Tavernier - Voyage

Voyage à travers le cinéma français/  Journey Through French Cinema 

Script & directed by Bertrand Tavernier     

   

 It’s kind of suitable that the end of my European movie excursion should be Bertrand Tavernier's Voyage a travers le cinema francais his three hour plus answer to the Martin Scorsese films about Scorsese’s discovery of US and Italian movies. The Taverrnier documentary arrived with a Gaumont logo stating “from the very first...” and packed the 2.00 o’clock at UGC Les Halles.

The opening montage, of great shots from key movies beautifully reproduced, immediately wins over an audience. We are going to see usually exceptional material in the correct format. The film isn’t an account of Tavernier’s own work or a run through of French cinema history. It’s about the director’s discovery of French movies. We kick off with the story of WW2 shortages leaving young Taverier with TB for which he was sent to a sanatorium where they ran Le Dernier atout long before he became aware of it’s director Jaques Becker and his career, of which we get an analysis. We learn that Jean Paul Gaultier watches Becker’s Falbalas every year for it’s analysis of the fashion industry.

Starting with Tavernier’s dad filmed in the family garden the director used for l'Horloger de St. Paul, autobiographical elements like the Nickleodeon Cine Club and the time spent in the now demolished Cinémas du Quartier, along with Tavernier’s work on enthusiast
movie writing get coverage, in with his job as assistant to Jean Pierre Melville, who told Tavernier he was the worst assistant he’d ever had and introduced him to a producer friend who put him to work as a press officer. Missing is the story about Tavernier telling Sam Peckinpah that he might be a great director but he was a total menace to publicity, winning Tavernier the choice of promoting any film the approving  producer had on his books.

Also under the microscope are Jean Renoir (“How could the nephew of Auguste Renoir become an American citizen?”) and Jean Gabin, with whom Tavernier did a long interview and whose career is analysed giving as much time to films like Gas Oil as the acknowledged masterpieces. Tavernier finds it revealing that Gabin produced the reviled le Chat. 

Jean Gabin late career.

The Von

 Particular emphasis goes to Edmond T. Greville (“the ultimate cult director” – well his
1937 Mlle Docteur is better than the Pabst film it cannibalizes). I loved the story of
Greville being told by Von Stroheim that the actor intended to play an amputee in  his role in Menaces and the director, desperate, coming up with the half  mask to cover the character's WW1 injuries - the Janus face, War and Peace. The Von was totally absorbed with the mask idea and forgot about the amputee thing.

The surprise is when we get to Eddie Constantine, whose films are to Tavernier a break with the tepid French crime movies that precede  them. The punch up with the director in John Berry’s 1955 Ça va barder - gets as much time as Alphaville.

Voyage ends surprisingly with a long section on French film music repeating Trufaut’s endorsement of Maurice Jaubert, though I’m puzled how Tavernier can say that Le Jour se leve has no theme when the same nine note phrase repeats from the titles to the ending even coming up as the music behind Jules Berry’s music hall dog act.  Tavernier rightly picks out the great Joseph Kosma (triply forbidden to work on Carné’s Les Enfants du paradis as a Jew, a Communist and a fugitive, but still providing the music for the mime scenes) and resolves the question of why, earlier in this production, the ending of Renoir’s Partie de Campagne wasn’t shown when Tavernier described it as the most touching scene in the cinema.

Watching his documentary is like talking to Tavernier himself. I keep on wanting to disagree with what he's saying while admiring the passion and effort behind his choices and there's always the odd moment of connection - our shared delight in Delannoy's 1939 "Von Sternbergian" Macao, l’enfer du jeu which gets early prominence equal to Renoir and Gabin - and Eddie Constantine and Jean Sacha.

I sweat on it turning up locally with subtitles. Part Two is said to be on the way.