre. In the 1990s Tavernier was engaged, along with other filmmakers and actors, in the mouvement des sans-papiers, a series of protests against attempts to deport African immigrants without legal papers. Several of his 1990s films engage in artistic social criticism. Tavernier's documentary, La guerre sans nom (1991), broaches the previously taboo and politically charged subject of the Algerian War. His feature L.627 (1992), like Mathieu Kassovitz's 1995 film La Haine, casts a critical lens on violent police tactics.

   In 1994, Tavernier returned to heritage and cast Noiret in La fille d'Artagnan (1994). This was followed by L'appât(1995), which won a Golden Berlin Bear. His success continued with Capitaine Conan (1996), for which he received the César for Best director in 1997. It was followed by Ça commence aujourd'hui (1999), Laissez-passer (2002), which features Jean Aurenche in a leading role, and Holy Lola (2003). Tavernier was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Istanbul International Film Festival in 2001. In addition to winning numerous international film awards, he has been nominated for more than fifteen Césars.

   Historical Dictionary of French Cinema by Dayna Oscherwitz & Mary Ellen Higgins