At least he never set foot on the wall.
From his beginnings, Bertrand Tavernier asserted himself as a solid craftsman, turning his back on the then fashionable affèteries.
For his first film, he adapts Simenon and enlists the services of Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost, screenwriters who were the pet peeves of the new wave.
Read also: Death of director Bertrand Tavernier at 79
The watchmaker of Saint-Paul
(1974)
takes place in Lyon, his birthplace.
We see it, we feel it, with its squares, its quays, its markets.
We should count the number of sequences at the table, where the guests comment on the election results in a cork, discuss the death penalty and Guy Lux in front of a sapper's apron or joke about Michel Droit while pouring himself a glass of Beaujolais.
There is Noiret, who will be the director's faithful accomplice.
The life of this quiet trader is turned upside down when his son kills the security guard of a factory where his girlfriend worked.
Attentive to his time - prostitutes demonstrated in the streets - Tavernier describes the relationship between a father and his boy, their difficulty in communicating, their sudden solidarity which perhaps resembles silent love.
To read also: Bertrand Tavernier: "I want to rehabilitate the western"
Royal Philippe Noiret as regent
The director then abandons contemporary drama to immerse himself in the Regency with
Let the party begin
(1975)
which is undoubtedly his best film.
His favorite actor bursts out there in a polished, elegant Philippe d'Orléans.
The debauchery and the fine dinners smelled of rottenness and everyone was stopping their noses.
The revolt was brewing and the Marquis de Pontcallec (Jean-Pierre Marielle, irreproachable) dreamed of a Breton republic while Abbé Dubois (Jean Rochefort, devilishly sinuous) treated his ulcer with aphorisms: “
I am stingy.
It's the only vice that costs me nothing.
”Tavernier tried to remind several times that the Regent's doctor was called Chirac.
The Judge and the Murderer
(1976)
earned Galabru his stripes as a serious, almost tragic actor.
In the mountains of Ardèche in 1893, this anarchist murderer wrote "
Hail Mary mother of heaven
" in the snow, raped shepherds and shepherdesses before slaughtering them, played cat and mouse with his judge (Noiret, obviously, mustache and bowler hat).
A fine old-fashioned duel which can be compared to that of "
Garde à vue
", but which Tavernier could not help ending with a strike with red flags, suddenly taking himself for the Bertolucci of
1900
.
Change of scenery with
Coup de torchon
(1981).
French West Africa 1938. Noiret is a policeman who doesn't arrest anyone, a total filth, spineless, twisted.
Eddy Mitchell does the rest, Isabelle Huppert the mistress, all a little forced, like Mocky light.
Life and Nothing Else
(1989)
and
The Princess of Montpensier
(2010)
.
The best Tavernier, now for eternity.
As a tribute,
Le Figaro
returns, below, in pictures on the greatest films of Bertrand Tavernier, from
L'Horloger de Saint-Paul
to
La Princesse de Montpensier
, including
Let the party begin ...
L'Horloger de Saint-Paul
by Bertrand Tavernier, in 1974, inspired by the novel by Georges Simenon L'Horloger d'Everton
Let the party begin ...
by Bertrand Tavernier, released in 1975, with Philippe Noiret, Jean Rochefort, Jean-Pierre Marielle ...
The Judge and the Assassin
by Bertrand Tavernier, in 1976
Dishcloth
by Bertrand Tavernier, in 1981
The Life and Nothing Else
by Bertrand Tavernier, in 1989. Nominated eleven times for the César, he received that of the best actor and the best music in 1990.
La Princesse de Montpensier
by Bertrand Tavernier, released in 2010