Bertrand Tavernier 9781526141859

Citation preview

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Bertrand Tavernier

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 1

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

French Film Directors

diana holmes and robert ingram  series editors dudley andrew  series consultant Chantal Akerman  marion schmid Auterism from Assayas to Ozon: five directors  kate ince Jean-Jacques Beineix  phil powrie Luc Besson  susan hayward Bertrand Blier  sue harris Catherine Breillat  douglas keesey Robert Bresson  keith reader Leos Carax  garin dowd and fergus daley Claude Chabrol  guy austin Henri-Georges Clouzot  christopher lloyd Jean Cocteau  james williams Claire Denis  martine beugnet Marguerite Duras  renate günther Georges Franju  kate ince Jean-Luc Godard  douglas morrey Mathieu Kassovitz  will higbee Diane Kurys  carrie tarr Patrice Leconte  lisa downing Louis Malle  hugo frey Georges Méliès  elizabeth ezra François Ozon  andrew asibong Maurice Pialat  marja warehime Jean Renoir  martin o’shaughnessy Alain Resnais  emma wilson Jacques Rivette  douglas morrey and alison smith Alain Robbe-Grillet  john phillips Eric Rohmer  derek schilling Coline Serreau  brigitte rollet Bertrand Tavernier  lynn anthony higgins André Téchiné  bill marshall François Truffaut  diana holmes and robert ingram Agnès Varda  alison smith Jean Vigo  michael temple

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 2

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

French Film Directors

Bertrand Tavernier Lynn Anthony Higgins

Manchester University Press manchester

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 3

12/10/2011 16:25

Copyright © Lynn Anthony Higgins 2011 The right of Lynn Anthony Higgins to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA, UK www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for isbn 978 0 7190 5922 3 hardback

First published 2011 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset in Scala with Meta display by Koinonia, Manchester

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 4

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

This one is for Julian, my Number One Son and movie buddy

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 5

12/10/2011 16:25

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 6

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Contents

list of plates series editors’ foreword acknowledgements 1 Tavernier and the ‘merveilleux lyonnais’

page viii ix xi 1

2 A filmmaker in his generation

26

3 Portraits of the artist

63

4 Tavernier’s historiography

115

5 The documentary gaze

187

6 Citizen Tavernier 244 filmography 264 select bibliography 280 index 283

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 7

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

List of plates

Cover photo – Portrait of Bertrand Tavernier in a Lyon Mural (Photo: Kieran Murphy) 1 The filmmaker in his native Lyon (Photo: Carole Lange) page 107 2 Bertrand interviews his father in Lyon’s Parc de la Tête d’Or (Still from Lyon le regard intérieur) 107 3 Noiret & Rochefort in the Parc de la Tête d’Or (Photo: Etienne George) 108 4 Autochrome of Madame Auguste Lumière (1907) (Photo: Institut 108 Lumière collection) 5 Sabine Azéma as Irène Ladmiral (1984) (Photo: Robert Doisneau) 109 6 Laurence Cuers and her father (Jean Dasté) (Photo: Carole Lange) 110 7 Caroline and Daddy: “These Foolish Things” (Photo: Jeanne Louise Buillard) 110 8 Béatrice implores, but the statue remains mute (Photo: Georges Pierre) 111 9 ‘Macache, bono, bézef !’ (Photo: Etienne George) 111 10 Isabelle Huppert as Rose leading the people (Photo: Etienne George) 112 11 Conan and Norbert (Photo: Etienne George) 112 12 Tavernier and Noiret during the filming of La Vie et rien d’autre (Photo: Etienne George) 113 13 La Mort en direct: Katherine Mortenhoe’s death for sale (Photo: Etienne George) 114 14 Ça commence aujourd’hui: Daniel (or is it Torreton?) is a teacher (Photo: Jürgen Vollmer) 114 15 Hogman Patin (Buddy Guy) knows more than it is safe to tell (Still from Dans La Brume électrique) 114

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 8

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Series editors’ foreword

To an anglophone audience, the combination of the words ‘French’ and ‘cinema’ evokes a particular kind of film: elegant and wordy, sexy but serious – an image as dependent upon national stereotypes as is that of the crudely commercial Hollywood blockbuster, which is not to say that either image is without foundation. Over the past two decades, this generalized sense of a significant relationship between French identity and film has been explored in scholarly books and articles, and has entered the curriculum at university level and, in Britain, at A-level. The study of film as art-form and (to a lesser extent) as industry, has become a popular and widespread element of French Studies, and French cinema has acquired an important place within Film Studies. Meanwhile, the growth in multiscreen and ‘art-house’ cinemas, together with the development of the video industry, has led to the greater availability of foreign-language films to an English-speaking audience. Responding to these developments, this series is designed for students and teachers seeking information and accessible but rigorous critical study of French cinema, and for the enthusiastic filmgoer who wants to know more. The adoption of a director-based approach raises questions about auteurism. A series that categorizes films not according to period or to genre (for example), but to the person who directed them, runs the risk of espousing a romantic view of film as the product of solitary inspiration. On this model, the critic’s role might seem to be that of discovering continuities, revealing a necessarily coherent set of themes and motifs which correspond to the particular genius of the individual. This is not our aim: the auteur perspective on film, itself most clearly articulated in France in the early 1950s, will be interrogated in certain volumes of the series, and, throughout, the director will be treated as one highly significant element in a complex process of film production and reception which includes socio-economic and political determinants, the work of a large and highly

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 9

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

x  series editors’ foreword skilled team of artists and technicians, the mechanisms of production and distribution, and the complex and multiply determined responses of spectators. The work of some of the directors in the series is already well known outside France, that of others is less so – the aim is both to provide informative and original English-language studies of established figures, and to extend the range of French directors known to anglophone students of cinema. We intend the series to contribute to the promotion of the formal and informal study of French films, and to the pleasure of those who watch them.

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 10

diana holmes robert ingram

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Acknowledgements

The pleasure of discovery is magnified when it is shared, and so I am happy to acknowledge the many friends and colleagues who have encouraged this project: Grace An, Dudley Andrew, Margaret Burland, Kate Conley, Mary Desjardins, Sam DiIorio, Bruce Duncan, Jill Forbes, Gerd Gemunden, Joe Golsan, Mary Jean Green, Sue Harris, Dalton Krauss, Lawrence Kritzman, David LaGuardia, Al LaValley, Amy Lawrence, Pierre Léglise-Costa, Ivone Margulies, Martin O’Shaughnessy, Pani Norindr, Bill Pence, Nathalie Rachlin, Keith Reader, Emanuel Rota, Ralph Schoolcraft, Geneviève Sellier, Dina Sherzer, Mathilde Sitbon, Jonathan Smolin, Richard Stamelman, Andrea Tarnowski, Bruno Tollon, Tom Trezise, Steven Ungar, Roxana Verona, Phil Watts, Mark Williams, and Kathy Wine. Each of you contributed something unique, and I am grateful for your generous conversation and your suggestions. I have benefited from opportunities to present my work at the Universities of Texas (Austin), Texas A&M, Pittsburgh, Princeton, Paris VIIISaint-Denis, the CUNY Graduate Center, Oberlin College, Williams College, the University of Minnesota Center for European Studies, London’s Center for Cinema Studies, and the Colloquia for 20th and 21st Century French and Francophone Studies. I am also grateful to the Borchard Foundation and the Salzburg Seminar and to the staff of the Bibliothèque du Film, the Institut Lumière, and Little Bear. All translations are my own, unless otherwise indicated. At Dartmouth, my work has been supported by the Parents Research Professorship and the Israel Evans Professorship. My students have been eager and able collaborators. Four very special students deserve individual mention: Rebecca Leffler, Tracey Van Dorpe, Joe DeBonis, and Emily Kane. Without technical and moral support from Tom Garbelotti, Susan

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 11

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

xii  acknowledgements Bibeau, Jeff Hawkins, Anthony Helm, and Jason Nash in Arts and Humanities Resources at Dartmouth, and from Carol Peper and Phyllis Ford in French and Italian, this project would never have seen the light of day. I would also like to thank Kathy Hart at Dartmouth’s Hood Museum of the Arts for her interest and her help. Portions of this book have been previously published, and I am happy to acknowledge the editors of Contemporary French Civilization (24: 2, fall 2000), L’Esprit Créateur (33: 1, spring 1993), French Cultural Studies (14: 3, fall 2003), South Central Review (22: 2, summer 2005), and Studia Filmoznawcze (spring 2004) for permission to reprint. My life continues to be enriched by Roland and Julian, who watched the movies with me, offered insightful suggestions, and cheered me on. Finally, I want to thank Bertrand Tavernier for his graciousness and his art. Like most academic research projects, this one sent me off in unexpected directions. Following in Tavernier’s footsteps involved delving into literary and archival sources and film history, of course, but also required me to learn about such topics as the organization of the French police, immigration and adoption law, the abolition of the death penalty, Breton separatism, the invention of color photography, the importation of coffee, music theory, and the history of matches! Although I met Tavernier on several occasions, I decided early on not to interview him. He has been extensively interviewed already, but mostly, I wanted to concentrate on the films themselves.

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 12

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

1 Tavernier and the ‘merveilleux lyonnais’ ‘Un film est comme un repas.’ Bertrand Tavernier

Bertrand Tavernier’s substantial oeuvre – twenty-one feature films, six documentaries, and several shorts since 1974 – could hardly be more varied. The filmmaker seeks to challenge himself in different ways with each film, refusing to be pigeonholed: ‘I need every new project to be the opposite of whatever preceded it, and yet to draw on what preceded it too,’ he explains. ‘I always want to head off in a new direction’ (Ciment and Herpe 1999: 84). Among the protagonists he brings to life in his fiction films can be found a nineteenthcentury serial killer, a colonial sheriff in a West African village, a jazz saxophonist, an impressionist painter, a filmmaker, a couple seeking to adopt a child in Cambodia, a schoolteacher undergoing an identity crisis, several soldiers from the First World War, a medieval knight, the Regent Philippe d’Orléans, a Lyonnais clockmaker, and the imaginary daughter of d’Artagnan. His choice of genres is equally eclectic: intimist portrait, sweeping historical drama, science fiction, literary adaptation, and documentary all fall within his purview. Some films are the product of long intellectual and artistic gestation, while others emerge from the heat of debate. For example, November 2001 marked the release of Histoires de vies brisées: Les ‘Double-peine’ de Lyon, a documentary investigating the plight of legal immigrants facing deportation. Less than two months later, another Tavernier film hit the Parisian screens: Laissez-passer, a historical drama about the filmmaking industry during the German Occupation. This second film is a carefully crafted work of art, while the first was assembled quickly in response to current events.

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 1

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

2  bertrand tavernier Yet in all its diversity, Tavernier’s oeuvre is unified by a recognizable constellation of ideas at its core. All his films are animated by the director’s love of his characters and by his idiosyncratic cocktail of enthusiasm and outrage. He is driven by a sincere commitment to making a difference. The larger-than-life passions and opinions he brings to the screen, in combination with his outspoken public activism, call to mind Emile Zola or Victor Hugo, figures who will make more than one appearance in these pages. ‘Je n’ai pas de solutions. Je filme ce qui me fait mal, me bouleverse, me choque,’ Tavernier explained in a 1999 interview. He continues: Je partage l’opinion de D. W. Griffith, qui considérait qu’une caméra pouvait changer le monde. Je suis né à Lyon, la ville où le cinéma est né. Les frères Lumière ont envoyé des opérateurs partout à travers la planète pour montrer le monde au monde. Je m’inscris dans cette tradition. (Raspiengeas 1999: 18)1

There are continuities of mood and style, too: among his signatures is an exquisite nostalgia that manifests itself in the backwardlooking melancholy of voiceover narration or in tracking shots of a vehicle traveling across a spectacular sunset. Whether fiction or documentary, Tavernier’s stories are character-driven, and his viewers learn to recognize his sensitivity to the rhythm of events and people – their ‘petite musique,’ as Monsieur Ladmiral, the impressionist painter of Un dimanche à la campagne (1984), puts it. Tavernier always seeks to give visual depth and social context, bringing to mind one of his most admired models in both aesthetic and political sensibility, Jean Renoir. Panoramic shots scan a horizon in order to situate characters in their larger geographical and affective landscape, and even interior decors are carefully furnished in order to reveal their inhabitants’ complexities and nuances. At other moments, his restless camera more readily recalls the New Wave filmmakers’ tendency to run in helter-skelter pursuit after a character, whose quest is conveyed through tracking shots. The French term, un travelling, should be taken literally in ­Tavernier’s case, as he is always curious, always hurrying off somewhere to find out. Along the way, the viewer notes his conscientious attention to the ethical implications of framing, 1 ‘I have no solutions. I film what causes me pain. I agree with D. W. Griffith, who believed a camera could change the world. I was born in Lyon, the birthplace of cinema. The Lumière brothers sent cameramen around the planet in order to show the world to the world. I belong to that tradition.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 2

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

tavernier and the ‘merveilleux lyonnais’  3 shot length, editing, and other artistic choices; he is painfully aware, as he once remarked, that ‘On ne tourne pas impunément’ (Capitaine Conan, DVD interview).2 In short, despite his range of genres and the variety of his subject matter, Tavernier’s work is of a piece. The corpus of his films is animated by a strong auteurist vision that is at once aesthetic, intellectual, emotional, social, and moral. It is the purpose of this book to describe that vision. The very coherence of Tavernier’s oeuvre poses dilemmas, however, to anyone trying to present a sequential account of it. Because the films are intensely personal (although not autobiographical), a number of themes return insistently. For example, France’s colonial past is evoked in nearly every film, albeit in very different ways and for different purposes. Similarly, family dynamics and questions about the powers and responsibilities of art inform all his work. As a result of such convergences, neither a strictly thematic nor a chronological approach does justice to both the unity and the evolution of his corpus. Most book-length studies about Tavernier thus far (Douin, Hay, Raspiengeas) have proceeded chronologically, treating his career according to decades, periods, or individual films. One exception is Bion’s 1984 book, Bertrand Tavernier: Cinéaste de l’émotion, which portrays the filmmaker through an anatomy of a single film during the process of its creation. Bion’s study of emotion in Un dimanche à la campagne illuminates Tavernier’s subsequent work. Emily Zants, too, emphasizes the role of emotion in her study of Tavernier’s ‘fractured narrative and bourgeois values.’ All his critics agree about the centrality of character. Narration, mise en scène, historical or invented situations, and geography provide the canvas or backdrop against which the characters evolve. At times, the plot might fail to cohere or to conclude satisfactorily, but compelling characters, the reality of their emotions, and the logic of their motivation carry the story. Instead of either a chronological or a thematic organization, the chapters ahead cluster the films using a broad concept of genre. Chapter 2 situates Tavernier in terms of his generation, the one that came of age during the wars of decolonization and the social and cultural upheavals that culminated in the ‘events’ of May ’68. His first feature, L’Horloger de Saint-Paul (1974), foregrounds ­miscommunication between a father and a son, against a specific social backdrop. This film invites us to examine intergenerational 2 ‘filming is never innocent.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 3

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

4  bertrand tavernier relations both among Tavernier’s fictional characters and also within French cinema history. Chapter 3 highlights films exploring what it means to be an artist. Can a creative artist be true to his (or in one instance her) art while also fulfilling responsibilities to family, job, and society? How is creativity shaped by the historical moment? Here, we will also come to appreciate how Tavernier’s passion for other arts – painting, photography, music, poetry – enriches his filmmaking. Chapter 4 groups together Tavernier’s numerous historical fictions under the umbrella of melodrama. As many commentators have noted, Tavernier is drawn to periods of transition. He shows us dramatic historical tipping points – from the end of the Middle Ages in La Passion Béatrice (1987) to the Occupation in Laissez-passer (2002) – when social categories are in flux, and radical change can be envisioned. Values prove ambiguous, and the fiber and complexity of the individual’s personality come into focus. At such moments, both history and fictional plot (both Histoire and histoire) appear openended, giving us opportunities to examine Tavernier’s conception of narration. Crises of masculinity in transition will be of particular interest here, as will representations of heroism. Chapter 5 examines a documentary impulse that runs through all Tavernier’s cinematic output. His straightforward documentaries will be evoked here, along with fiction films containing a documentary dimension. These films offer opportunities to note how Tavernier’s work has evolved over time, and how the historical contexts in which his art has developed have influenced his choice of subjects and his manner of filming. Tavernier began his career at the end of the Pompidou years and produced a film almost every year through the Giscard d’Estaing and Mitterrand eras. Although he has not been directly involved in electoral politics, nor does he claim any party affiliation, his political sympathies fall solidly on the Left, with a pronounced anarchist streak. ‘La plupart des grands metteurs en scène,’ he observes, ‘sont toujours des gens qui ont fait du cinéma contre. [… ] Il faut toujours arracher quelque chose quand on fait un film: un peu de liberté. Il faut toujours s’opposer, s’opposer à des diktats à la mode’ (Tavernier interview 2006).3 An inveterate 3 ‘The important filmmakers tend to be those who make movies against something. […] You always have to wrench something free when you make a film. You have to combat the fashionable diktats.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 4

12/10/2011 16:25

tavernier and the ‘merveilleux lyonnais’  5

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

contestataire, he is deeply engaged in his country’s social debates and especially its cultural politics. Studying the documentary dimension of his work and its activist implications will demonstrate the extent to which his work can be understood within a tradition of engagement. Finally, chapter 6 will spotlight Tavernier’s role as public citizen and advocate for the cinema – especially for French national cinema – and how this advocacy has made itself felt throughout his career.

Biography of a cinephile Paris may be the ‘City of Lights,’ but Lyon, the home town of the Lumière brothers, was the birthplace of cinema and also, on 25 April 1941, of Bertrand René Maurice Tavernier. Although as a young boy he moved to the capital with his parents and two younger sisters, his native Lyon, with its eccentric geography, history, local traditions, and self-presentation, forms an important cornerstone of the filmmaker’s identity. Bertrand is the product of two long-established middle-class Lyonnais families: his father, René Tavernier, descends from a line of professionals and public officials. His mother, Geneviève DumontCotte, hails from a dynasty of the silk-makers for which Lyon has been famous since the Renaissance. Tavernier counts among his earliest memories the flares of the Liberation, viewed from the terrace of the family home on the rue Chambovet in the hilly neighborhood known as Montchat, on the city’s eastern edge. He will often evoke the distinctive quality of the light in Lyon as a special inspiration, and the city plays a major role in his (and his characters’) most introspective moments. Beyond the immediate family, Bertrand’s two grandmothers represent childhood reference points in geography and society. The house belonging to Mamine (Hélène Tavernier) stood on the wide Avenue Félix-Faure, in Lyon’s bustling and commercial 3rd arrondissement. A cultivated socialite, she was the artist among the grandparents, and she also contributed a note of wit and fun. With her, Bertrand made his first forays into the cinema houses of Lyon. Mamé (Marie Dumont), on the other hand, lived on the sycamore-bordered Avenue Foch, in an elegant older neighborhood a few short blocks from the Rhône and not much farther from the Parc de la Tête d’Or, whose deer preserve Tavernier calls his ‘favorite place.’ Domestic and pious,

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 5

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

6  bertrand tavernier Mamé introduced Bertrand to the arts of the kitchen. Both grandmothers possessed extensive libraries. Even after the move to Paris, regular visits to his two Lyonnais grandmothers gave Bertrand the opportunity to learn the city’s tram routes and to memorize the evocative names of all the stops (Raspiengeas 2001: 45–6). Cinephile from an early age, Tavernier is possessed of an ‘invraisemblable culture cinématographique’4 according to his signature actor, Philippe Noiret (L’Horloger de Saint-Paul, DVD interview). His gargantuan appetite for films of all qualities, all genres, and all nationalities was, for this intense but timid and awkward boy, an education and a salvation. Worried by his mediocre schoolwork, the Tavernier parents sent their son at the age of eleven to be educated by the Oratorians in Pontoise, outside Paris, a move the young man experienced as an exile and an imprisonment. He took refuge, already, in books (especially historical novels) and the cinema. Escaping school on the weekends, he would take the bus into Paris and spend all his free time in the movie houses. Young Bertrand’s own apprenticeship as a voracious moviegoer closely paralleled the development of post-war cinephilia in the country at large. During the Occupation, the German authorities had exercised tight control over what films could be imported and shown, but the Liberation opened theaters to previously banned French films of the 1930s as well as a flood of British, Italian, Soviet, and especially American films of all genres and qualities. De Baecque considers the period between the Liberation and 1968 to be the golden age of French cinephilia, a time that conferred on cinema its status as ‘the seventh art’ and finally deemed filmmakers worthy of serious study (2003: 11). The discovery of John Ford, Orson Welles, and Gary Cooper was a revelation, as were the newly available albums by jazz greats such as Sidney Bechet, Louis Armstrong, Bud Powell, Lester Young, and Charlie Parker. As a result of the 1946 Blum-Byrnes agreement, France negotiated post-war reconstruction loans and won a monopoly for French films in French movie houses for four weeks quarterly (revised to five in 1948). This meant that the rest of the time, American films could dominate the theaters (although not yet the box office), and a fad for everything American gradually took hold. 1946 also saw the creation of the Centre National de la Cinématographie (CNC), and state aid to filmmakers encouraged production and export 4 ‘an unbelievable knowledge of cinema.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 6

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

tavernier and the ‘merveilleux lyonnais’  7 of French films. Cinema was a high profile and accessible form of entertainment, and cultural policy contributed significantly to debates about post-war national identity (Weiner 2002: 60–9). As part of its inflation-control policy, the Fourth Republic kept ticket prices low, and the public flocked to the theaters in even greater numbers than during the Occupation. 1947 – the year the Tavernier family moved to Paris – was and remains a record year for movie attendance in France, with 421 million tickets sold (Bosséno 1996: 69). When in 1957 Tavernier enrolled at the Lycée Henri IV in Paris’s Latin Quarter, he could avail himself of the Cinémathèque Française, then located on the nearby rue d’Ulm, and he often attended several showings a day with his friend Volker Schlöndorff. Cinema clubs, too, were in full swing by then. Launched by Louis Delluc in 1937, the ciné-club movement had been suppressed during the Occupation only to flourish with increased effervescence after the Liberation. In 1960, Tavernier and a few friends would create the Nickel-Odéon, which they affiliated with the Fédération Française des Ciné-Clubs, and where they would regale themselves with whatever films they could beg or borrow, often rescuing forgotten reels rotting in cellars. In this way, they became acquainted with the work of Budd Boetticher, Jules Dassin, Delmer Daves, John Ford, Samuel Fuller, Edmond T. Gréville, John Huston, Fritz Lang, Anthony Mann, Vincente Minelli, Max Ophüls, Roberto Rosselini, Douglas Sirk, and many others. The movies also provided a political education. ‘J’ai commencé à découvrir la politique grâce au cinéma américain,’ Tavernier confides. ‘J’ai appris le New Deal avec Les Raisins de la colère. J’ai eu envie d’en savoir plus sur la Prohibition, le régime Wilson, les rapports démocrates-républicains en voyant des films de gangsters et sur le génocide indien devant les westerns de Delmer Daves’ (Raspiengeas 2001: 70–1).5 He also learned about the McCarthy era, and many of the retrospectives he organized – at the Nickel-Odéon and much later at the Institut Lumière, a regional cinémathèque, museum, and research center in Lyon, which he helped to found and over which he continues to preside – have been motivated by a desire to support the work of formerly blacklisted artists. 5 ‘I began to discover politics thanks to American cinema. I learned about the New Deal from The Grapes of Wrath. I wanted to know more about Prohibition, the Wilson presidency, the Democrats and Republicans from watching gangster movies and about the Indian genocide from westerns by Delmer Daves.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 7

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

8  bertrand tavernier From these activities, it was only a few steps to a career in the cinema, and Bertrand was already eagerly jumping in with both feet. However, Tavernier père evinced extreme skepticism and issued an ultimatum: either Bertrand would attend law school, or he would pay his own way. His father proving immovable, Tavernier chose the latter option. He supported himself writing film criticism for small reviews and then eventually articles for emerging and visible venues such as Positif, Cahiers du cinéma, and Télérama. He was impressed by JeanPierre Melville’s Bob le flambeur, and his essay-interview championing Melville, published in February 1960 in L’Étrave, a student journal of cultural commentary that he co-founded, impressed the filmmaker sufficiently to offer the young journalist-cinephile a position as assistant for his next film, Léon Morin, prêtre (1961). The experience was not entirely uplifting: Melville’s style of directing was cold and controlling, irascible and dictatorial. The negative example nevertheless served later to confirm Tavernier in his own diametrically opposed working methods: collaborative, open to improvisation, collegial, warm, almost familial. ‘Tatave,’ as he is known to his intimates, accepts creative input from everyone on his team, from the scriptwriter and actors to the assistant grip. Melville was nonetheless willing to help out, as was another early mentor, Claude Sautet, by trying once again (unsuccessfully) to convince René Tavernier that the cinema was a profession worthy of his son. As director’s assistant and budding journalist, young Bertrand drew the attention of Georges de Beauregard, one of the most visionary and powerful producers of the era. Associated with the rise of the Nouvelle Vague, he had promoted, in addition to Melville, the careers of directors Godard, Chabrol, Demy, Varda, Rozier, Rivette, Schoendoerffer, and cinematographer Raoûl Coutard. In 1961, de Beauregard took Tavernier on as press attaché and then, in 1963, invited him to contribute to a collective ‘film à sketches’ entitled Les Baisers. The following year, again at de Beauregard’s instigation, Tavernier filmed a second sketch for another collective endeavor, La Chance et l’amour. The films drew little box-office enthusiasm and are rarely screened. Despite positive critical response to his own contributions, Tavernier was subsequently embarrassed by these early efforts. Although de Beauregard offered further opportunities, he decided to take time to learn and to mature, continuing his work as press attaché and journalist until 1972. During this hiatus, he conducted some of the

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 8

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

tavernier and the ‘merveilleux lyonnais’  9 interviews he would later publish under the auspices of the Institut Lumière under the title Amis américains: Entretiens avec les grands auteurs d’Hollywood (2008). In 1970, with Jean-Pierre Coursodon, he published an encyclopedia: 30 Ans de cinéma américain. Twenty-five years later, the revised edition of 50 Ans de cinéma américain (1995), contains over 1100 pages of film history, filmographies, and insightful analyses of individual artists and films. Also during this period, Tavernier took the time to marry Claudine (Colo) O’Hagan. Irish on her father’s side, French on her mother’s, Colo’s parents were friends of the Tavernier family. As passionate about the cinema as Bertrand, and as much a rebel against formal schooling, Colo planned from an early age to become a writer. De Beauregard served as witness at the couple’s winter 1965 wedding. Their son Nils was born later that year, and a daughter, Tiffany, followed two years later. Filmmaking quickly became a family affair. At the age of six, Tiffany made her first cameo appearance in the opening sequence of Tavernier’s first feature film. As an adult, she has served as his occasional assistant director, co-scriptwriter, and author of a novel that he adapted. Nils, for his part, helped in the conception of L.627 (1992) and plays a major role in La Fille de d’Artagnan (1994). He filmed the ‘making of’ documentary about his father’s 1996 Capitaine Conan and served as co-director of the 1996 documentary, De l’autre côté du Périph’. Since then, Nils has become a filmmaker in his own right. Colo has scripted or co-scripted several of Tavernier’s most lyrical films, and the two continued to work together even following their separation after fifteen years together. In 1977, when Tavernier decided to form his own production company with Frédéric Bourboulon, he named the company ‘Little Bear,’ after his wife’s nickname for him. Bear, yes. Little, no. Nothing about Tavernier is small: large and ungainly, his presence is nevertheless imposing not because of size or an imperious style, but by the scope and grandeur of his enthusiasms. He possesses the legendary Lyonnais gourmandise matched by an appetite for knowledge, for books, for movies, for experience, for friends, for conversation (especially about the cinema), and for involvement in controversies. He might be intimidating, were he not so genuine and likeable, so generous and supportive of other people and their projects, including this one (plate 1).

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 9

12/10/2011 16:25

10  bertrand tavernier

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Lyon, le regard intérieur (1988) Although he is outspoken about public issues and has granted many interviews, Tavernier is reticent about personal disclosure. Even to his friends, he talks about himself only in the most general of terms, so that actor-friend Claude Rich, for example, describes him as ‘pudique’ (‘modest,’ Nils Tavernier 2003). Nevertheless, a strong sense of the artist’s personality and even his intimate concerns can be felt in the films. Lyon, le regard intérieur is a good place to start, because it is the closest he is likely to come to self-portraiture. This film sets forth the filmmaker’s vision in both the literal and figurative meanings of the term: the core constellation of ideas that informs all Tavernier’s films is present here, and although he himself stays in the shadows, his signature techniques and the characteristic rhetoric of his imagination appear front and center. A 50-minute made-for-television documentary, Lyon, le regard intérieur takes the form of a conversation between Bertrand and his father René (b. 1915) about the history and personality of the city where the family traces its roots back to the sixteenth century. Even here, however, in one of the few works in which he appears onscreen, we most often see him from the back, or at the periphery, a soft-spoken and self-effacing interviewer. It was not surprising that the ‘Chroniques de France’ producers would turn to Lyon’s most famous filmmaker to capture in its series what in the film Tavernier père calls a ‘merveilleux lyonnais.’ At one point, the director suggests to what extent his vision of himself and his craft is bound up with his native city: ‘“A Lyon les ombres sont plus longues qu’ailleurs,”’ he says, quoting from one of his father’s poems. ‘Et ce Lyon de l’ombre, ce Lyon secret, je le sens profondément en moi. Il me dicte ma conduite et souvent celle de mes personnages.’6 The rest of Tavernier’s oeuvre bears out this statement: several of his protagonists live in Lyon and others make a pilgrimage there in order to regain a sense of stability and purpose. Several of his documentaries, too, are rooted in his Lyonnais identity. In fact, Tavernier’s notion of family extends to the Lumière family, whose home, like the Tavernier homestead, was destroyed to make room for urban renewal. The original factory belonging to the Lumière family, however, now houses 6 ‘The shadows in Lyon are longer than anywhere else. And I sense the presence of this shadowy, secret Lyon deep within myself. It dictates my own conduct and that of my characters.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 10

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

tavernier and the ‘merveilleux lyonnais’  11 the Institut Lumière (located on Lyon’s rue du Premier Film), thanks in large part to Tavernier’s lobbying efforts. An elected official once told Tavernier that his first film, L’Horloger de Saint-Paul, inspired the city to repair and preserve the architectural treasures of the Vieux Lyon where the film was set, a neighborhood which is now classified by UNESCO (Air France Magazine 2000: 84). The city has returned Tavernier’s affection, notably by including his portrait in one of its famous outdoor murals honoring the city’s luminaries (see the cover illustration). Throughout Lyon, le regard intérieur, the portrayal of Lyon also describes the filmmaker, who is a traditional Lyonnais at heart. Like the city’s typical citizens, Tavernier places a high value on loyalty to local customs, to family, and to friends. In addition to his highly developed appreciation of Lyon’s renown as a ‘ville gastronomique’ (as has been widely noted, many of his films include a meal scene), Tavernier shares his fellow Lyonnais’ reputed tendency toward introspection and nostalgia and toward a certain kind of modesty that downplays its accomplishments and hides its treasures. René Tavernier evokes the local legend of a golden statue, buried since antiquity at the site that bears its name: the Parc de la Tête d’Or. It is also René who advances the metaphor that gave the film its title: he compares the city to ‘une grande dame qui avance les yeux baissés, préoccupée de son regard intérieur.’7 Like Lyon, the film, too, unveils itself in layers: the ­invitation to make a documentary provided an opportunity for the son to interview his father who, already ailing, would die within the year. The filmmaker encourages René to speak about himself by asking him to talk about Lyon, and we get to know Bertrand in a similarly indirect fashion, through his interview with his father. Also contained within the film is a history lesson about the heroism of the local people during the German Occupation, and about René’s activities in the Resistance. The film begins with aerial shots gracefully caressing a painting of a landscape: a patchwork of fields in muted ochre, sand, and olive green outlined in black. Gradually the images assume the contours and detail of a river and bridges in summer, then winter, followed by hillsides dotted with red-tiled roofs, then a network of highways. Like the slow-moving camera, the accompanying music is meditative 7 ‘A great lady who walks with her gaze turned inward.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 11

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

12  bertrand tavernier and stately. Then the sounds and images of an orange speed train (TGV), arriving in the station just before sunrise, move diagonally across the screen from upper right to lower left. ‘En fait, j’ai conçu ce film comme un long travelling arrière’8 notes the filmmaker in a publicity statement (littlebearproduction.com). As already noted, we will do well to appreciate the ‘travelling’ or tracking shot as both technique and theme. The camera moves, of course, in this film’s sweeping panoramic shots over the cityscape, but Tavernier’s expositions often involve literal travel too, and his landscapes are frequently filmed from within a moving vehicle. Tavernier often mentions his fascination with trains. They serve as a nicely filmable social microcosm, with people from different backgrounds jumbled together. They also offer a powerful means of narrative exposition, as in Capitaine Conan, where they prove ‘un moyen formidable de montrer une armée.’9 Here in Lyon, le regard intérieur, the train’s arrival also serves as Tavernier’s homage to the Lyonnais roots of cinema: the shot is an exact quotation from the Lumière brothers’ Train Arriving in La Ciotat. A similar shot of a TGV diagonally crossing the screen behind the credits opens Tavernier’s first film, L’Horloger de Saint-Paul, also set in Lyon. Here in Lyon, le regard intérieur, the ultra-modern super-fast train marks the time that has intervened since 1895. It is also instructive to situate Lyon, le regard intérieur in relation to the ‘city symphonies’ of the 1920s. Described in one source as ‘lyrical documentaries,’ these films used the visual, spatial, and temporal dynamics of the film medium to paint a day in the life of a great city (Thompson and Bordwell 1994: 198–200). Combining documentary elements with experimental visual effects, the films foreground and frame elements of everyday life in ways that make them surprisingly new and artistic. For example, music and editing transform the shapes and sounds of machinery (factories, moving vehicles), giving them a poetic rhythm. Social class contrasts and everyday or ‘found’ art are important thematic components. Best-known examples of the genre include Alberto Cavalcanti’s Rien que les heures (1926); Marcel Carné’s Nogent, El Dorado du dimanche (1929); and Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929). Jean Vigo’s A propos de Nice (1930) incorporates social critique of wealthy patrons at a vacation spa, while Joris 8 ‘In fact, I imagined the film as a long receding tracking shot.’ 9 ‘a terrific way to introduce an army.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 12

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

tavernier and the ‘merveilleux lyonnais’  13 Ivens’s Rain (1929) paints the city of Amsterdam before, during, and after a rainstorm, recalling Claude Monet’s impressionist portrayals of the cathedral at Rouen as it evolved throughout the day and across the seasons. The genre was launched by Walter Ruttmann’s Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927), which opens with an early morning close-up of a river, followed by a train arriving in a station. The film goes on to document the city’s rhythms in five ‘acts,’ allowing the spectator to observe varying occupations, ages, sexes, and classes: the shops open, people go to work, break for lunch, shop, smoke, fight, use public transportation, consume meals, and attend plays, ballet, cabaret shows, and bars, and finally return home to bed. The film ends with a display of fireworks over the city. Lyon, le regard intérieur begins just before dawn with a train’s arrival in the station, and it includes visual social commentary (with interviews and voiceover, unlike the earlier silent movies). It too evolves through the day, ending with lush views of the city just after sunset. Given Tavernier’s initial assignment and the narrative shape he gives to his portrait of his native city, we should assume that Tavernier conceived his film with the city symphonies in mind. The conversation between the two generations of Tavernier men in Lyon, le regard intérieur is punctuated with images juxtaposing the city’s past with its present and identifying sites of memory and regret. Carriages moving sedately along wide boulevards as recorded by the Lumière brothers contrast with modern superhighways and traffic jams. Whereas the ‘horrible’ Crédit Lyonnais bank tower is a recent addition to the skyline, cherished landmarks – the tramway system, the Tavernier family home – have disappeared. Unable to save that house from demolition, Tavernier fought tirelessly to preserve the Lumière family homestead, now the Institut Lumière with Tavernier at its head. (The famous factory recorded in the Lumière brothers’ very first film disappeared decades earlier, a lapse in civic pride Tavernier considers inexcusable.) Strategies of evoking the past using the visual props of the present bring to mind Alain Resnais, who uses traveling shots of today’s landscapes (in Nuit et brouillard, 1956, for example, and Toute la mémoire du monde, 1956) combined with voiceover narration, which produces a tension between our distance from the past and its impact on the present. As the train image is replaced by the film’s title, Tavernier’s voice­­ over muses:

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 13

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

14  bertrand tavernier Dans les moments de doute, de remise en question ou d’angoisse, j’éprouve souvent le besoin de revenir me promener à Lyon, de revenir filmer Lyon. Peut-être qu’en recherchant ses racines, qu’en explorant ou en s’inventant des souvenirs, on peut cicatriser ses blessures. Je crois surtout que Lyon est une ville qui prédispose aux retours en arrière, une ville où l’on peut récapituler, se retrouver mieux que partout ailleurs. Parce que l’on s’y heurte sans cesse à la lancinante question du temps – du temps qui passe, ou du temps arrêté. Ce fut la première raison d’être de ce film, que de flâner à travers des souvenirs: les miens, bien sûr, mais surtout ceux de mon père. ‘Flânerie nostalgique à l’écart,’ comme l’a écrit Gabriel Chevalier, ‘d’une époque où tout allait à rebours de tout ce qu’on nous avait enseigné.’10

While Tavernier speaks in his own voice here, these reflections could as easily have come from the mouths of various of his fictional characters who, in moments of angst and doubt, make a nostalgic voyage of return (in time, in space), often to Lyon, to ‘interview’ an aging or ailing parent. The turbulent era referred to in the quotation above is that of the Occupation, when Lyon served as a hub of the Resistance. In that context, the elder Tavernier is a remarkable figure in his own right, with whom his son sympathizes and from whom he inherited some of the values apparent in his films. Although René Tavernier’s responses in the film are understated and anecdotal, it was during the Occupation that he made his most lasting contribution.11 Before the outbreak of war, he had settled in Paris and established his literary reputation with two volumes of poems in 1937 and 1938. After the 1940 defeat, René returned to Lyon and in October of 1941 assumed editorship of the literary review Confluences, created just four months previously and named in honor of the city’s location where the Rhone 10 ‘In moments of doubt or anxiety, I often feel the need to return to Lyon, to film Lyon. Perhaps by seeking our roots, by exploring or inventing memories, we can heal our wounds. I think Lyon is a city that encourages us to look backward, to sum up, making us feel more at home there than anywhere else. Because there, one perpetually stumbles over the piercing question of time – time that passes, time that stops. Such was this film’s initial raison d’être, a stroll down memory lane: my own memories, of course, but especially my father’s. ‘“A nostalgic stroll,’” as Gabriel Chevalier wrote, ‘“through an era where everything was topsy turvy from the way we had been taught.”’ 11 René continued as a journalist and poet after the war, served as president of the Pen club in France, and for many years wrote the ‘chronique littéraire’ in Lyon’s daily newspaper, Le Progrès (Raspiengeas 2001: 347–8).

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 14

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

tavernier and the ‘merveilleux lyonnais’  15 and the Saône rivers meet. One of only three non-clandestine literary journals that managed to promulgate a spirit of Resistance in the southern zone, the review united communists and Catholics, brought sympathizers from the university together with working writers, and drew such budding luminaries as Francis Ponge, Georges Sadoul, Joë Bousquet, and Claude Roy. Louis Aragon and his wife and fellow writer Elsa Triolet also supported the review, and for a brief time in 1943, the couple took refuge in the Tavernier home (Lottman 1982: 208–9; Sapiro 1999: 423–45, 512–28). The southern chapter of the Comité National des Ecrivains, a Resistance organization of writers, was founded and held its meetings chez Tavernier, where Albert Camus also made an occasional appearance. Pressed by his son, René Tavernier affirms that he and his companions considered Confluences to be part of a ‘Résistance intellectuelle.’ Elsewhere, he explains how in the face of military and political oppression, freedom of expression and the protection of the national culture were of paramount importance for the survival of national identity (Debû-Bridel 1970: 80–92). These same values are discernible in Bertrand’s films as well as in his public interventions on behalf of the French cinematic ‘patrimoine.’ Whereas in normal times there might have been rivalries between regions or generations, the hardships of the Occupation – and the ascendancy of the German-supported Nouvelle Revue Française – required networking and intergenerational solidarity among Resistance writers and publications (Sapiro 1999: 424). Established poets such as Eluard and Aragon offered their work to fledgling reviews and provided mentorship. René’s perspective was clearly inherited by his son, whose work similarly combines poetry and journalism, art and activism. A crusade to promote national culture motivates the director’s most passionate engagements in contemporary political and cultural arenas, for example his championing of national cinemas in resistance to Hollywood hegemony. And cross-generational alliances characterize both the content of many of Tavernier’s films and also his approach to assembling his creative team. In particular, his collaboration on several of his earliest films with screenwriting team Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost, prominent figures from an earlier generation of filmmakers, has been widely misunderstood and criticized, as we shall see. The history of Confluences is intertwined with that of the city, and so René’s memories provide vignettes of a period of conflict and

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 15

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

16  bertrand tavernier heroism. The Tavernier family’s roots in the city’s geography are illustrated by reference to a great-uncle Tavernier, an engineer, who built the Pont Wilson over the Rhone in the heart of Lyon, one of only a few among the city’s twenty-eight bridges the Germans failed to dynamite to cover their retreat in August 1944. René recalls that these explosions broke all the windows nearby, prompting him to invite Swiss journalist colleagues to view the city’s destruction. While in Lyon, the visiting journalists also witnessed the discovery of a mass grave at Bron, just beyond the city limits. While René recounts these anecdotes, the two men review moments in the history of Lyon in a montage of images taken from newsreels of the Occupation and Liberation, Lumière brothers’ street scenes, photographs, paintings, and clips from Tavernier’s own Lyon-based films. This interweaving of public and personal history is enriched by several literary and filmic sources. The first of these is Gabriel Chevallier, evoked in the film’s opening voiceover. Chevallier (1885–1969), a Lyonnais writer whom René undoubtedly knew, authored fictionalized memoirs of both World Wars. Among these books is Chemins de solitude (1945), composed during a similar backward-looking moment of ‘anxiety and doubt’ provoked by the German invasion and Occupation, and which motivated Chevallier, as it did René Tavernier, to return home to Lyon in order, as he puts it, to seek the advice of his ancestors. Chevallier explains in his preface that he took refuge in writing about his childhood and his combat service during the First World War as a way of escaping the shameful and frightening events of the present. Chevallier’s style shares with that of both Taverniers a mixture of nostalgia and indignation. The filmmaker, however, transposes Chevallier’s reflections on ‘la lancinante question du bonheur’ (Chevallier 1945)12 into his own meditation about ‘la lancinante question du temps.’ In Tavernier’s film as in Chevallier’s writing, there is a convergence of technique and theme: Tavernier’s term retour en arrière must be understood both as the French term for flashback and the intellectual and emotional exercise of memory and return to earlier generations, in an effort to understand and palliate the present. Also interviewed is Pierre Mérindol, another writer with roots in Lyon’s Resistance milieu. A journalist, Mérindol enjoyed a long career writing first for Franc-Tireur, then for Lyon’s principal daily newspaper, 12 ‘the piercing question of happiness.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 16

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

tavernier and the ‘merveilleux lyonnais’  17 Le Progrès, covering major world and regional events, including most recently at the time of this film, the trial in Lyon of Klaus Barbie, the Nazi ‘butcher of Lyon’ (Mérindol 1987). Barbie is infamous for the roundup (in the town of Caluire, overlooking Lyon from the far side of the Saône) of several top Resistance leaders, including Jean Moulin, de Gaulle’s deputy to the internal Resistance. Barbie was subsequently held responsible for the torture and murder of Moulin and tried for his role in authorizing the deportation of thousands of Jews from the region. The Barbie trial put Lyon in the foreground of the ongoing national ‘retour en arrière’ to the Occupation period. Given the centrality of Lyon in the Resistance and the Barbie trial, it is remarkable that Lyon, le regard intérieur constitutes Tavernier’s only contribution – and it is a very understated and personal one – to the ‘mode rétro’ of the 1970s and 1980s. Mérindol’s presence, alongside the quotations from Chevallier and the wartime newsreels, helps situate René Tavernier’s memories in a collective and more broadly historical context. These voices also represent the filmmaker’s tribute to an older generation, expressing his fascination with their stories.13 Also woven into Lyon, le regard intérieur are quotations from Tavernier’s own cinematic output. Throughout his career, Tavernier has evinced a tendency to mix fiction and documentary, poetry and journalism, and to bring the historical into dialogue with the imaginary. Here, citations from his fiction films set in Lyon affectionately evoke aspects of the city’s personality. Scenes from L’Horloger de Saint-Paul are inserted for their capacity to document such Lyonnais traditions as the ‘bouchon’ (informal restaurant serving regional fare) and the Saint-Paul neighborhood in the historic district of the Vieux Lyon. Tavernier interviews his father in the very spot – the deer preserve inside the Parc de la Tête d’Or – where the fictional Michel Descombes (Philippe Noiret) conversed with a police detective (Jean Rochefort) about his son’s disappearance (plates 2 and 3). In a similar vein, a typical Lyonnais driving along the quais de la Saône and complaining about the traffic turns out to be Jean Galabru in Une semaine de vacances, Tavernier’s 1980 fiction film, set in Lyon, about a schoolteacher (Nathalie Baye) experiencing her own ‘moment de doute, de remise en question, ou d’angoisse.’ In yet another sequence, 13 Lyon, le regard intérieur was broadcast the same year that Tavernier’s friend Marcel Ophüls released his Hôtel Terminus, a documentary about Barbie’s extradition and trial.

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 17

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

18  bertrand tavernier Tavernier recounts memories of his maternal grandmother’s home – the house where he was born – on the Avenue Foch. His camera shows while his voice describes what it was like for a child to wander down the apartment’s dark corridors finally to arrive in the sunlit kitchen. Suddenly, we find ourselves in the kitchen of Un dimanche à la campagne, watching the fictional painter’s housekeeper and granddaughter preparing a rhubarb tart. Although Un dimanche à la campagne is set in a village on the outskirts of Paris, Tavernier here reveals the scene’s roots in his personal geography and biography. We are gratified – and our upcoming analysis of his films is enriched – by Tavernier’s eventual voiceover confession: ‘En revenant Avenue Foch pour la première fois depuis plus de trente ans, je découvre que je n’ai fait que filmer mon enfance. C’est cette lumière, cette atmosphère que j’ai essayé de retrouver dans tous mes films. C’est là […] que j’ai commencé à rêver.’14

Perhaps the most important site of memory and nostalgia in Lyon, le regard intérieur is an absent one: the Tavernier family home in Montchat, recently demolished to make room for a public park. Tavernier’s voiceover informs us that although the house no longer stands, he had a chance to record it, too, in his first film. A brief clip from L’Horloger de Saint-Paul shows watchmaker Michel Descombes traveling to the home of his former housekeeper in search of his runaway son. As we watch Descombes cross the garden and approach the door, Tavernier recounts that ‘Renversant les rôles, j’ai eu envie d’y faire pénétrer mon père.’15 As the inserted clip ends, the camera turns once again toward the gate in time to capture the elderly René Tavernier advancing along the same path just taken by the fictional character. The personal nature of this maneuver confirms Tavernier’s frequent assertion that Noiret is his autobiographical actor. The shot/ countershot sequence causes a fusion or suture (we might call it a ‘confluence’) of fiction and documentary, making it appear as if the two fathers are about to greet each other. The film thus creates an imaginary world where it is possible to preserve in fiction what has been lost in life. 14 ‘Returning to the Avenue Foch for the first time in more than thirty years, I realize that all I have done is to film my childhood. It’s that light, that atmosphere that I’ve tried to recapture in all my films. It is there […] that I began to dream.’ 15 ‘Reversing the roles, I wanted to see my father arrive there too.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 18

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

tavernier and the ‘merveilleux lyonnais’  19 Like all portraits, Tavernier’s autobiographical persona in Lyon, le regard intérieur is both a reflection and an invention. The film constructs ‘Bertrand’ as a character among others by showing us what and how he sees and by revealing what matters to him. In the process, it conveys a sort of (auto)mythography woven from his personal tropes or habits of thought as these are embodied in his favorite visual and poetic images. Demonstrating an affinity with Truffaut’s belief that the cinema was more magical than life, Tavernier’s ‘merveilleux lyonnais’ ties filmmaking to the magic of childhood. The film thus provides a personal context that illuminates dimensions of his work such as the importance of place, the presence of history (both national and individual), the construction of character, the social powers of art, and the responsibilities of the artist.

A literary filmmaker Another important component of Tavernier’s sensibility is a deep attachment to literature, especially French literature. In fact, if film provided his political education, his passion for history comes from novels. An avid reader from childhood, Tavernier is just as familiar with Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas, Simenon and Jim Thompson, as he is with John Ford, Jean Renoir, Fernandel, and Buster Keaton. The writers among his father’s acquaintances who populated Bertrand’s childhood also encouraged his interests. Literature and film are never very far apart in France in any case: French cinema is distinguishable from, say, Hollywood in that it tends to be more language-oriented to begin with. Literary cinema has sometimes been produced by a single individual who is both filmmaker and novelist or playwright (Marcel Pagnol, Jean Cocteau, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Marguerite Duras). Other films have been the joint project of a writer and a filmmaker working as a creative team: Marcel Carné and Jacques Prévert, for example, or Alain Resnais working with a succession of novelists. In the case of Resnais especially, literariness has also meant according extra weight to poetic scripts that critics sometimes find verbose. Filmmakers also often express their affinities with literature through adaptation to the screen of literary works, either major classics or minor works and popular genres. Of course the cinematic quality of literary adaptations varies widely and has been the subject of much debate, particularly

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 19

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

20  bertrand tavernier during the era of the New Wave filmmakers, who built their program on a rejection of the overly respectful and somewhat stilted adaptations of literary classics that characterized the preceding ‘Tradition of Quality.’ We will delve further into this debate in chapter 2. At one time or another, Tavernier has been a literary filmmaker in all these ways. His literary culture is as extensive and as eclectic as his cinematic expertise, and his reading has had a profound impact on his films. And although he is resolutely an internationalist, especially in matters cinematic, the persona he projects in his films is firmly rooted in French traditions. Unlike what one finds in many films of the Nouvelle Vague, however, the presence of literature in Tavernier’s films is neither superficial nor anecdotal. Rare are the isolated allusions that serve as winks to a connoisseur public. Rather, Tavernier’s literary sensibility can be felt at a broad conceptual level and forms an integral part of his self-presentation and worldview. He works with ­scriptwriters known for the literary qualities of their writing. Several of his films are adaptations, although the films usually diverge from the texts that inspired them. And while Tavernier has co-scripted many of his films, he has not thus far ventured into publishing a novel or play. On the other hand, several of his protagonists are writers. Tavernier’s outspoken quest to explore social conflicts and express his own passionately held convictions through his work have earned him comparisons with activist filmmakers such as Jean Renoir and Ken Loach. His activism can also be situated in the distinguished tradition of littérature engagée. For example, Tavernier harks back to Victor Hugo (toutes proportions gardées, as the French expression would have it), in that he has established himself as both an artist and a public figure, and his work embodies the civic commitments he chooses in his life. Examining his historical films in chapter 4 will give us the opportunity to compare his approach to those of Zola and Sartre as well. Alongside quotations from a minor author, Gabriel Chevallier, another literary echo in Lyon, le regard intérieur is more implicit yet more pervasive: that of Marcel Proust. Much has been written about the visual quality of memory in A la recherche du temps perdu (1954) and about Proust’s use of optical imagery: the play of light and shadow, the centrality of photography, the magic lantern that projects historical and mythical figures onto young Marcel’s bedroom wall.

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 20

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

tavernier and the ‘merveilleux lyonnais’  21 If novelwriting for Proust is visual, Tavernier’s filmmaking is correspondingly novelistic. Like Proust, Tavernier represents temporal phenomena through their physical correlates in the visible world. The nostalgic mood of Lyon, le regard intérieur – its investigation of ‘la lancinante question du temps’ – is typical of Tavernier’s tendency to dwell on themes of loss and the passage of time. It is fair to say that this film, along with much of Tavernier’s cinematic oeuvre, displays a distinctively Proustian sensibility. For Tavernier, as for Proust, objects and places are inhabited by spirits or ghosts, and spatial imagery proves more important than narrative as a means to embody time. Tavernier’s choices of settings to evoke the past call to mind Proust’s ‘croyance celtique’ that lost souls take refuge in animals, plants, or inanimate objects and can be magically called back from death (Proust 1954: 44). This belief – also a theory of representation – helps explain how Marcel’s whole childhood could unfold from the taste of a petite madeleine dipped in tea. In the same way, the people, objects, and places that appear in Lyon, le regard intérieur contain echoes from the past. René Tavernier, for example, considers himself the repository of his departed friends: ‘Je ressens en même temps leur absence et leur présence. Ils ne sont pas morts parce qu’ils vivent en moi,’16 he declares. The city of Lyon, too, bears readable traces of its history. For René, street addresses and monuments bear memorial traces of his dead Resistance comrades, and he conjures a mental tableau of Vercingétorix similarly defending Lyon’s Fourvière hill against Roman occupiers. Bertrand’s memory is more personal: the Parc de la Tête d’Or, the name of a trolley stop, an empty space where a house used to stand, the curve of a staircase, the flow of water along the Saône, and the special quality of evening light in Lyon contain the magic of his childhood. Filming for Tavernier, like writing for Proust, is also a method of overcoming the anguish of impending separation and death, a way to ‘cicatriser ses blessures.’ In the opening novel of Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu, the child Marcel waits anxiously in bed for his mother to come to his room to bid him good night. Much later, after she is gone, his novel serves to memorialize her. Similarly, at the center of Lyon, le regard intérieur lies Tavernier’s filmed conversation with his ailing father. Like Proust, Tavernier is an astute and often acerbic observer of 16 ‘I feel both their absence and their presence. They are not dead, because they live in me.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 21

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

22  bertrand tavernier social and especially familial interactions. Nuances of family relations are always already nostalgic, looking back from an imagined future vantage point, even while they are happening. Exploring Proust’s passion for photography, photographer Brassaï describes the writer’s desire to fix the image for eternity as a bulwark against an overwhelming tide of losses. Brassaï identifies photographic influences in Proust’s descriptions of people and places in motion, particularly as viewed through the windows of moving vehicles, such as trains (1997: 19, 161). Writing frame by frame, as it were, Proust is able to create rapid changes in point of view to convey the sense of an object or person moving through time. One might even call Proust’s novel, like Tavernier’s Lyon documentary, ‘un long travelling arrière.’ And Lyon, le regard intérieur is at its most Proustian when the filmmaker declares, at the end of a long tracking shot through his grandmother’s house, that ‘je n’ai fait que filmer mon enfance.’ The layout of Combray (both the novel and its semi-imaginary village) is organized around the two itineraries the family could take on their promenades: they could leave the house through the front gate and walk toward Méséglise (‘Swann’s Way’), or alternatively, they could choose to exit through the back garden toward the ‘Guermantes Way.’ Eventually, Marcel comes to realize that the two paths are connected, and also that the past can be joined to the present through memory and writing. Tavernier’s sentimental geography of Lyon is described in similar terms. René recounts that when inhabitants of Lyon are introduced, they identify themselves by their ‘géographie de la famille,’ in other words, by explaining in which neighborhood they live. As already noted, Tavernier describes Lyon, le regard intérieur as a ‘promenade nostalgique’ through his childhood, and some of his remembered excursions are literal ones. Young Bertrand’s childhood Lyon consisted of visits to the houses of his two grandmothers in two distinct neighborhoods, which become associated with aspects of his childhood: the pious and conservative grand bourgeois side, and the more artistic, adventuring, and mischievous side. As in Proust’s case, adulthood brings the realization that seemingly distinct sectors (‘ways’) of the city and of his mind are not so separate after all. More ‘confluences.’ Reminiscing about the local trains he used to take from Montchat to his grandmother’s house on the Avenue Foch below, Tavernier uses a startlingly Proustian image. He notes that the ‘petit train de la gare de l’est’ – soon to be demolished, but captured in his

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 22

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

tavernier and the ‘merveilleux lyonnais’  23 film – was ‘presque le dernier trait d’union entre le Lyon de mon enfance et le Lyon d’aujourd’hui.’17 Lyon, le regard intérieur is full of such ‘traits d’union.’ René tells of a typical Lyonnais craftsman, a friteur-vitrier (‘fryer-glazier’) who can replace your windowpanes and also, in the back of his tiny shop, serve you some delicious fish fritters. This peculiarity is as familiar to the true Lyonnais as the city’s famous traboules – hidden corridors that permit discreet or even clandestine passage from one building to the next. René recommends that we appreciate this mystery without seeking to understand it. Only a foolish Parisian would attempt to resolve such enigmas. The friteur-vitrier is René’s most vivid example of how Lyon is ‘une ville profondément double.’ Two rivers flow together in the city center. Both weather and politics can prove unpredictable: the northern climate meets that of the ‘midi’ in Lyon, which is presided over by both an archbishop and a mayor. To the northwest above the Vieux Lyon, there are two hills: La Croix Rousse – ‘la colline qui travaille,’ in a popular dictum attributed to Michelet – and Fourvière, site of the basilica: ‘la colline qui prie.’18 Historically, the people of Lyon have been both internally conformist and prone to resist outside pressure, both ‘bourgeois’ and ‘frondeur’ (‘rebellious’). They are, in René’s words, ‘toujours dressé contre quelque chose.’19 In all these instances, grasping the city’s personality requires valuing both ‘ways.’ One could say the same of Tavernier himself. Recalling the bridges destroyed by the Germans as they retreated, Tavernier remarks that ‘Toute mon enfance a été bercé par l’histoire de ces ponts et de leur reconstruction.’20 Like the friteur-vitrier, or the trains that served as a ‘trait d’union’ between past and present, these bridges might serve as a guiding image for understanding Tavernier’s films, which refuse to be pigeonholed in either side of any easy binary divide. The bridges (or at least the one that remained, the one engineered by the Tavernier ancestor) are part of both public history and autobiography. Tavernier’s documentaries incorporate fictional elements, while his fictions often have a documentary dimension. No one considers him avant 17 ‘The little train of the eastern station was almost the last hyphen linking my childhood Lyon to the Lyon of today.’ 18 ‘the worker hill’ and ‘the hill that prays.’ 19 ‘always up in arms against something.’ 20 ‘Those bridges and their reconstruction were my childhood bedtime story.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 23

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

24  bertrand tavernier garde, yet he forges surprising blends of traditional forms with more modernist concerns. At once scholar, practitioner, and public activist, Tavernier is equally at home on the commercial as on the artistic side of cinema. While a dazzlingly well-informed devotee of Hollywood, he remains a forceful advocate of French film culture and traditions. He is at the same time an heir of the Nouvelle Vague and an admirer and astute analyst both of the French ‘Tradition of Quality’ that preceded it and of Hollywood cinema. The narrative and stylistic accessibility of his films makes him popular with a broad public, and yet their intellectual and experimental aspects appeal to ‘art film’ fans. He has succeeded in establishing himself as a mainstream filmmaker while remaining always ready to enlist his resources and considerable prestige in support of worthy causes. He is both a ‘cinéaste de l’émotion’ and a political activist, within and outside his films. His work is sophisticated and highly intellectual – he is an artist’s artist, a filmmaker’s filmmaker. Yet at the same time, he is also a popular, often quite comic storyteller who seeks to reach the widest possible public. The financial reasons for this are obvious: with ever-increasing production costs and plummeting movie attendance, neither individual filmmakers nor French national cinema can survive without reaching out to a diverse international audience. In addition, Tavernier’s temperament motivates him to be accessible. He wants his work to have an impact on the real problems of real people in the real world. In order to bridge the multiple and sometimes contradictory dimensions of Tavernier’s work, it will be important to take our critical cues from the films themselves.

References Air France Magazine (2000), ‘Lyon, Berceau du cinéma,’ May. Baecque, Antoine de (2003), La Cinéphilie: Invention d’un regard, histoire d’une culture, 1944–1968, Paris, Fayard. Bosséno, Christian-Marc (1996), La Prochaine Séance: Les Français et leurs cinés, Paris, Gallimard. Brassaï (1997), Marcel Proust sous l’emprise de la photographie, Paris, Gallimard. Chevallier, Gabriel (1945), Chemins de solitude, Lyon, Editions Cartier. Ciment, Michel and Noël Herpe (eds) (1999), Projections 9: French Film-makers on Film-making, trans. Pierre Hodgson, London and New York, Faber and Faber.

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 24

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

tavernier and the ‘merveilleux lyonnais’  25 Debû-Bridel, Jacques (ed.) (1970), La Résistance intellectuelle, Paris, Julliard. Lottman, Herbert R. (1982), The Left Bank: Writers, Artists, and Politics from the Popular Front to the Cold War, Boston, Houghton Mifflin. Mérindol, Pierre (1987), Barbie: Le Procès, Lyon, La Manufacture. Proust, Marcel (1954), A la recherche du temps perdu, vol. 1, Paris, Gallimard. Raspiengeas, Jean-Claude (1999), ‘De quoi j’me mèle?’ Télérama, 2565. Sapiro, Gisèle (1999), La Guerre des écrivains 1940–1953, Paris, Fayard. Thompson, Kristin and David Bordwell (1994), Film History: An Introduction, New York, McGraw-Hill. Weiner, Susan (2002), ‘Cinephilia in Postwar France,’ Contemporary French Civilization, 26. See also Select Bibliography.

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 25

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

2 A filmmaker in his generation

Toward the end of Lyon, le regard intérieur, René credits his son for helping the Lyonnais appreciate their city and its heritage. René explains that Lyon’s charm and beauty, like those of a woman walking with a ‘regard intérieur,’ are accessible only to those who make the effort to understand. He goes on to praise Bertrand’s films for their power to make those hidden qualities visible: il y a un merveilleux lyonnais. J’y crois tout à fait. Et toi, tu y crois, parce que c’est toi qui l’a filmé. Et c’est grâce à ça que les lyonnais se sont aperçu souvent du décor dans lequel ils vivaient, qui faisait partie de leur esprit, de leur âme. Ils ne s’en rendaient pas compte. Ils l’ont vu à travers tes films. Et là, leur opinion sur Lyon va changer.’1

Here, finally, the father gives his public blessing to his son’s vocation. In 1988 when the documentary was filmed, Bertrand was forty-seven. René was ailing and would die the following year. In typical Lyonnais fashion, the conversation is neither dramatic nor overtly emotional. It is followed, however, by a lyrical montage of shots and music from Tavernier’s films set in Lyon. The clips depict scenes of homecoming and reconciliation. Relations between generations are a central concern in all Tavernier’s work. Moreover, lines of communication and misunderstanding, estrangement and reconciliation, run in both directions, as parents as well as children seek acceptance, approval, and affection. In this 1 ‘I deeply believe that Lyon has a magical side. And you believe it too, because you have filmed it. Thanks to you, the people of Lyon have awakened to the surroundings that are part of their spirit, their soul. They didn’t realize it was there, until they saw it in your films. And now their opinion of Lyon will change.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 26

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

a filmmaker in his generation  27 chapter, we will explore the significance of generations in Tavernier’s films and in his career. He is sometimes seen as being out of step with his age group, beginning when he selected the scriptwriting team of Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost to write the screenplay for his first feature film, thereby giving the impression of casting his lot with the so-called ‘Cinema of Quality’ that preceded the Nouvelle Vague. But the question is not that simple, and here as in many other areas, we will find that Tavernier cannot be defined in either/or terms. The notion of generations has far-reaching implications in his work, ranging from literal families to successive ‘waves’ of filmmakers in the history of French cinema. Examining this pervasive network of themes reveals a lot about his social, political, and affective worldview and can help us identify Tavernier in terms of what historian Pierre Nora calls ‘genera-tional consciousness’ (1996–98: 503). Tavernier has been acclaimed by many as the leading French cinéaste of his generation. He is younger than Godard and Truffaut, Resnais, Marker, Varda, and Marcel Ophüls, but older than Luc Besson, Jean-Jacques Beineix and the ‘cinéma du look’ as well as Diane Kurys and Chantal Akerman and the multitude of women filmmakers who emerged in the 1980s and 1990s. Along with others such as Alain Corneau, Jacques Doillon, Jean Eustache, Philippe Garrel, Claude Miller, André Téchiné, and Coline Serreau, Tavernier established his reputation in the 1970s. Unlike the Nouvelle Vague with which they are often compared, however, these cinéastes have never been characterized as a movement. Prédal simply calls them ‘la génération 70’ (1996: 319–44). The leading cinéaste of his generation, then, but which generation is that, exactly? How have world events of Tavernier’s lifetime contributed to his identity as an artist? What is his place in history, including the history of cinema? How does his oeuvre reflect – or reject, or reinterpret, or resonate with – the work of his predecessors and contemporaries? And how does his generational sensibility manifest itself in his films? What do we even mean by the term ‘generation’? Changes in French politics and society in the wake of 1968 played a significant role in shaping the emerging cohort of filmmakers. Gaullism faded with the death of President Georges Pompidou in 1974. A priority for his successor, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, was to abolish censorship, a change in the law that ratified cultural shifts already underway. As a result, during the rest of the decade, porno-

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 27

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

28  bertrand tavernier graphic films flooded the market, accounting for about half of all French productions screened in France. During 1974, the year L’Horloger de Saint-Paul was released, Just Jaeckin’s Emmanuelle joined the top-grossing French films of all time. Less conspicuous at the time, increased freedom in the representation of political events and opinions proved more important in the long run. Also in the spotlight in 1974 was Louis Malle’s Lacombe Lucien, which, with Marcel Ophüls’s documentary Le Chagrin et la pitié of 1971, launched the ‘mode rétro,’ ushering in new interpretations of the Occupation years, after a long period of official Gaullist historiography. Clearly, then, by the early 1970s, French audiences were ready for something new. Since the early 1960s, the movie-going public had begun to lose interest, and the following decade saw a steady decline in attendance, so that from a high water mark of 412 million tickets sold in 1957, spectatorship had fallen to 203 million by 1968 and to 176 million in 1973, the year Tavernier was shooting his first feature. Since the beginning of his career, he has worked in a climate where ticket sales have only once risen above 200 million (202 million in 1982), with 1991 and 1992 marking a low point at 117 and 116 million respectively (CNC.fr). Sue Harris cites a variety of factors that contributed to these shifts. Growing numbers of films were being televised, and more families did their movie viewing at home. Between 1960 and 1970, the price of movie tickets rose at nearly double the rate of increase in the cost of living, another incentive to stay home. When they did leave the house, audiences showed declining interest in cerebral or ‘difficult’ experimental or self-questioning art and increasingly chose foreign (especially Hollywood) over domestic productions and commercial over art-house films (Harris 2004: 256–9). Declining movie house attendance correlated with a renaissance in the production of films attempting to combine high artistic values with wide audience appeal. While the government retained a measure of economic control through professional certification and subsidies, the Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française (ORTF) was restructured, and a constellation of more independent units was created that included the Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (INA). The INA and television became and remain important sources of funding and distribution for filmmakers (Williams 1992: 28–34). Prédal feels confident in locating a change in the cultural wind around 1972–73, when the effects of 1968 began to appear. Changes in films’ content

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 28

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

a filmmaker in his generation  29 and tone reflected ‘non plus les événements mais les mentalités. Sans la moindre référence aux faits politiques, la plupart de ces films ne développent plus ni la même esthétique ni les mêmes idées’ (1996: 335, 324–5).2 This is precisely the unstable cultural landscape in which Tavernier launched his career. These conditions will inspire his attempts to bridge the gap between popular and high culture by appealing both to educated cinéphiles and to mass audiences. We should not be surprised that the new cohort of filmmakers sought ways to accommodate an auteur agenda to the demands of a transformed marketplace. Tavernier’s reputation as the leader and spokesman of his diverse and beleaguered generation has grown over time, along with his oeuvre. Many of his creations have met with solid box-office success, and his work has received numerous prestigious awards (see Filmography). To indicate just a few examples, his first feature won the Prix Louis Delluc in 1973. Twice he has been named ‘best director’ at the César awards, and his films have earned two more Césars for best screenplay. The 1984 Cannes Film Festival awarded Un dimanche à la campagne its top prize for mise en scène. In 2001, Tavernier was honored for the entirety of his career at the Istanbul International Film Festival. In addition, he has received prizes from the Syndicat Français de la Critique de Cinéma and the International Berlin Film Festival, and he has received the Prix Méliès and the Prix Georges de Beauregard. Most recently, Dans la brume électrique (2009) was a finalist at the Berlin Film Festival and won the Grand Prize at the Festival International du Film Policier, and La Princesse de Montpensier was an official contender for the 2010 Palme d’Or. By any standard, this is an impressive record of achievement. Another important factor contributing to Tavernier’s reputation is his self-appointed role as public defender of film artists at home and of French national cinema in an international arena. His outspoken public leadership has been felt in his native Lyon, where he lobbied for and helped create the Institut Lumière. From his Paris base at Little Bear, the production company he co-founded in 1977, Tavernier’s voice is regularly heard – in person, on television, and in the written press – in debates over cultural issues such as France’s campaign in the early 1990s for the ‘exception culturelle’ (a drive to exclude 2 ‘no longer events, but mentalities. Without the slightest reference to political facts, most of these films demonstrate a changed esthetic and new ideas.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 29

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

30  bertrand tavernier cultural products from trade negotiations), the 1999–2000 polemic about the power of certain critics, as well as over social and political questions such as immigration, Algerian War veterans’ pensions, and adoption law. Little Bear has also produced collections of television spots advocating the release of political prisoners and calling for an end to the use of landmines. Tavernier was even interviewed by Le Monde about the 2003 American invasion of Iraq! According to historian Pierre Nora, each age cohort comes to ‘generational consciousness’ as it recognizes the distinguishing features of its own historicity. Nora considers the concept of a generation to be a key to collective identity because of its power as a lieu de mémoire (memory site) that ‘strikes directly to the vital core of our historical perception of the present’ (Nora 1996–98: 498–531). Defined in terms of shared perceptions (and inevitably, representations), generational consciousness bears an affinity with myth, and it also overlaps with ‘ideology’ as Louis Althusser theorized it. A myth or ideology is a conceptual grid – like a master-narrative or a set of semi-conscious but paradigmatic values and assumptions – that mediates between individual experience and the real. Within this frame of reference, a single film or the entire oeuvre of a cinematic auteur can reveal a generation’s consciousness. In fact, from the start of his career, Tavernier has resisted easy classification. An admirer and astute analyst of the French ‘Tradition of Quality,’ he is also an heir of the Nouvelle Vague that rejected it. In addition, he pledges allegiance both to French national cinema and to world cinema. Although most critics assume (either approvingly or not) that he has ‘returned’ to a pre-New Wave conception of filmmaking, I do not believe this to be the case. Instead, Tavernier has defined his creative identity in a no-man’s land (even more a no-woman’s land) between strongly cohesive generations of filmmakers. It is unsurprising that in his historical films, he is drawn to periods of aftermath and transition, moments characterized by the heady possibility of creating new worlds, but also by a cloud of existential doubt. Nor is it remarkable to find, in Jill Forbes words, ‘the inscription of the conflict of generations as a trope within […] many of his films’ (1992: 153).’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 30

12/10/2011 16:25

a filmmaker in his generation  31

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

L’Horloger de Saint-Paul L’Horloger de Saint-Paul is adapted from Georges Simenon’s 1955 novel, L’Horloger d’Everton. Written in French while the novelist was living in the United States, the story is set in 1950s Connecticut. The novel’s protagonist, Dave Galloway, discovers that his teenage son, Ben, has murdered a man. Listening to news of the cross-country pursuit that will result in the arrest of Ben and his girlfriend, Lillian, Dave is caught in a maelstrom of journalists, neighbors, and police. At the heart of the novel, however, is Dave’s introspective quest to understand. In the course of his ruminations, Dave learns to question his own habitual ‘instinctive respect for everything that represented authority.’ He draws continuities linking his son’s act to his own and his father’s moments of less violent rebellion. At Ben’s trial, he simply declares, ‘Mon fils et moi sommes solidaires’ (Simenon 1954: 92, 121).3 Finally, noticing in photos of his father, himself, and his son certain visible signs of ‘suppressed revolt,’ he assembles the three portraits – the three generations – into a single frame. One can easily guess how Tavernier might have been drawn to this novel in the wake of the 1968 rebellions: themes of revolt that transform relations between generations are central to the film, as to the novel. While respecting the broad outlines of Simenon’s plot and characterizations, however, Tavernier’s adaptation, scripted with the aforementioned Aurenche and Bost, makes changes that bear the filmmaker’s personal signature. Tavernier retains the pivotal figure of the father (now called Michel Descombes and played by Philippe Noiret) coming to terms with his son Bernard’s crime, but the setting has moved from rural 1950s America to Lyon in the 1970s. Tavernier eliminates several peripheral characters while adding others, including a former housekeeper, Madeleine, who cared for Bernard when he was a child. He replaces Dave Galloway’s backgammon and drinking buddy, Musak, with Descombes’s friend Antoine, a union militant. These and other changes break open Simenon’s private, domestic drama, making Tavernier’s version historical, collective, and political. Even while the filmmaker actively focuses on urgent present-day questions, his generational consciousness is strongly shaped by four formative moments in French political and cultural history, all of 3 ‘My son and I stand together.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 31

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

32  bertrand tavernier which are evoked in some way in L’Horloger de Saint-Paul: the Second World War; France’s colonial empire; the events of May 1968; and the era of the Nouvelle Vague. Taken together, these outline the frame of reference for his artistic choices and provide a canvas on which he paints his stories. At the same time, he actively (if sometimes obliquely) defines the present in relation to these formative cultural memories. In order to better appreciate the film that launched his career, then, let us examine how it presents itself as post-war, postcolonial, post-1968, and post-New Wave. Post-war Born in 1941, Tavernier belongs – just barely – to the age cohort de­­­ scribed by journalist Françoise Giroud in La Nouvelle Vague: Portraits de la jeunesse. This 1958 book was the result of a survey at the newsweekly L’Express in conjunction with the Institut Français d’Opinion Publique (IFOP). The survey sought to characterize the worldview of French men and women under thirty, that is, the generation that came of age after the Second World War. Survey results revealed that 38 per cent of young people expected to see another worldwide conflict in their lifetime. They judged that the French postal and train systems functioned well, but they placed politics, the economic situation, housing, and political leadership among aspects of contemporary society that were going badly. Asked to identify the biggest problem facing France, 28 per cent named the Algerian War and 24 per cent the difficulty of establishing a stable government. 29 per cent felt that the conflict in Algeria would last at least two more years, while 52 per cent said they could not guess how long it might last. 64 per cent expressed a pessimistic view of the prospects for their own future. Unsurprisingly, then, the post-war generation was marked by suspicion of all ideologies (including religions) and a desire to define a personal morality rather than adopt an established one. Giroud describes the generation as less dogmatic than its elders, less convinced that France is the center of the world. This post-Auschwitz, post-Hiroshima generation understandably identifies more readily with a global community – with humanity at large – than with narrower national interests. Such an attitude seems particularly reasonable in light of the young people’s fear of being duped and their widespread observation that it is not clear what their country stands for. Asked which author most influenced the outlook

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 32

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

a filmmaker in his generation  33 of their age group, they ranked Jean-Paul Sartre ahead of all others by a long shot. It is worth noting that to designate the age group targeted by her survey, Giroud’s title introduced the term Nouvelle Vague, which would soon be used in a more limited sense to label a group of filmmakers, some of whom (Truffaut, Godard, Chabrol, and Varda, for example) fell within the age parameters of the survey, while others (such as Rohmer and Resnais) were considerably older. Moreover, the generational portrait Giroud and her team compiled also describes the world-weariness displayed in many of the early Nouvelle Vague films. The young protagonists behave like drifters. They are prematurely cynical and often act superficial, passive, or aloof. Lacking moral anchors or engagement in historical, political, or social realities, they seem propelled by undercurrents of existential doubt. On the cusp of Giroud’s cohort and a younger generation, Tavernier shares most of these worries, but his overall approach shows a contrasting activism and engagement. Unlike the older members of Giroud’s sample population (those born as early as 1927), Tavernier has few concrete personal recollections of the war. He claims that his earliest childhood memories date from August 1944, when he sat with his family on the terrace of their house in Montchat overlooking Lyon, listening to the explosions and watching the flares of the Allied bombardments during the liberation of the city. As he reminisces in Lyon, le regard intérieur, ‘Je n’ai jamais pu par la suite séparer la notion de lumière de toutes ces émotions, de tout ce tumulte, de toute cette vie qui semblait renaître.’4 Whether a literal recollection or a sort of retrospective screen memory, this son et lumière of the Liberation is Tavernier’s formative ‘spectacle.’ Although his family moved to Paris soon after, Tavernier’s wartime memories and his personal nostalgia for Lyon are closely bound together at the origin of his vocation. Other than these semi-mythical images, Tavernier is post-war mainly through identification with his father’s generation, including Aragon, Triolet, and the other artists, intellectuals, and journalists he encountered in his parents’ circle. From them, the future filmmaker absorbed certain notions about the nature and function of the arts. ‘La Résistance intellectuelle,’ the term René Tavernier and the others used to describe their contributions as writers and publishers to 4 ‘Ever since then, I am unable to separate the notion of light from all those emotions, all that tumult, everything returning to life.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 33

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

34  bertrand tavernier opposing the German Occupation and the Vichy government, also aptly describes Bertrand’s conception of the purpose of film, especially documentary. (‘Il faut toujours arracher quelque chose quand on fait un film: un peu de liberté,’ see chapter 1.) Even when their stories are fictional, his films always enter into debate, if only in passing, with the powers that be. Certain of his films have provoked full-blown controversies. One can understand his choice of subjects and even some of his narrative quirks – his use of voiceover, certain shifts of tone, openly polemical endings – as expressing an intention to be oppositional. Another of René’s wartime values – expressed in Lyon, le regard intérieur and adopted by his son – is a strong-willed intergenerational solidarity. As René pointed out, clandestine opposition in wartime required that diverse groups work together. Bertrand’s refusal of competition between generations expresses itself in his inclusive and collective production methods and in his indignation about the oedipal rivalries that typically characterize artistic avant-gardes (for example the Nouvelle Vague’s wholesale rejection of its predecessors). It has also taken the form of his participation in competing film journals Les Cahiers du cinéma and Positif, sometimes pitting them against each other. Tavernier’s will to be contestataire is also demonstrated in his abiding interest in persecuted artists, exemplified by his systematic and single-handed efforts, through his articles and his Institut Lumière retrospectives, to ‘rehabilitate’ American film professionals ostracized by McCarthyism. His recruitment of Aurenche and Bost, the scriptwriting team ‘blacklisted’ by the Nouvelle Vague, is another instance where he reached across generations to rectify a perceived injustice. As a result, his films themselves evince no clear allegiance to any particular generation, either in their content (for example, he refrains from taking sides in the many stories of family dynamics) or in their style (critics often compare his work to film movements of earlier eras). When in the 1970s and 1980s a ‘mode rétro’ emerged in France, with novelists and filmmakers producing a flood of works reflecting backward on the Second World War, Tavernier stood out as an exception. This vogue emerged just after the tumultuous events of May 1968 with Marcel Ophüls’s Le Chagrin et la pitié (made in 1969, released 1971). Louis Malle provoked a scandal with his 1974 Lacombe Lucien, the first film to portray a collaborator as protagonist. ­Directors as diverse

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 34

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

a filmmaker in his generation  35 as Truffaut and Diane Kurys (another filmmaker from Lyon, born in 1948) weighed in with Le Dernier Métro (1980) and Coup de foudre (1984) respectively. With the exception of the made-for-television Lyon, le regard intérieur, however, which engages wartime issues so indirectly that they never even figure in descriptions of the film, Tavernier waited until 2002 to make Laissez-passer about the film industry during the Occupation. Interestingly, the film features Jean Aurenche as one of the protagonists and Pierre Bost in a secondary role. Post-colonial If Tavernier’s relation to the Occupation is mediated by sympathy for and identification with his father’s generation, his outlook in relation to colonialism and decolonization places him squarely within his own age cohort. Tavernier celebrated his twentieth birthday on 25 April 1961. This was the penultimate year of France’s conflict in Algeria and thus, for example, the year in which René Vautier set his 1971 film Avoir vingt ans dans les Aurès, about a group of French soldiers who opposed continued military presence in Algeria. Their drama has as its backdrop the ‘Generals’ putsch,’ during which a group of officers reacted against de Gaulle’s initiatives toward Algerian self-determination by resolving to continue independently (and illegally) to fight for retention of L’Algérie française. In fact, the putsch ended on Tavernier’s birthday. He might have been conscripted but for his poor eyesight, which made him ineligible for military service. As is the case for many members of the generation described by Giroud, the Algerian War is a primal scene for Tavernier’s career. Like the Occupation for their elders and the Vietnam War for their American counterparts, Algeria was the site that crystallized the generational consciousness of French young people coming of age in the 1960s. Virtually every one of Tavernier’s films includes some allusion to France’s colonial past, often casually woven into non-plot elements or peripheral details (see chapter 5). They are hidden in plain view in the way that references to current events crop up parenthetically in many New Wave films. But rather than simply being part of a muted cinéma vérité current events backdrop, as in the Nouvelle Vague, accumulation of such details functions in Tavernier’s work to bring historical depth and even motivation to his character portraits. They also serve as opportunities for acerbic authorial commentary. A colonialist mentality is always portrayed – sometimes sarcastically

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 35

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

36  bertrand tavernier – as a character flaw, and colonized people are presented sympathetically. Countless such instances reveal a Tavernier consistently critical of France’s imperialist adventures and haunted by the violence that ended them. His 1992 documentary, La Guerre sans nom, consists entirely of interviews with French conscripts who fought in Algeria, many of whom had never before shared their memories. That film is a moving portrait of a significant constituency within Tavernier’s own generation. More recently, Holy Lola (2004) is set in today’s Indochina and directly addresses the after-effects of colonialism. In L’Horloger de Saint-Paul, the murdered man is a factory enforcer who may have molested Bernard’s girlfriend. Although the crime occurred before the narrative begins and its victim never appears on screen, investigators find his apartment decorated with souvenirs from Indochina and Algeria, where he fought in both colonial wars. Found among his effects are an army pistol and a poem by Claudel praising the parachutists. If he was in Algeria during the spring of 1961, he no doubt sided with the putsch. None of this material appears in the source novel, nor is it indispensable to the film’s plot. Post-1968 Fredric Jameson locates the beginnings of what came to be known as ‘the Sixties’ with Third World national liberation movements and the progress toward decolonization, and he sees that turbulent decade drawing to a close around 1972–74 (1988: 184). I do not find it coincidental that Tavernier created his first feature film at the end of this period. After his early forays making short films under the aegis of Georges de Beauregard, Tavernier had returned to his work as journalist and press attaché, determined to bide his time. After 1968, his time had clearly come. Just as he shares an identifiable (Leftist, anti-militarist) perspective on France’s colonial history, Tavernier’s oeuvre reveals a post-May ’68 countercultural sensibility. Although he is in no sense an avant-garde filmmaker or even overtly experimental – in fact he takes pains to make his films accessible – his style of thought resonates with the more radical soixante-huitards. Having just turned twenty-seven in April, Bertrand is older than the student protesters of 1968 (older, for example, than the iconic student spokesman, Daniel Cohn-Bendit), but he is of an age with other leaders of the rebellions: Serge July (born 1942) for example, and Bernard Kouchner (1939). Already beyond his student years, Tavernier’s sympathies neverthe-

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 36

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

a filmmaker in his generation  37 less lie with the revolts. (In fact, his sympathies will always lie with rebellion.) His contribution to the actual ‘events,’ however, seems to have been limited to participation in the February riot outside the Cinémathèque, from which he emerged with a bloodied face (de Baecque and Toubiana 1999: 238). It is nevertheless reasonable to situate him in the cohort of filmmakers who made their first major film after – and in the wake of – the upheavals of May 1968. And although Tavernier himself has not made a film that is ‘about’ the events in any directly narrative way, his work is nevertheless suffused with the spirit of the rebellions, which must have struck an already strong chord in his consciousness. One of the earliest salvos in the rebellions occurred in February within the Parisian cinema sector in the form of the ‘Langlois Affair.’ The scandal began when Minister of Culture André Malraux peremptorily dismissed the eccentric and charismatic founder and head of the Cinémathèque, Henri Langlois, from his post and replaced him with a Gaullist bureaucrat. Film professionals from around the world joined together to protest this ouster and to rejoice at Langlois’s reinstatement in April. An ad hoc activist group of cinema workers known as the Etats Généraux du Cinéma (EGC) gathered to critique the way the industry was organized and to imagine how it might be restructured. Led by Truffaut and Godard, members of the EGC successfully disrupted the Cannes Film Festival, generating additional publicity. These events proved to members of the film community that they could respond effectively to government attempts to bureaucratize and commodify the cultural sector. In the process, they realized they had the power to take their industry into their own hands. Although the political results of May were short-lived and the Gaullist government quickly succeeded in re-establishing the status quo ante, the impact of these events in the cultural sphere was considerable (Reader 1993; Winock 1986). The most important result was a new and expanded understanding of the political potential of culture. A paradigmatic instance of this can be found in Godard and Gorin’s Tout va bien (1972), where a filmmaker-turned-advertiser (Yves Montand) learns to ‘think historically’ as he reflects upon his own fall from activism into complicity with consumer values. As for many others of his generation, the ‘events’ of May ’68 may well have crystallized the young Tavernier’s perspectives on France’s recent history and current problems and helped him envision the

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 37

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

38  bertrand tavernier social interventions a young filmmaker might make. That the French Communist Party had not supported the revolts made it necessary to find other channels for expressing Leftist sentiment, but in any case, young artists were no longer in the mood for adhering to the guidelines of Socialist Realism. (One of the slogans of May ’68 had been: ‘A bas le Réalisme Socialiste. Vive le Surréalisme.’5) In addition, philosopher Louis Althusser had moved beyond classical Marxism to theorize the function of cultural production as operating more autonomously in relation to the economic sphere. During and after May ’68, it became increasingly plausible, even within a generally Marxian analysis, to treat culture as a site of activism. Michel de Certeau described the revolutionary potential of cultural expression with his famous statement: ‘En mai dernier, on a pris la parole comme on a pris la Bastille en 1789’ (Winock 1986: 358; Barthes 1968).6 In short, not since the heyday of Sartrian Existentialism had there been such enthusiastic belief in the possibility of producing social change from within the cultural sector. This is the context in which Tavernier turned from journalism to feature-length filmmaking, and this is the spirit in which he continues to conduct his career today. Although their outlooks and output diverge widely, Tavernier has his own way of enacting Godard’s famous injunction to ‘make ­political films politically.’ On a superficial level, L’Horloger de Saint-Paul makes explicit reference to the iconography and discourses of May ’68. The film’s opening credits unfold against a tracking shot of a car in flames, a stock image of revolt that evokes both the events of May ’68 and also other films of the period. The following year, ­Tavernier will even use a burning carriage in his historical drama, Que la fête commence, to metaphorically prefigure the Revolution of 1789. The discursive style of 1968 appears in a restaurant ­conversation among Michel Descombes and his friends, who discuss recent elections, ­prostitutes protesting their working conditions, and the death penalty. The mood of the times is evoked in lines like, ‘C’est la mode de brûler les voitures’7 and ‘On étouffe dans ce foutu pays.’8 But the filmmaker’s post-1968 roots go much deeper. When he supports the French ‘exception culturelle’ and argues against the

5 ‘Down with Socialist Realism. Long live Surrealism.’ 6 ‘In May, we took over speech the way we took the Bastille in 1789.’ 7 ‘It’s all the rage to burn automobiles.’ 8 ‘We’re suffocating in this screwed up country.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 38

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

a filmmaker in his generation  39 commodification of culture at the time of the 1993 GATT negotiations, he revives the perspective of those (including himself) who protested the firing of Langlois from the Cinémathèque. When in 1977 he creates his own production company, he is motivated by a desire for artistic autonomy, particularly the freedom to put forward his own social agenda. Little Bear was born in the context of Tavernier’s Des enfants gâtés, in which an ivory-tower scriptwriter learns to ‘think historically’ when he joins in a renters’ protest movement against their corporate landlord. Political filmmaking also means for Tavernier, as it does for Godard, questioning the power hierarchies of the production process. In the footsteps of Renoir, whose collective filming practices were in harmony with the spirit of the Popular Front (and in direct contrast with Melville, whose methods Tavernier had experienced first-hand), Tavernier puts primary emphasis on process and cooperation. For his first feature, he assembled a team of congenial professionals who would remain with him for future ventures: scriptwriters Aurenche and Bost, veteran actors Philippe Noiret and Jean Rochefort and novice actress and fellow Lyonnaise Christine Pascal, cinematographer Pierre-William Glenn, and composer Philippe Sarde. Noiret’s solidarity was particularly crucial. When an interested producer offered financing if the fledgling filmmaker would consent to relocate his story from Lyon to Paris, Tavernier flatly refused. This was no whim. That his conception of his first film is deeply rooted in Lyon is demonstrated by many details, such as the haunting musical motif associated with clockmaker Descombes. The motif is adapted from the chimes of the famous fourteenth-century astronomical clock in Lyon’s St Jean cathedral. ‘I wanted Lyons to be a character in the film,’ the director explains. ‘For me, Lyons was as important as the protagonists of the story, and sometimes I wanted to [ …] have shots of the city, and those shots are not only documentary but have a relationship with what is going on inside the characters’ (Lowenstein 2000: 168). In the face of financial obstacles, Noiret invested his personal funds and the considerable weight of his own reputation to make the project possible. Many years later, in a tribute to Noiret shortly after the actor’s death, Tavernier evoked these beginnings, calling Noiret ‘l’homme à qui je dois ma carrière’ (Tavernier interview 2006).9 9 ‘the man to whom I owe my career.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 39

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

40  bertrand tavernier Anti-hierarchical and anti-authoritarian reflexes permeate Tavernier’s approach to his work. Documentaries that give silenced minorities a forum in which to tell their stories in their own voice also speak to a professional ethics informed by the spirit of May ’68. Fictional characters are afforded the same deference. Curiously, his concern for process and participatory democracy also helps clarify some peculiarities of his plots. His resistance to the ‘tyranny’ or the ‘dictatorship’ of plot means that stories sometimes follow the internal logic of characters, whose itinerary is more important than their destination. This means that plot is subordinated and sometimes all but forgotten, and endings are often problematic. If we keep in mind that Tavernier systematically downplays the well-wrought story in favor of a focus on the unfolding of personalities in the context of their everyday lives and historical contexts, the abrupt shifts of register that sometimes characterize his films become more comprehensible. Engaging in political filmmaking in the wake of 1968 has also meant participating in debate about the international politics of culture. During and after May ’68, there was much argument around the question of what revolutionary model artists should follow. Sergei Eisenstein’s writings had recently been translated into French and posed an alternative to Socialist Realism. Many radicals became fascinated with the Chinese Cultural Revolution, so that Roland Barthes, Julia Kristéva, and others made what one might call ‘pilgrimages’ to the People’s Republic. Intellectual foment led to the creation of new periodicals such as Libération and Tel Quel, and established publications were pressured to take a stand. Debates between rival journals were the order of the day. The Tel Quel group, for example, and the editors at the Cahiers du cinéma opted en bloc for a Maoist line. Affiliated with the Cahiers since his early days as a critic there, Godard was the most visible filmmaker to experiment with a Maoist perspective. The principal rival of the Cahiers was the journal Positif, founded in Lyon in 1952 (just a year after the Parisian Cahiers). Tavernier’s preference for Positif can be attributed both to the journal’s Lyonnais roots and to its rejection of the Maoist model after May ’68. Although he has written for both journals, his affiliation with Positif has been more durable, and in fact, he jocularly admits to having fanned the flames of the rivalry between the two journals, deliberately praising in the pages of each the filmmakers it despised and criticizing its favorites. Discussing his early film criticism published in rival journals, he

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 40

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

a filmmaker in his generation  41 remarks playfully: ‘Moi, je ne me situais pas par rapport à un clan. Cela m’amusait de défendre Fuller dans Positif et Daves dans les Cahiers. Un peu comme Julien Benda qui disait se sentir de droite avec les gens de gauche et de gauche avec les gens de droite.’10 In the aura of 1968, his love of and expertise about Hollywood led him to refuse even the conformity of the anti-conformists: recalling French antiAmericanism of the 1960s, he notes that choosing to ‘aimer le cinéma américain était une manière de se battre contre la culture officielle, contre l’intelligentsia de gauche ou d’extrême gauche qui mettait les films américains au ban’ (Tavernier interview 2008: 21).11 Not surprisingly, over the years, the critics at Positif have shown a more ‘positive’ response to Tavernier’s work than writers for the Cahiers, who have for the most part reviewed his films disparagingly, sometimes in ways that suggest strong pre-judgment. Positif also embodied from its beginnings certain principles later associated with the methods of May ’68, such as its loosely organized editorial collective that contrasts with the Cahiers’ traditional hierarchy headed by an editor-in-chief. While Positif gave much attention to questions of colonial wars and censorship (such as that of the McCarthy era), its editors strove more than others (notably the Cahiers) to be eclectic and to avoid adopting a fixed editorial doctrine. The writers showed measured admiration for American cinema and took pains in their style and choice of subjects to remain accessible to a wide public (Ciment and Kardish 2003). All these values became part of Tavernier’s own directorial philosophy. His missionary zeal may sometimes become irritatingly didactic, but he remains more of an old-style Leftist than a radical of the Maoist or any other stripe, and he remains suspicious of labels and cliques. The Women’s Movement, too, emerged in France in the aftermath of May ’68, but its effects on Tavernier’s work are harder to untangle. There are overtly feminist moments in certain films, notably Le Juge et l’assassin (1976), where the Judge’s working-class mistress slowly achieves consciousness of her oppression. But this awareness seems stilted and contributes to the film’s narrative awkwardness and its over-stylized ending. Co-scriptwriter Christine Pascal brought an 10 ‘I didn’t define myself in relation to any clan. It amused me to defend Fuller in Positif and Daves in Cahiers. A little like Julian Benda who claimed he leaned to the Right in the company of Leftists and to the Left with Right-wingers.’ 11 ‘loving American cinema was a way to fight against official culture and the Leftist intelligentsia that would ban American movies.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 41

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

42  bertrand tavernier explicitly feminist agenda to Des enfants gâtés. It is worth noting that while father–child relations abound in Tavernier’s filmography, mothers are strikingly rare. Portraits of strong daughters, however, are frequently central. More than forty years afterwards, sociologists and historians are still trying to account for 1968. Given the era’s suspicion of authority and refusal of totalizing master-narratives, it was not surprising that there was resistance to seeing the efforts of 1968 reduced or ‘recuperated’ (a buzzword at the time) by simplistic, one-dimensional explanations. In any case, the eruptions had been over-determined by a gamut of social, economic, cultural, and historical forces. As early as the summer of 1970, Philippe Bénéton and Jean Touchard attempted to make sense of the discourses that were already proliferating around the recent upheavals. Their analysis distinguished eight ‘types of interpretation’ already in circulation, attributing the May ’68 revolts to one or more of the following: deliberate subversion; crisis in the universities; a rush of blood to the head, youthful revolt; spiritual revolt or a crisis of civilization; class conflict; traditional social conflict; a new type of social movement; political crisis; a random combination of circumstances. The article remains current today, and its categories provide a basis for virtually every subsequent study of the period (Bénéton and Touchard (1970) in Reader, 1993). In the wake of its own violent event, L’Horloger de Saint-Paul narrates a fictionalized analogue of Bénéton and Touchard’s analysis. The murder is committed before the story begins against a victim we never see. As a result, young Bernard Descombes’s apparently gratuitous crime remains more symbolic than real, yet another ­ example of baffling youthful behavior. Its primary function is to generate explanations, like a Rorschak blot. The young man himself refuses to explain his act other than to assert that the man he killed was ‘une ordure’ (‘scum’), and he has no regrets. This leaves a blank canvas on which the press, the police, lawyers, and spectators project explanatory narratives. When police detectives search the home of the murder victim, they find evidence of a stereotypical Right-winger. The dead man was a ‘flic d’usine,’ a combination security guard and stool pigeon, who may have molested Bernard’s girlfriend and then invented a pretext to fire her. One reporter favors a psychological interpretation, suggesting that the mother’s departure and Michel’s failure to remarry might be responsible for the young delinquent’s behavior.

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 42

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

a filmmaker in his generation  43 Another journalist paints the young suspect as a dangerous political activist, because his room sports an ecologist poster. According to television reports, the crime was ‘un geste politique,’ and Bernard a dangerous ‘gauchiste.’ Or were the motives perhaps economic? On a more flippant note, a man on the street expresses the consumerism that was a target of ardent debate around 1968 (Guy Debord’s La Société du spectacle appeared in 1967), when he opines that a person might well have motives to kill a man, but burning a car is beyond understanding! For his part, Bernard’s attorney counsels the boy’s father to adopt the strategy of claiming it was a crime of passion. Resembling Bénéton and Touchard’s social science approach, Tavernier’s film surveys all the proposed explanations for the violence without privileging any. None of them makes much sense to the father, either. Like the eruptions of 1968, Bernard’s act remains polyvalent and overdetermined, and in any case unintelligible, as it resists interpretation to the end. Although not a focus of their attention, Bénéton and Touchard suggest that the soixante-huitards themselves were operating within a post-war frame of reference, and this is also implicit in the film. The urban intellectual and student protagonists of May ’68 were for the most part members of the generation described by Françoise Giroud. Writing about Italy and Germany, Jameson advances the proposition that the emergence of strong political consciousness in the generation coming of age in the 1960s ‘must surely at least in part be attributed to the fascist past of these two countries, to their failure to liquidate that past after the war, and to a violent moral revulsion against it on the part of a segment of the youth and intellectuals who grew up in the 60s’ (Jameson 1988: 204). Henry Rousso’s now-famous study of the ‘Vichy Syndrome’ confirms the relevance to France of Jameson’s insight. Rousso reminds us that Marcel Ophüls’s documentary, Le Chagrin et la pitié, helped launch a resurgence of interest in the Occupation after a long period of repression, ushering in the above-mentioned ‘mode rétro’ (Rousso 1987). In fact, Ophüls himself credits the younger generation for making his film possible, and he gives voice to their curiosity about their parents’ wartime activities (including in some cases, complicity with fascism), which many of the parents had never before revealed. Tavernier evinces just this sort of cross-generational curiosity when he interviews his father about the Occupation in Lyon, le regard intérieur.

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 43

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

44  bertrand tavernier Coming after 1968 and against the backdrop of the mode rétro, L’Horloger de Saint-Paul adds a historical dimension to Simenon’s generational portraits. In the novel, a father comes to acknowledge his own rebellious streak when he recognizes the same trait in his son. Michel Descombes’s spiritual drama, like Dave Galloway’s, culminates in his decision to stand unconditionally by his son without seeking to understand him. His only statement from the witness box is ‘My son and I stand together.’ Descombes makes his living repairing clocks; he fixes time, one might say, mending generation gaps. His (and Tavernier’s) radical gesture is to refuse to adopt a position of power, but instead to question the workings of authority. The spectator is invited to identify with the father, for example, but not against the son. Instead, the father learns from his son, and even comes to value his own small acts of rebellion. Le Chagrin et la pitié was an inspiration for Tavernier’s similarly structured documentary about France’s war in Algeria, La Guerre sans nom, which he dedicated to Ophüls. But L’Horloger de Saint-Paul already dramatizes interconnections between the son’s youthful revolt and resurgences of the father’s wartime memories. Visiting Bernard in prison, Descombes reports that two thugs from the murdered man’s factory had trashed his shop. Instead of calling the police, he and Antoine chased the two intruders, beating them soundly and tossing one of them into the Sâone. Recounting this incident to Bernard causes a companion memory from the war to resurface: under fire, Descombes had disobeyed a superior officer who ordered him to return into a burning building. Descombes recalls that he lived in fear of court-marshall for the duration of his service. Like the novel’s Dave Galloway, Descombes looks forward to the birth of his grandchild, wondering if that child will be a rebel too. He also thinks back to an ancestor’s small revolutionary gesture. Asked by Costes, a journalist, about a trinket in his son’s room, Descombes explains that the little gadget was built by a great-uncle for the purpose of fabricating contraband matches. It cut wood into strips, which were then dipped in sulphur and phosphorus and exchanged for a penny – or five years in prison. The Descombes ancestor got himself caught because the phosphorus on his shoes generated sparks when he walked. The journalist eagerly jots down these details, but Michel tells him the incident is unimportant. Moreover, publicizing this ancient ‘crime’ might offend the ancestor’s great granddaughters, who still

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 44

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

a filmmaker in his generation  45 live nearby. Costes has already seized his explanation, however, and wants to run with his story. ‘Un hors-la-loi, c’est passionnant, pour un gamin, c’est folklorique. C’était le héros de la famille.’12 Descombes demurs, remarking that his son is not a fan of heroes. This great uncle belongs plausibly to the period of the Commune (1870–71), and indeed, laws were passed in 1871–72 imposing a tax on the sale of matches and a state monopoly on their manufacture. Matches serve nicely to evoke the folkloric iconography of the Commune, especially of the Pétroleuses, women who allegedly participated in the revolutionary movement by setting fires. Aurenche claims to have scripted this exchange after an anecdote involving one of his own great uncles (Lowenstein 2000: 164). It might also have been inspired by a passing reference in Simenon’s novel to a Galloway ancestor who fought with the Confederacy, or perhaps by the ‘secret flame’ (Simenon 1954: 124) that unites generations of rebellious Galloway men. In addition, the scene evokes the symbolic burning car of the opening shots. It also gives Descombes occasion to resist yet another attempt to explain his son’s crime. What is remarkable about this film is that the chain of authority and subversion runs in both directions, repeatedly undermining attempts to favor any one person or generation or explanation over the others. The experience of chastising the two thugs, along with the memory of his own wartime insubordination and the family story about the ancestor, helps the father imagine and sympathize with his son’s act of revolt. What is more, his desire to re-establish connection with his son has allowed him finally to appreciate his own act of rebellion and even to repeat it. At the beginning of the film, Descombes had insisted on waiting for a green signal before crossing an intersection. Later, he urges his friend to run a red light in pursuit of the pair of vandals. With these sequences, Tavernier assembles a genealogy of rebellious Descombes men against the historical backdrop of nineteenthcentury revolutionary movements, Second World War Resistance (of a sort), and May ’68. And yet unlike the novel’s Dave Galloway, Tavernier’s protagonist does not seek a grand design of generational continuities, nor does he group the family rebels together in a single frame. The novel also orchestrated a crescendo in the three g ­ enerations’ rebellions, from a one-night escapade to an unsuitable marriage to 12 ‘an outlaw, now that’s exciting for a kid; it’s folkloric. The family hero.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 45

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

46  bertrand tavernier a murder. Descombes resists these sorts of (en)closure in the same way the film as a whole rejects reductive explanations. Instead, he learns to resist being pigeonholed into institutions, whether these are the judicial system and the courts, or traffic signals, or political or psychological or heroic narratives. Neither action-adventure nor gangster-thriller, L’Horloger de Saint-Paul is an unpretentious essay on the politics of daily life in 1970s France. Pierre Nora’s essay on the origins of generational consciousness, mentioned earlier, was the fruit of his own reflections on May ’68 and his observation that, unlike previous social upheavals such as the 1789 Revolution or the Commune, the 1968 events lacked any ‘triggering trauma’ that would have precipitated the gesture of revolt. Instead, the iconography and discourses surrounding the events show that the generation of May ’68 was forging its own collective identity by looking backward to earlier revolutionary moments. The most prominent of these is 1789, where Nora locates the origins of the very concept of generation. ‘The Revolution,’ he writes, ‘was intrinsically generational, nowhere more so than in its ambition to be a historical, initiatory rite of passage from the night of despotism to the bright day of liberty’ (Nora 1996–98: 502). In his view, two key changes in perspective define that watershed. First, ‘the past is no longer the law.’ Second, like other historians, Nora locates the beginning of the revolution on 20 June 1789, when the members of the Third Estate signed the ‘Tennis Court Oath’ pledging to produce a Constitution that would put an end to Absolute Monarchy. It was this paradigm shift away from hierarchical obedience and toward horizontal identification that made possible ‘an egalitarian world in which generational consciousness was born.’ Nora describes the shift as ‘the triumph of fraternal solidarity over paternal judgment’ (Nora 1996–98: 501). It seems to me that Nora’s words describe quite nicely the transformation that Michel Descombes undergoes in L’Horloger de Saint-Paul. While initially sharing confidences with the investigating policeman (Jean Rochefort, plate 3), himself also a troubled father, Descombes will come to realize he can’t continue to dance with power while siding with his son. He looks backward (if only with whimsical nostalgia) to the Commune and forward to his grandchild, and ultimately, in his own quiet way, makes two significant gestures that in effect re-enact the paradigm shift of the Revolution. When he rebuffs the policeman’s consolation and camaraderie, he effectively throws off his remaining

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 46

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

a filmmaker in his generation  47 allegiance to patriarchal institutions of law and authority. (Nora’s ‘The past is no longer the law.’) And when he rejects all recuperative explanatory narratives to declare instead his solidarity with his son – ‘Je suis entièrement, totalement solidaire de mon fils’ (Simenon 1954: 212, trans 121)13 – he enacts the ‘triumph of fraternal solidarity over paternal judgment.’ Or as the critic at Humanité Dimanche described the film: ‘C’est la montée d’une histoire d’amour paternel qui se transforme en fraternité’ (23 January 1974).14 However, all this may seem somewhat grandiose for the modest likes of Michel Descombes, who shares his son’s aversion to heroic explanations. A different rapprochement is perhaps more appropriate. When he refuses to call the police but instead chases the two vandals from his shop, or when, after a lifetime of obedient rule-following he urges his friend to run a traffic light, or when he re-evaluates his wartime act of insubordination, one might say he answers the question, ‘Qu’est-ce qu’un homme révolté?’ And the answer to that question was: ‘Un homme qui dit non. Un esclave, qui a reçu des ordres toute sa vie, juge soudain inacceptable un nouveau commandement.’15 That was Albert Camus, of course, in his L’Homme révolté (1951), itself written in the aura of the Resistance. By portraying his rebel as a man who has learned the value of revolt from his son, however, and thereby reversing generational and institutional hierarchies of authority, Tavernier makes a powerful statement. As we have seen, L’Horloger de Saint-Paul harks back to the recent ‘events of May ’68,’ and this is not surprising, given that the film is the work of a thirty-one year old. But in a context of a continuing national obsession with youth, what is remarkable about the film is its sympathy with an older generation, as its story unfolds from the father’s point of view. Unlike many films and filmmakers of the Nouvelle Vague, Tavernier does not automatically adopt the perspective of a one-dimensional, ahistorical younger generation. On the contrary, parents – especially fathers – and members of the parental generation are portrayed with affectionate insight and rich detail. Even the brutal father in La Passion Béatrice is studied in depth, with an eye to understanding what made him the monster he has become. 13 ‘My son and I stand together.’ 14 ‘It’s a story of paternal love transformed into brotherhood.’ 15 ‘What is a rebel? A man who says no. […] A slave who has taken orders all his life, suddenly refuses to obey another command.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 47

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

48  bertrand tavernier And when Tavernier’s youthful protagonists encounter moments of personal crisis and doubt, they take time out to visit an aging father: Katherine Mortenhoe in La Mort en direct (1978), believing she is dying, goes to his nursing home to hold her father’s hand; Caroline, in Daddy nostalgie (1990) rushes to the side of her dying father; Laurence, a teacher suffering a period of discouragement, takes a long bus ride to visit her parents; and Eloïse d’Artagnan leaves the shelter of the convent where she was raised in order to seek out her retired swashbuckler father, who she is confident will help her avenge the murder of her Mother Superior. A son, too – Francis, in Autour de minuit (1986) – takes his ailing American jazz musician friend to visit his parents in Lyon. Each of these scenes marks a character’s moment of personal reassessment and the beginnings of a change in direction. Tavernier’s ability to adopt multiple vantage points is integral to the moral complexity of his meditations on generational authority. Spectators share the paternal point of view of a saxophonist and his friend in Autour de minuit, and in Daddy nostalgie, while also sympathizing with a daughter who tries – and ultimately fails – to reach a father too absorbed in his career to notice his daughter’s need. Eloïse is the only daughter to succeed in getting her father’s attention (and La Fille de d’Artagnan is Tavernier’s only outright comedy). Parents are sometimes shown to relate differently to a daughter than to a son. The aging painter in Un dimanche à la campagne is able to enjoy and identify with his daughter’s rebellion, while his rapport with his son is more conflicted. And intergenerational disconnection is pursued to its logical and lethal consequences in L’Appât (1995), whose parents are morally absent and whose children are irretrievably lost. Que la fête commence begins with the death of the Regent’s daughter and ends with the death of a young peasant boy, figured as a son of the people. That in the opening sequence of L’Horloger de Saint-Paul Tavernier cast his own daughter, Tiffany, as a little girl who witnesses the burning car through a train window may explain the film’s sympathetic portrayal of the parental generation in a story (and in a historical era) fixated on youthful revolt. Philippe Noiret, playing Michel Descombes, was a young father too at the time. The father’s point of view is made central in the source novel through free indirect discourse. Tavernier replaces Dave Galloway’s introspections with the police detective who befriends Descombes. Detective Guiboud understands the other man’s grief over his son’s betrayal, because he

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 48

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

a filmmaker in his generation  49 himself has troubled relations with his children. As the investigation proceeds, however, Descombes slowly chooses to side with his son against institutional power and its representatives. Tavernier replaces Dave Galloway’s solitary ruminations with an open confrontation: lunching together in a bistro, Guiboud and Descombes hear a radio update on the hunt for the two young fugitives. Suddenly, Descombes departs in anger, leaving money on the table and instructing the policeman to ‘keep the change.’ Cutting and patronizing, his remark also acknowledges that society pays the police to do their work. Guiboud remains at the table looking pensive and disappointed but hardly surprised. Perhaps he realizes that Descombes is responding to societal forces, not personal animosity. After 1968, politics is understood not as a matter of elections or Left–Right positions (although Descombes and his friends discuss these over dinner), but rather, as the negotiation of everyday relations to institutions of power. L’Horloger de Saint-Paul bears striking resemblances to another film, Joseph Losey’s Time Without Pity (1957). This story of a man ruined by a false accusation was the first film Losey signed with his own name after being blacklisted by Senator Joseph McCarthy’s House Unamerican Activities Committee and consequently exiling himself to London. In the film, a chronic alcoholic leaves his treatment center and travels to London in an attempt to prevent his son’s execution for murder. Believing his son to be innocent, he races against the clock and resists the undertow of drink, succeeding at the last minute in identifying the real perpetrator. Lacking proof of the other man’s guilt, however, he provokes the murderer to kill him, the father, and in this way, he saves his son from the gallows. The two films share several important features. In both, the viewer shares the father’s anguish as he travels to the prison, only to learn that his son refuses to see him. In neither film is the murder a mystery, since we know the criminal’s identity from the start. Instead of a mystery, both offer a tale of a man tormented by worry that he has been an inadequate father, who seeks to redeem himself in his son’s eyes. In addition – and unlike Simenon’s Dave Galloway – both fathers act to radically transform the nature of relations between generations. As a result, in both films a reversal of the traditional generational pattern of approval and authority has distinctly political overtones. Tavernier’s first article for Positif, published in the July–August issue of 1960, was a review of Time Without Pity. The review was

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 49

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

50  bertrand tavernier written during the period when Tavernier was actively seeking to mature and learn before attempting a first film. Years later, he will describe Losey’s use of objects and decor to establish a metaphysical universe, a strategy he himself adopts (Tavernier 1995: 651–2). In his review, published just after he turned nineteen, Tavernier admires the way Losey links his scenes together, establishing deceptive appearances in the first half of the film and then unmasking them in the second half. What strikes him most, however, is ‘the enormous and powerful virulence in the satire,’ whereby a private drama of father and son functions as a portrait of a society. ‘It is a dynamite film,’ the young Tavernier writes, ‘the sort of film after which you feel […] you have just witnessed the destruction of a world, a rotten society, physically and morally falling apart.’ He pays close attention to how Losey describes characters ‘who are alone and alienated in their solitude by a society that is crushing them.’ In the end, ‘the only way for truth to triumph is through violence,’ and ‘the battle involves love, friendship, and solidarity’ (Ciment and Kardish 2003: 59–62). Tavernier returns to all these themes fourteen years later in L’Horloger de Saint-Paul: his plot, too, turns on a father’s worldview turned upside down, on his journey from solitude to solidarity, and on a personal drama that represents a society in crisis. He even noticed the ‘clock-like precision’ with which Losey’s story unfolds. As these and other examples show, generational relations for Tavernier are always anchored in social contexts and sometimes even function allegorically. As the father of a troublesome schoolboy puts it in Une semaine de vacances: ‘Les enfants ne ressemblent pas à leurs parents. Ils ressemblent à leur époque.’16 Tavernier’s family genealogies serve, too, as figures for the history of aesthetics: bebop musicians, filmmakers, a painter, each identifies with predecessors while seeking to overturn them in order to define a new generation of artists. This is, of course, the dynamic Harold Bloom outlined in The Anxiety of Influence (1973). It is also the script played out by François Truffaut’s oedipal diatribe against the ‘cinéma de papa’ that launched the Nouvelle Vague. Post-New Wave It has been widely assumed that Tavernier’s career represents a throwback, that he has implicitly rejected the New Wave, and with it, the 16 ‘Children don’t resemble their parents. They resemble their era.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 50

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

a filmmaker in his generation  51 modern. This portrayal – whether denounced or deemed commendable – derives in turn from two arguments: first, that Tavernier eschews formal experimentation in favor of unselfconsciously transparent storytelling; and second, beginning with his first film, that his choice of scriptwriters Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost signaled a deliberate repudiation of the Nouvelle Vague and wholesale alignment with their predecessors, those filmmakers of the so-called Tradition of Quality that the New Wave (particularly Truffaut) had explicitly rejected. Both these assumptions merit further scrutiny. The New Wave directors are justly famous for having revolutionized the methods of film creation and liberated the profession for those who followed. They were eager to challenge the rules of storytelling, filming techniques, acting, financing, and distribution, and they represented the perspectives of contemporary young people through their spontaneous, dynamic style. All novice French filmmakers since that time owe the New Wave a debt of gratitude for shaking off outmoded and paralyzing production and distribution systems. Their breakthrough was facilitated by new technologies that made filmmaking less expensive and less cumbersome. Lightweight cameras, cable-free sound recording devices, and highly light-sensitive film stock made it possible to dispense with costly studios and artificial lighting and instead to set their films in (mostly Parisian) apartments, streets, and cafés. Social and political conditions were propitious too (and very different from when Tavernier began his career). The country was in the middle of thirty years of post-war prosperity, an era Jean Fourastié would later dub the ‘trente glorieuses.’ The Nouvelle Vague directors appeared on the scene during the tumultuous moment of passage from the Fourth to the Fifth Republic. France had recently lost its colonies in Indochina, and repressive policies and escalating violence in Algeria were topics of passionate debate. Official and unofficial censorship, as well as sometimes unspoken taboos, prevented treatment of certain sexual or political subjects. Films that broached any topics relating to the Algerian war (decolonization or terrorism, for example, or torture) risked delays or suppression. Consequently, political material, when represented at all in New Wave films, is either peripheral or introduced so obliquely as to be nearly incomprehensible (Higgins 1996). There is still disagreement about whether the ‘New Wave’ coheres at all as a group or a style. In the last analysis, its historical moment – its political, techno-

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 51

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

52  bertrand tavernier logical, cultural, and sociological landscape – goes farther than any other explanation of the Nouvelle Vague as a generational changing of the guard. Except perhaps the extraordinary attack on the Tradition of Quality that appeared in the January 1954 issue of the Cahiers du cinéma. That issue contained a now-famous essay entitled ‘Une certaine tendance dans le cinéma français’17 by François Truffaut, then a brash young movie critic at the magazine. In a stridently polemical tone, Truffaut set forth an agenda for the New Wave, five years before the explosion upon the scene of its masterpieces, including his own first feature, Les 400 Coups. Truffaut advocated an auteurist approach whereby directors would produce their own scripts and in which the dynamism of the image would be as important as the screenplay. In other words, they would foreground the specificity of the cinematic medium of expression in and of itself, wielding what six years earlier Alexandre Astruc had called a ‘caméra-stylo’ (Astruc 1948). One can hardly overestimate the impact of Truffaut’s article. The editors found it so inflammatory that they urged Truffaut to moderate his tone. The Nouvelle Vague might never have been considered a movement at all, had it not been for Truffaut’s manifesto. Truffaut’s real grievance was against the subordination of the filmmaker’s art to the widespread adaptation of French literary classics, a practice that, with government encouragement, had brought about the patriotic post-war Tradition of Quality to compete with the influx of American films (implicitly a ‘tradition of quantity’). In short, his diatribe was cinema’s declaration of independence from literature. His most explicit targets were the popular screenwriters Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost. Beginning in 1943 with Claude Autant-Lara’s Douce, the pair had worked together, with Aurenche constructing the scenarios and Bost crafting the dialogues. As a team, they had provided scripts for the masterpieces of the Tradition of Quality, including many literary adaptations. Their scripts were witty, literary, and fully elaborated, but they left little room for the colloquial spontaneity and freewheeling improvisation that were to be the hallmarks of the Nouvelle Vague. Thanks to Truffaut, ‘Aurenchébost’ quickly became a catchword for stale, outdated filmmaking, and the blacklisted pair soon faded from view for the duration of the Nouvelle Vague’s heyday. 17 ‘A certain tendency of French cinema.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 52

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

a filmmaker in his generation  53 Enter Bertrand Tavernier, twenty years later, with L’Horloger de Saint-Paul, a literary adaptation signed by Aurenche and Bost. Not only that, but Tavernier went on to co-script a second film with Aurenche and Bost (Le Juge et l’assassin) and after Bost’s death in 1975, two more with Aurenche alone (Que la fête commence, Coup de torchon (1981)). He made Un dimanche à la campagne from a novel by Bost. Finally, he put Aurenche and Bost on screen as characters in Laissez-passer. Tavernier could not have been unaware that his opening gambit would cast him as a player in a revived quarrel of ancients versus moderns, and indeed, his choice of screenwriters for his debut has been widely interpreted as a kind of counter-manifesto repudiating the Nouvelle Vague and siding with the Tradition of Quality. Many academic film historians have indeed concluded that Tavernier’s choice of Aurenche and Bost automatically signaled a rejection of the New Wave (Austin 1996: 149; Forbes 1992: 153) and an alignment with the kind of filmmaking Truffaut excoriated (Powrie 1997: 21, 47). Prédal recognizes the possibility that Tavernier was reacting against ‘un certain nombrilisme du cinéma d’auteur,’18 but he nevertheless situates the filmmaker in a 1970s current of a ‘retour du romanesque’19 that he considers ‘un peu extérieur à l’histoire du cinéma’ (Prédal 1996: 334–5).20 Such assessments of Tavernier as retrograde are all the more striking in that it is now generally acknowledged that Truffaut’s diatribe against Aurenche and Bost was overstated, if not outright dishonest: Truffaut had flattered Bost into giving him the draft of a script in progress and then used it to launch his attack. Truffaut later admitted that he had acted irresponsibly and regretted his tactics (Lowenstein 2000: 160). In any case, Tavernier and others have repeatedly pointed out – and Truffaut eventually agreed – that if many of the Tradition of Quality adaptations were uninspired and mechanical, this was the fault of the directors, not the scriptwriters. Journalist Jean-Michel Frodon takes a more skeptical view. He believes Tavernier’s choice of scriptwriters was intentionally provocative. At the same time, he finds that aspects of the filmmaker’s vision as first unveiled in L’Horloger de Saint-Paul – detailed representation of time and space, avoidance of psychological explanations for the characters’ behavior (‘psychological realism’ having been the ‘certain 18 ‘the navel-gazing tendencies of auteurist films.’ 19 ‘a return of the novelistic.’ 20 ‘somewhat marginal to cinema history.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 53

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

54  bertrand tavernier tendency’ at the root of Truffaut’s denunciation), the creation of the film’s specifically cinematic structures, and the evocation of a precise historical moment and social milieu – announce ‘l’originalité d’un cinéaste avec lequel il faudra compter’ (Frodon 1995: 278–9).21 When L’Horloger de Saint-Paul was released in 1974, the press was enthusiastic both about the film itself and about Tavernier’s choice of Aurenche and Bost. The event gave them the opportunity to take sides, and almost without exception, they opted for Tavernier over the ‘nombrilisme’ of the New Wave (thereby, of course, preserving the imputed opposition). François Maurin of L’Humanité, for example, hailed ‘le retour de deux des scénaristes les plus connus et les plus talentueux du cinéma français’22 and regretted that Aurenche and Bost had been forgotten during a period that elevated auteurism into a fetish (19 January 1974). The critic at Le Monde rejoiced when the film received the prestigious Louis Delluc prize and saw the award as a belated homage to the proscribed scriptwriters (14 January 1974). Numerous reviewers took the opportunity for a dig not only at Truffaut for blacklisting the screenwriters, but at the Nouvelle Vague in general. Several reviews tellingly congratulate Tavernier on his ‘anticonformism,’ that is, his willingness to work outside the paradigms established both by predecessors and current fashions (Le Point, 21 January 1974; Combat, 14 January 1974; Le Canard enchaîné, 16 January 1974). To its account of the film, Le Nouvel Observateur added a box proclaiming enthusiastically ‘Vive Aurenchébost!’ The reviewer sees in Tavernier’s film a resolution of the polemic launched by Truffaut: ‘Aujourd’hui que les perspectives s’aménagent et que les arbres de la Nouvelle Vague ne nous cachent plus la forêt, cet hommage à Aurenchébost satisfait’ (Bory 1974).23 Tavernier himself scoffs at his alleged repudiation of the New Wave, and he considers it ludicrous to suppose that a fledgling filmmaker would risk his career to make a point. He claims not to understand the furor over his choice of screenwriters and explains patiently that he approached Aurenche and Bost because he admired their work, imagined they would be delightful collaborators, and, in addition (and 21 ‘the originality of a filmmaker that we will have to reckon with.’ 22 ‘the return of two of the best-known and most talented screenwriters of French cinema.’ 23 ‘From today’s perspective, now that New Wave trees no longer hide the forest, this homage to Aurenche and Bost is gratifying.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 54

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

a filmmaker in his generation  55 thanks to Truffaut!) they were available (Lowenstein 2000: 156–7). He was particularly impressed by the two writers’ political outspokenness and once remarked sarcastically that unlike some, they didn’t wait for 1968 to tackle controversial topics (Douin 1997: 120). He frequently refers in interviews to their script for Claude Autant-Lara’s Douce. Released during the Occupation, that film contains lines that were provocative and perhaps even dangerous at the time. Much later, in an interview for the Los Angeles Times after the American distribution of Laissez-passer (which refers to those lines), Tavernier explains his long-standing admiration of Aurenche and Bost: [Douce] also has that scene where a woman visits the poor family and as she’s leaving says, ‘I wish you patience and resignation,’ which are words Marshall Pétain played on the radio for years. And the guy with her says, ‘You had better wish them impatience and revolt.’   Tavernier leans forward, his eyebrows arcing up. ‘Imagine. The word “‘revolt” in a film in 1942.’   ‘When I discovered the film,’ he says, ‘I decided I wanted to work with the people who’d written that line. I wanted to know them.’ (Lowenstein 2000: 162–4; Wilson 2005)

Moreover, their political daring as exemplified in Douce aligns the scriptwriters with the tradition of ‘intellectual Resistance’ Tavernier learned about from his father. Additionally, Tavernier recalls having sought scriptwriters from an older generation, because L’Horloger de Saint-Paul is about a father and son. ‘J’avais besoin de gens plus âgés que moi,’24 he explains, adding the qualification that at seventy years of age, Aurenche and Bost were among the youngest people he had ever known (L’Horloger de Saint-Paul, DVD interview). Elsewhere, he elaborates: ‘devant autant que derrière la caméra, il était question, durant tout le tournage, des rapports de père à fils’ (Beylie 1974: 6).25 That throughout his career he has seen Philippe Noiret in paternal terms is revealed in the director’s heartfelt tribute following the actor’s death: ‘Je me sens un peu orphelin,’ he declares: ‘I feel like an orphan’ (Tavernier interview 2006). Le Nouvel Observateur’s reviewer pointed out another detail that bridged the chasm between the young Tavernier and the artists he admires from an older generation: 24 ‘I needed to work with people older than myself.’ 25 ‘Both behind and in front of the camera, the filming was about relations between father and son.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 55

12/10/2011 16:25

56  bertrand tavernier

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘Si l’on ajoute que Bertrand Tavernier a dédié son film à Jacques Prévert, vieux lion du cinéma de gauche et poète de l’anarchie bouffebourgeois, on voit qu’entre ces anciens et Tavernier-le-jeunot c’est aussi une histoire de père et de fils.’ (Bory 1974)26

For his part, when Jacques Prévert learned that Aurenche and Bost had scripted Tavernier’s film, the poet is said to have remarked that their presence ‘me garantit la rectitude morale de l’oeuvre’ (Tesseire 1974).27 In sum, there are many ways to understand Tavernier’s choice of Aurenche and Bost short of assuming a wholesale rejection of an earlier generation of filmmakers. Sadly, however, the formulaic and reductive nature of the debate over L’Horloger de Saint-Paul has obscured the debt Tavernier owes to his Nouvelle Vague predecessors and his deep and frequently expressed appreciation of their work. As a young film critic and press agent, Tavernier had manifested considerable enthusiasm and support for the New Wave directors, and he is always quick to praise their films. ‘J’ai vécu la Nouvelle Vague de manière très passionnée,’ he says. ‘J’avais envie de voir les films, je pensais qu’on avait besoin de nouveaux metteurs en scène. Le cinéma français tournait en rond, devenait rance’ (Tassone 2003: 278).28 Under producer de Beauregard, he served as press attaché for Varda, Demy, Godard, and Rozier and later freelanced for Chabrol. He met and learned from cinematographer Raoul Coutard and composer Antoine Duhamel, and he has remained friendly with many of these early mentors and models. Duhamel, who had worked with Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol, and also with Autant-Lara (and many, many others), composed scores for Tavernier’s short sketch in La Chance et l’amour (1964), and then returned for La Mort en direct (1980), Daddy nostalgie, and Laissez-passer. As a fledgling filmmaker, Tavernier appreciated ways the New Wave directors rewrote the rules of narration, camera movement, and the use of equipment. He learned a great deal from observing 26 ‘If we add that Bertrand Tavernier dedicated his film to Jacques Prévert, that old lion of Left-wing cinema, that poet of bourgeois-baiting anarchy, we see that this story between old timers and the young cub Tavernier is also a tale of father and son.’ 27 ‘guarantees the film’s moral righteousness.’ 28 ‘I was passionate about the New Wave. I wanted to see the films, I believed we needed new directors. French cinema was turning in place, becoming stale.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 56

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

a filmmaker in his generation  57 their use of hand-held cameras and direct sound, and he admired (and adopted) their experiments with natural decors and lighting. He praises their fresh approaches to a profession whose creativity was stifled by ‘des conditions de production très corporatistes.’ He understood the importance of auteur theory: ‘[…] la Nouvelle Vague a réussi à imposer le ‘“je”‘ au cinema, le film à la première personne, brisant certains moules scénaristiques’ (Tassone 2003: 278–82).29 In his work at the Institut Lumière, as in his own filmmaking, especially his adaptations (which he invariable co-scripts), he has espoused the auteur approach. Some of his statements about filmmaking – such as: ‘the way you place the camera and the way you edit sequences can suggest emotions that are as deep as anything that Stendhal or Balzac could create’ (Porter 1986: 103) – might have been quoted directly from Astruc or Truffaut. In all these ways and more, his oeuvre demonstrates the influence of his elders. It would thus be a mistake to position Tavernier in affiliation with or in opposition to any particular generation of filmmaking. His encyclopedic knowledge of world cinema has allowed him to draw from traditions including the New Wave, the Tradition of Quality, and many others. ‘[T]out n’est pas né avec la Nouvelle Vague,’ he points out. ‘On assiste aujourd’hui à une sorte de révisionnisme critique qui prétend nous faire croire que l’histoire du cinéma moderne commence à l’époque de la Nouvelle Vague. Ce n’est pas vrai, l’histoire du cinéma moderne a commencé avec la naissance du cinéma’ (Tassone 2003: 283–4).30 Nevertheless, beginning with his first feature, he has engaged in a sustained conversation with the New Wave, especially Truffaut. As an adolescent, he requested an invitation from Truffaut and then skipped school in order to spend a day observing the shooting of Les 400 Coups (Tassone 2003: 279). In fact, Truffaut apparently once planned to adapt Simenon’s L’Horloger d’Everton using father and son actors Pierre and Claude Brasseur (Tesseire 1974). With his choice of Aurenche and Bost to script his own adaptation of that novel, it is almost as if Tavernier is taking care of Truffaut’s unfinished business and correcting his mistakes. It is thus a fine coincidence that the same 29 ‘the New Wave succeeded in imposing the ‘“I’” in cinema, the film in the first person, breaking the scriptwriting mould.’ 30 ‘Not everything was born with the New Wave. Today we’re seeing a sort of critical revisionism that would have us believe that modern cinema began with the New Wave. That’s not true. Modern cinema began with the birth of cinema.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 57

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

58  bertrand tavernier weekend Tavernier was accepting the Prix Louis Delluc in Paris for L’Horloger de Saint-Paul, the older director was in New York receiving the Best Foreign Film award for La Nuit américaine. In fact, Tavernier had served as press agent for Truffaut’s film – which was produced by de Beauregard. Tavernier also admired its cinematographer, PierreWilliam Glenn, whom he engaged for his own debut. While returning to work with Truffaut on Une belle fille comme moi (1972) and L’Argent de poche (1975), Glenn would also continue with Tavernier for Que la fête commence, Le Juge et l’assassin, La Mort en direct, and Coup de torchon. Strangely, no critics have concluded from this that Tavernier should be assimilated to the Nouvelle Vague. So much does Tavernier sympathize with Descombes’s resistance to explanation and closure that L’Horloger de Saint-Paul doesn’t really conclude. Instead, it leaves its protagonist on a railroad overpass near the prison, watching the trains coming into the station. And five years later, he reappears: Une semaine de vacances concerns a lycée teacher, Laurence Cuers (Nathalie Baye), who experiences a bout of depression and follows her doctor’s orders to take a week away from work. Laurence accepts an invitation to dine with Monsieur Mancheron, the father of one of her more unmanageable students. Joining them at the table is Mancheron’s friend, Michel Descombes, who gives news about his son in prison ‘cinq ans déjà.’ He, Michel, is helping to care for the child of Bernard and his girlfriend, Liliane, until the two complete their sentence. The reappearance of Michel Descombes is not the film’s only link with L’Horloger de Saint-Paul. Une semaine de vacances again foregrounds Lyon, this time in wide-screen CinemaScope that enhances urban panoramas and traveling shots of the city’s two rivers. Here once again, the famous Lyonnais bouchons provide a setting for a convivial meal. And Descombes is still living his modest liberation from paternalistic authority: he indicates he has parked his car over there, ‘là où c’est interdit.’31 But as Mancheron recounts his own school days to Laurence and compares himself to his son, he discovers that the school system oppresses the teachers as much as the students. Tavernier fought hard to set his first film in Lyon, despite pressure from producers and others; it was important to him that he tell this story of a father and son in the setting of his childhood. Une 31 ‘over there, where it’s forbidden.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 58

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

a filmmaker in his generation  59 semaine de vacances is also set in Lyon, and Laurence’s discouragement calls to mind the opening voiceover of Lyon, le regard intérieur. But in contrast to L’Horloger de Saint-Paul’s manifest anger and effervescent social critique, Une semaine de vacances was made in 1980, in the climate of national discouragement that preceded the election of socialist François Mitterrand to the Presidency. Mancheron is the parent mentioned earlier who declared that children resemble their era more than their parents. This later film conveys a malaise that is both individual and national and whose symptom is a paralyzing depression that is both economic and moral. The pace is slower, more contemplative, more world-weary. The questions and the solutions of 1968 persist only in the form of a useless nostalgia. Laurence’s companion (Gérard Lanvin) points out on several occasions that selfdoubt is a luxury, and in response to a student complaint that, in the lapidary terms of 1968, ‘On a tué notre imagination,’32 Laurence replies that it’s too simple to evade responsibility by finding someone to blame. Tavernier’s background conversation with Truffaut thus extends beyond L’Horloger de Saint-Paul into its sequel. Une semaine de vacances, like Ça commence aujourd’hui (1999) almost two decades later, inscribes itself in the French school-as-microcosm subgenre that includes Truffaut’s Les 400 Coups and L’Argent de Poche, along with such classics as Jean Bénoît-Lévy and Marie Epstein’s La Maternelle (1932), and Jean Vigo’s Zéro de conduite (1933). In fact, Laurence Cuers’s pupils read Molière’s play, l’Avare, in an overt allusion to Argent de poche. In both cases, the classroom scenes reinforce the microcosm effect by underscoring a convergence of social issues (in the class discussion of Molière’s play) and student engagement with (or disengagement from) the national curriculum. Mancheron laments with affectionate perplexity that his son, like himself, is somewhat of a ‘cancre.’ Dictionaries usually translate this word as ‘dunce,’ but the French term has richer connotations. Jacques Prévert’s poem of that title conjures more of a dreamer, somewhat of a cut-up, a fledgling ‘homme révolté.’ As already noted, L’Horloger de Saint-Paul is dedicated to Prévert, that patron poet of cancres, that advocate of healthy doses of rebellion and anarchism. Prévert also wrote for some of the filmmakers of an earlier generation targeted by 32 ‘they’ve killed our imagination.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 59

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

60  bertrand tavernier Truffaut’s 1954 polemic (Autant-Lara, Delannoy, Allégret) as well as others Truffaut didn’t target (Renoir, Carné, Bunuel). Although Tavernier’s early choices have struck some as a repudiation of the New Wave and particularly of Truffaut, like Les 400 Coups, L’Horloger de Saint-Paul is an intensely personal first film, featuring an ‘autobiographical actor’ (Jean-Pierre Léaud, Philippe Noiret) who would return in the same role (Doinel, Descombes) in a subsequent film. In both debut films, a personal and intimate family drama reflects the social mood pervasive at the historical moment of their making, as both films foreground relations between generations. Truffaut, however, filming in 1958, portrays boisterous children becoming progressively alienated from teachers and parents. (One of his teachers remarks ‘J’ai peur pour la France dans dix ans.’33) Twentytwo years later, Tavernier stages a rapprochement: Laurence’s genuine affection for her students and commitment to her profession eventually send her back to work. In his historical moment, Truffaut saw the generations – of young people, of filmmakers – as divergent and hostile in ‘Une certaine tendance’ and in Les 400 Coups. A generation later, in very different historical circumstances, Tavernier brings them back together. L’Horloger de Saint-Paul suggests that the theme of conflicts between generations may ultimately be a red herring. Tavernier works instead to reconnect generations, showing that rebellion, solidarity, influence, and even memory are two-way streets. Rather his work is more interesting if, than assigning him to one generation or another, we recognize it as a sustained exploration of relations between generations both in families and in cinema history. Instead of claiming his films’ novelty or debating accusations about their derivative nature, he says, significantly, ‘le problème c’est de voir les filiations’ (Tassone 2003: 285).34 Within his first film, outside it, and throughout his career, it seems that Tavernier is actively engaged in constructing the identity of his generation and his era.

33 ‘I fear for France in ten years.’ 34 ‘you have to see the filiations.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 60

12/10/2011 16:25

a filmmaker in his generation  61

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

References Astruc, Alexandre (1948), ‘Naissance d’une nouvelle avant-garde,’ L’Ecran français. Austin, Guy (1996), Contemporary French Cinema: An Introduction, Manchester University Press. Baecque, Antoine de and Serge Toubiana (1999), François Truffaut, trans. Catherine Temerson, New York, Knopf. Barthes, Roland (1968), ‘L’Ecriture de l’événement,’ Communications, 12: 108–112. Bénéton, Philippe and Jean Touchard (1970), ‘The Interpretations of the Crisis of May/June 1968,’ trans. Keith A. Reader, in Reader (1993). Beylie, Claude (1974), ‘Le Temps de la pitié,’ L’Avant-Scène Cinéma, May, 147. Bory, ‘Jean-Louis (1974), ‘Vive Aurenchébost!’, Le Nouvel Observateur, 14 January. Camus, Albert (1951), L’Homme révolté, Paris, Gallimard. Ciment, Michel and Laurence Kardish (eds) (2003), Positif: 50 Years: Selections from the French Film Journal, New York: Museum of Modern Art. Forbes, Jill (1992), The Cinema in France After the New Wave, Bloomington, Indiana University Press. Frodon, Jean Michel (1995), L’Age moderne du cinéma français de la Nouvelle Vague à nos jours, Paris, Flammarion. Giroud, Françoise (1958), La Nouvelle Vague: Portraits de la jeunesse, Paris, Gallimard. Harris, Sue (2004), ‘Spectators 1960–2004: The Decline, Fall and Rebirth of Cinemagoing,’ The French Cinema Book, Michael Temple and Michael Witt (eds), London, BFI. Higgins, Lynn A. (1996), New Novel, New Wave, New Politics: Fiction and the Representation of History in Postwar France, Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press. Jameson, Fredric (1988), ‘Periodizing the Sixties,’ The Ideology of Theory Vol 2: Syntax of History, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press. Lowenstein, Stephen (ed.) (2000), My First Film: 20 Celebrated Directors Talk about Their First Film, London and New York, Penguin. Nora, Pierre (1996–98), ‘Generations,’ Realms of Memory, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, New York, Columbia University Press. Porter, Melinda Camber (1986), Through Parisian Eyes: Reflections on Contemporary French Arts and Culture, Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press. Powrie, Phil (1997), French Cinema in the 1980s: Nostalgia and the Crisis of Masculinity, Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press. Prédal, René (1996), 50 Ans de cinema français, Paris, Nathan. Reader, Keith A. (1993), The May 1968 Events in France: Reproductions and Interpretations, New York, St Martin’s. Rousso, Henry (1987), Le Syndrome de Vichy de 1944 à nos jours, Paris, Seuil. Simenon, Georges (1954), The Clockmaker, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Orig. L’Horloger d’Everton (1954), Paris, Presses de la Cité. Tassone, Aldo (2003), Que reste-t-il de la Nouvelle Vague? Paris, Stock.

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 61

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

62  bertrand tavernier Tesseire, Guy (1974), ‘Bertrand Tavernier Prix Delluc: Comment réaliser un premier film,’ L’Aurore, 15 January. Truffaut, François (1954), ‘Une Certaine Tendance dans le cinema français,’ Les Cahiers du cinéma, 15 January. Williams, Alan (1992), Republic of Images: A History of French Filmmaking, Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press. Wilson, Chuck (2005), ‘Impatience and revolt’ in the fine films of occupied France,’ The Los Angeles Times, 4 May. Winock, Michel (1986), La Fièvre hexagonale: Les grandes crises politiques de 1871 à 1968, Paris, Calmann-Lévy. See also Select Bibliography.

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 62

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

3 Portraits of the artist

Although his work springs from emotion and personal experience, Tavernier is also very analytical and self-aware. His background as a press agent, his encyclopedia of American cinema, his many published articles and reviews, and the numerous interviews he has given and conducted testify to the thought he devotes to the technical, esthetic, personal, and social roots of his art. We should thus not be surprised that his oeuvre contains a self-reflecting dimension, or that many of his characters are artists. Even protagonists whose primary occupation lies elsewhere enjoy an artistic hobby. In L.627, Lucien (Lulu), chief of a police narcotics squad, makes home movies in his spare time; Daniel Lefebvre of Ça commence aujourd’hui teaches small children by day and writes poetry in the evening. Regent Philippe d’Orléans in Que la fête commence, like his historical model, is an accomplished musician. This chapter will focus on Tavernier’s portraits of professional artists. Des enfants gâtés gives us Bernard Rougerie, a middle-aged scriptwriter who rents an apartment away from his family in order to complete a screenplay. He is soon caught up in a renters’ dispute. Seven years later, Un dimanche à la campagne portrays an elderly painter provoked by a Sunday visit from his children and grandchildren to reflect upon the artistic compromises he has made. In Autour de minuit, an aging African-American bebop saxophonist making a comeback in 1959 Paris is rescued from self-destruction by a French fan, himself a graphic artist. A scriptwriter in Daddy nostalgie takes a break from work to spend time with her dying father. Although none of these films treats cinema per se, all explore the challenges and rewards of a life devoted to art. Taken together, the films explore the

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 63

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

64  bertrand tavernier separate material components of cinematic art – script, sound, and image. Eventually, with Laissez-passer, Tavernier will bring the components together in a historical fiction about the French filmmaking industry during the German Occupation. Art for Tavernier never occurs in a vacuum. Throughout his career, he has devoted much attention to the individual artist’s struggle to juggle competing needs for solitude, family and community, the desire for self-expression, and the imperative to make a living while also making a difference. In this chapter’s films, all the artists portrayed are fictional, although most took inspiration from real historical models. All grapple with material obstacles and existential crises that jeopardize their identity and sometimes even their life. Tavernier has suggested that he chooses to portray artists precisely because they epitomize the dilemmas experienced by any thinking person living in a wider society. ‘Most of the characters that interest me are people who are preoccupied by the problems of communicating,’ Tavernier explains, ‘and they are always people in crisis. On some level they are always creative people. […] [O]ne of the main characteristics of my central character is doubt, and a certain kind of questioning, and anxiety’ (Porter 1986: 99–100). Tavernier’s artists are successful. They fear not failure, but insignificance. Their doubts arise from conflicts between their creative vision and their human limitations. Bernard Rougerie in Des enfants gâtés comes to question the value of his contrived screenplay with its superficial characters. Monsieur Ladmiral, the painter, suspects that his talent has been too timid, too academic, too bound by rules imposed by his obligations to his family and by subservient imitation of his mentors. Now that it is perhaps too late, he wonders whether he should have been bolder, even selfish. Saxophonist Dale Turner wonders what he still has to offer, as he struggles to make his music soar against the downward pull of external forces (the brutalities of racial discrimination) and his own inner demons (the artificial paradise of alcohol and drugs). And each of the two artists of Laissez-passer mobilizes his inner strengths and even his weaknesses to find his own style of resistance to Occupation. For all these figures, being an artist is a balancing act. Each is torn between his familial and civic commitments on the one hand and his creative vocation on the other. Each must weigh his reliance on tradition against the need to imagine something new. Each wants to express private concerns

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 64

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

portraits of the artist  65 in ways that will be understood and appreciated by the public. In Laissez-passer, Tavernier distributes this balancing act between two characters, converting inner struggle into dialogue: director Jean Devaivre (Jacques Gamblin) takes a job with a German-controlled studio to cover his Resistance activities. More visceral and intuitive, scriptwriter Jean Aurenche (Denis Podalydès) refuses any contact with Occupation authorities and lives his career on the run, casting anxious glances over his shoulder. Tavernier’s portraits of the artist also function as self-portraits, in that they are the filmmaker’s laboratory for thinking about cinema, about its sources, powers, limits, and its debts to the other arts.

The personal and the political: Des enfants gâtés The evening they meet, scriptwriter Bernard Rougerie (Michel Piccoli) accompanies his neighbor, Anne Torrini (Christine Pascal), to a laundromat. They chat about the renters’ strike, of which Anne is a militant leader. At their destination, however, the two overhear an elderly gentleman requesting permission to watch the facility’s television. Perched on a plastic chair and surrounded by the hum of washing machines, he ecstatically drinks in the strains of La Traviata. He has found an island of transcendence amid the urban hubbub, causing Bernard and Anne to pause and smile. As the two leave the building, the opera music continues across the change of scene, escaping the television to accompany the camera as it circles gently, caressing silhouetted children and colored neon lights, making them dance against the darkening sky and transforming the ugly housing project into a painting of color and light. This spillover from the film’s content to its form suggests that Tavernier allows his subject to guide his esthetic choices. It is as though the cinematography itself had been inspired by an unexpected eruption of music in a laundromat. A similar juxtaposition informs the film’s opening shots of a bleak industrial panorama mitigated only by a few children’s crude but exuberant drawings daubed on a wall. Here, urban ugliness is leavened by accordion music and a bawdy song rendered with brio by actors Jean Rochefort and Jean-Pierre Marielle, lamenting the Paris of yesteryear. Both instances demonstrate how art can infuse the ordinary with beauty, and even how creation might incorporate a measure of civic ­engagement.

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 65

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

66  bertrand tavernier Although Bernard Rougerie has left his family behind and moved temporarily into a 19th arrondissement high-rise in order to complete his screenplay in isolation and tranquility, the task proves more difficult than it seemed. No sooner does he move in, than Anne Torrini appears at his door to recruit his participation in a protest movement. In the course of their rent dispute, Anne and Bernard will encounter a host of pressing social issues. Anne has lost her job; an immigrant tenant fears he will forfeit his residency permit if he speaks out; several women swallow their discontent, leaving political action to their husbands. Loneliness and financial troubles push one renter to suicide. Rougerie feels compelled to add these injustices to the other problems he confronts at work and in his marriage. Tavernier’s first portrait of an artist explores the competing demands of creation and responsibility to family and society. How, the film asks, might one manage to be both artist and citizen? Of all Tavernier’s fictional characters, Rougerie is the most closely modeled on Tavernier himself. Both the Tavernier children play roles, with Tiffany as Rougerie’s daughter, and on several occasions, the filmmaker acknowledges the story’s autobiographical elements, often with tongue in cheek. Like his creator, Rougerie is apparently indebted to Truffaut: he names his protagonist Antoine and calls one segment of his script ‘La Fuite d’Antoine,’ echoing the working title for Les 400 Coups: ‘La Fugue d’Antoine.’ The rent dispute, too, was drawn directly from personal experience. In the spring of 1974, the Taverniers were living on the rue des Dames in Paris’s 16th arrondissement. When the landlord dramatically raised the monthly charges, Tavernier joined fellow renters to oppose the measures. Protests in turn drew retaliatory rental rate increases or even eviction notices. On behalf of his neighbors, Tavernier wrote an indignant letter to new Prime Minister Jacques Chirac. He concluded his letter by announcing his intention to make a film about rental abuses (Des enfants gâtés, DVD interview). Released three years later, Des enfants gâtés recounts Tavernier’s experiences on the rue des Dames. This would not be the last time he would use his camera as an instrument of social intervention. Like his creator, Rougerie soon finds himself composing letters and representing fellow protesters on the evening news. Rougerie’s new neighbors are delighted when he uses his weight as a public figure on their behalf. The television interviewers, however, are more interested in Rougerie’s celebrity status than in the cause he supports.

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 66

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

portraits of the artist  67 One newscaster’s question goes to the heart of Rougerie’s dilemma: ‘Y a-t-il un rapport,’ the interviewer wants to know, ‘entre votre activité de cinéaste et votre comité de locataires?’1 Caught by surprise, Rougerie only has time to mumble a few words, and we never learn what his answer might have been. That he is troubled by the question becomes apparent in a later conversation with Anne about his wife, Catherine, who teaches handicapped children. She takes on real problems, he explains admiringly, suggesting an unfavorable comparison to his own trivial movie plot. Des enfants gâtés as a whole is infused with the spirit of its post-1968 era. Rougerie’s abrupt encounter with ‘la politique du quotidien’ (the politics of everyday life), and the film’s somewhat heavy-handed self-reflexivity echo similar themes in other films of the period. For instance, in Godard’s Tout va bien of a few years earlier, a former filmmaker now making advertisements (Yves Montand) and his wife, a journalist (Jane Fonda) struggle to join their personal life to their political commitments and in the process, learn to ‘think historically’ about their choices. Following the same trajectory, Bernard Rougerie comes to rue the inconsequentiality of his own work, and he returns home at the end with renewed appreciation of his wife’s daily struggles. He proposes to adapt a poem by one of her young patients. The poem, composed for the film by Colo Tavernier, describes a moment of suicidal despair surmounted by commitment to artistic creation. By authoring Des enfants gâtés, Tavernier made good on his warning to Minister Chirac. In a 1999 interview, he gave a response of sorts to the question Rougerie was unable to answer about the relation between social action and artistic commitment: ‘Je suis un metteur en scène. Je n’ai pas de solution,’ Tavernier explained. ‘Je filme ce qui me fait mal’ (Raspiengeas 1999: 18).2 He will repeat this kind of effort, particularly in the documentary-like fictions we will examine in chapter 5, where he forges a hybrid form that allows him to tackle social issues while mobilizing spectators’ engagement with entertaining characters. Des enfants gâtés makes explicit its affinities with popular entertainment. Leaving the laundromat, Rougerie asks Anne to name the best love scene in all of cinema. She makes several highbrow guesses – 1 ‘Is there a connection between your work as a filmmaker and your renters committee?’ 2 ‘I’m a filmmaker. I have no solutions. I film what causes me pain.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 67

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

68  bertrand tavernier Bogart and Bacall, Godard’s Pierrot le fou (1965) – but his choice is from Laurel and Hardy slapstick. Further tributes to popular entertainment are evident in the casting: Des enfants gâtés features five members of the comedy troupe from the Le Splendid, one of the most successful of the popular Café-Théâtre venues of the 1970s, famous for its social satire. Gérard Jugnot, Thierry Lhermitte, Martin Lamotte, and Christian Clavier are among Rougerie’s neighbors, and Michel Blanc plays an apartment rental agent. In addition to their comic presence, these actors brought an aura of teamwork to the neighbors’ gatherings that echoes throughout the film, and their witty repartee helps highlight the near-slapstick absurdity of some of the abuses they are protesting. Tavernier successfully blends mainstream spectacle with an acti­­ vist agenda, but Rougerie is troubled by the tension between the two. While working on their script, Rougerie and his collaborator, Pierre (Michel Aumont), are interrupted by mysterious voices emanating from the apartment’s ventilation system. A comic parody of the pair’s commercial ‘inspiration,’ the sounds come from a speaker announcing specials in the Prisunic below. Even by the film’s end, Rougerie’s approach will be less militant than that of his creator. In fact, it was Tavernier’s willingness to tackle ongoing controversies that attracted Michel Piccoli’s moral and financial support for Des enfants gâtés and also induced Tavernier to create his own production company, Little Bear. Rougerie’s crisis of confidence about his profession, although not foregrounded, lies at the heart of the film, and its various plot threads move him toward an outlook that is more socially aware. Like Tavernier’s script, Rougerie’s is partly autobiographical, albeit less deliberately. As he races between protest meetings and his desk and from his own apartment to Anne’s, his script begins to influence his life and vice versa. He recycles events and insights of the moment into his script, and conversely, he seeks experiences that will fill its gaps. Having decided his story lacks love interest, for example, he leaves his apartment and encounters Anne. Later, having begun an affair with her, he asks new questions about his characters’ relationships. Anne draws out his doubts about the value of his work and accuses him of having ‘des problèmes de riche, des problèmes de luxe’ (in other words, of being a bourgeois ‘enfant gâté’ or ‘spoiled child’). Their encounter and his increasing involvement in his neighbors’ troubles lead Rougerie away from insipid soap opera and toward a more socially meaningful cinema.

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 68

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

portraits of the artist  69 The film’s refusal of heroes and heroic narratives, its displacement of attention from individual to collective concerns, its documentary and exploratory feel, its recognition that, in the slogan of the time, the personal is political – these and other elements reflect the selfquestioning consciousness-raising style of the early Seventies and gave the film wide popular appeal. Yet Tavernier’s film also manifests a more traditionally Leftist perspective. The critic for Le Quotidien de Paris (6 September 1977) celebrated the film’s triumph over commercial cinema, calling it a ‘virage à gauche du cinéma français.’3 In an interview, Tavernier expresses gratitude to the Communist elected officials and union organizers who helped with (and several of whom appear in) the film. Another critic praised its demystification of romantic love and its foregrounding of class differences (Rouge, 7 September 1977). Indeed, instead of a traditional plot structure, the film follows the evolution of the protagonist’s sentiments and his social consciousness, which in turn are shaped by his changing material circumstances when he moves from a bourgeois family household into a rent-controlled apartment. In addition, Des enfants gâtés raises questions of gender and sexuality that political parties of the Left traditionally resist addressing, but which feminists had been pressuring them to incorporate into their platforms. The film is dedicated to Colo, whose contributions as co-scriptwriter have often added depth to Tavernier’s female characters. Christine Pascal, too, participated with the Tavernier couple in elaborating the script, particularly in the development of her own character, Anne. While Rougerie is largely unconscious of the dynamics linking his life to his script, and his co-writer, Pierre, produces a running patter of boorish pronouncements about women (they are greedy and rapacious, for example, and incapable of appreciating Charlie Parker), Anne is an outspoken feminist. Pierre provides comic counterpoint to Rougerie’s growing sensitivity to inequalities between the sexes. Tavernier’s fellow Lyon native, Christine Pascal made her cine­­ matic debut as Liliane Torrini, the young Descombes’s girlfriend in L’Horloger de Saint-Paul. Since then, she had played key roles in Que la Fête commence and Le Juge et l’assassin. For Des enfants gâtés, the director ­ invited her to try her hand at scriptwriting, and he subsequently 3 ‘a Left turn in French cinema.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 69

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

70  bertrand tavernier mentored her venture into directing.4 Tavernier describes Pascal’s own films in terms of their uncompromising tone and their narcissistic obsessions (Douin 1997: 298), a characterization that also describes Anne Torrini, an intransigent, idealistic young woman who aspires to liberate herself and make the most of her life. She might even be Liliane herself, older and out of prison. Tavernier praises Pascal’s work as an actress, particularly her comfort with her body and her frank sexuality, topics about which he is usually squeamish. Pascal contributes the voice of young women of the 1970s who participated in the nascent feminist movement. The feminist stance Pascal brings to Des enfants gâtés rarely rises this explicitly to the surface of Tavernier’s films, but it is a perspective with which he consistently sympathizes. Following Tavernier’s two historical dramas since L’Horloger de Saint-Paul, its resonance with contemporary issues gives Des enfants gâtés a documentary dimension that makes it a portrait of France during the Giscard d’Estaing years. For both the character and his creator, the incidents depicted add up to a ‘fait divers vécu’5 in Tavernier’s words (Des enfants gâtés, DVD interview). Tackling ‘la politique du logement’ (the housing crisis) in Des enfants gâtés and again in De l’autre côté du Périph’, the police in L.672, and crime and compulsive consumerism in L’Appât, Tavernier’s project is closely linked both to the social and economic spaces of the capital and to the contemporary political issues that raise his ire and inspire him to create. It also moves him closer to documentary modes of representation. Released shortly after a renewed wave of evictions, Des enfants gâtés earned the label ‘film témoin,’ (‘testimony film’) and several reviews wondered obliquely if its director entertained electoral ambitions (Rouge, 7 September 1977; Libération, 19 September 1977). He had no such aspirations. Although his concerns are both political and aesthetic, his ambition is more complex than either alone, as he aims to be political within his art. Its blending of lyricism, collective social vision, and mainstream appeal led reviewers to liken Des enfants gâtés to the cinema of the Popular Front and particularly to the Renoir of Le Crime de Monsieur Lange (1936). Des enfants gâtés shares with certain of Renoir’s films an emphasis on the forging of a commu 4 Most notably, Pascal directed Le Petit Prince a dit, which won the Prix Louis Delluc for 1992. 5 ‘news item brought to life.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 70

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

portraits of the artist  71 nity. Like Renoir, Tavernier makes films that both portray and are the product of such a process. Like citizen Tavernier himself, Rougerie moves from isolation to participation in collective public action, just as Tavernier has also made it a priority to forge a creative team with his scriptwriters, cameraman, technicians, and actors. One critic got it right when he called Des enfants gâtés an ‘histoire chorale’ (Laszlo 1977). Tavernier explains in interviews that he aimed to incite spectators to get involved, to act. The Nouvel Observateur went so far as to call him a ‘provocateur’ (9 September 1977). It can easily be pointed out that Bernard Rougerie isn’t much of an artist. He pursues largely commercial goals by churning out formulaic stories in which he has little personal investment. The film focuses on Rougerie’s work only to the extent that it conflicts with his growing confusion about his intimate relationships and his awareness of social injustices. During the course of the film, however, he also moves in the direction of artistic sensibility. He begins to care about the script he is producing and to put more of himself into it. With insights gained from his wife and from Anne – and especially from his involvement in a community and a cause he comes to care about – he develops the beginnings of an individual style and personal vision. Christine Pascal drew attention to this evolution in Rougerie’s outlook with the working title she gave to the film: ‘Un petit pas dans la tête il a fait, le monsieur’ (‘A Small Step Forward in his Head, the Gentleman Has Taken,’ Bion 1984: 47). Pascal’s title echoes a remark Tavernier made about L’Horloger de Saint-Paul that the main subject of the movie […] was the small step that [Descombes] takes, the small and enormous step taken by somebody who cannot cross the street if the light is not green. […] The Watchmaker is the story of somebody who goes from A to B instead of A to Z. But that step is enormous at the same time. (Lowenstein 2000: 176)

In fact, all Tavernier’s films eschew heroism and dramatic gestures to enact instead this sort of ‘small step’ in everyday life that adds up to a revolution in consciousness. In the end, we know almost nothing about Rougerie’s script, except that he has distanced himself from its commercial origins, and he has been forced to think about the relation between his work and his beliefs. Tavernier will continue to face this dilemma throughout his career, and his experiments with various solutions account in some measure for the variety of his oeuvre. Rougerie never considers

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 71

12/10/2011 16:25

72  bertrand tavernier

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

abandoning his family, but his encounter with an unfamiliar world outside his customary horizon crystallizes questions coming from his inner self: can one be both an artist and a member of a community? Is it possible to bring all one’s commitments together within a work of art? Tavernier’s other artist films address these questions in radically varying ways.

‘Adapting’ to modernity: Un dimanche à la campagne ‘La grande force du cinéma, c’est la manière dont il s’interpénètre avec les autres arts.’ Bertrand Tavernier (Bion 1984: 60)

If the challenge of juggling art with the politics of everyday life in the wake of the 1960s lies at the heart of Des enfants gâtés, the questions of a decade later were different. ‘French cinema in the 1980s was in crisis,’ asserts Phil Powrie. He attributes that crisis to four factors: (1) a continuing decline of cinema-going generally, compounded by growing public preference for Hollywood imports; (2) a decline of auteur cinema brought about by a convergence of cinema and television; (3) traditional genre cinema progressively giving way to American-style super-productions; and (4) shifts of style brought about by the ascendance of advertising (1997: 1). If Tavernier’s interest in the interplay of social with aesthetic questions has inspired him throughout his career to create characters involved in artistic pursuits, it is during the 1980s that he devotes his most concentrated attention to this theme. Un dimanche à la campagne enjoyed even greater popular success than Des enfants gâtés. It garnered numerous awards, including Critics Choice prizes in New York and London and Césars for best actress (Sabine Azéma) and best screenplay. At Cannes, it won the top prize for mise en scène, and rumors suggested that the film missed the Palme d’Or by a hairsbreadth. It is among the most popular of Tavernier’s films outside France. Tavernier attributes its international appeal to the film’s evocation of recognizable and positive images of France, such as Impressionism. Skeptical academic critics have seen these characteristics as flaws, citing the lush images and alleged imitation of the Tradition of Quality as evidence of a paralyzing nostalgia. For our purposes, the film usefully extends our discussion of generations, inviting us in particular to consider how the cinema claimed its

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 72

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

portraits of the artist  73 ­inheritance from the traditional arts and incorporated its predecessors into its own modern project. Set in 1912, Un dimanche à la campagne has in common with Tavernier’s historical films a story that unfolds at a moment of historical instability. The First World War is on the horizon, industrialization is galloping forward, and the characters seem subliminally aware of an imminent threat to their way of life. The world of art, too, is in transition, with the great sweep of modernism underway, although the characters can only begin to grasp its significance. The film turns its spotlight on a painter who is also in crisis. Monsieur Ladmiral (Louis Ducreux) enjoys the material rewards of a long and successful career painting portraits and still lifes. A member of the Académie and sporting the rosette of the Légion d’honneur, he lives in a lovely mansion outside Paris where, aided by his housekeeper, Mercédès (Monique Chaumette), he receives his children and grandchildren in the elegant style of the leisured bourgeoisie. Aware of advancing age, however, Monsieur Ladmiral worries about the artistic compromises he has made. His reflections are provoked by the arrival of his son, Gonzague (Michel Aumont), with his wife and three children for their regular Sunday visit. He is troubled more deeply still by the unexpected appearance later in the day of his free-spirited daughter, Irène (Sabine Azéma), at the wheel of her chic but noisy motorcar. Aside from that, very little happens: several meals are ceremoniously served and consumed; Gonzague and his wife snooze indoors while Ladmiral falls asleep in the sun; Gonzague’s two young sons engage in boisterous pranks, and their frail sister, Mireille, climbs a tree and needs to be rescued; Irène takes her father for an automobile ride to an outdoor café or ‘guinguette,’ where they reminisce and share what might be a last dance. Following several anxious phone calls to a (perhaps married) lover, Irene rushes back to Paris. Ladmiral accompanies the rest of his family to catch the evening train and then returns to his studio, where he contemplates the possibilities of a blank canvas. Much like Rougerie’s, Ladmiral’s outward success has not protected him from worry about relating his art to the things he cares about. A youthful canvas buried in an attic trunk and his daughter’s portrait on a parlor wall suggest he may once have been able to do so, but he has limited his recent work to a series of views of his studio (his ‘coins d’atelier’) in which technical mastery and impersonal elegance take

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 73

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

74  bertrand tavernier precedence over imagination and emotion. The canvas in progress features a shawl artfully draped over a sofa, with only a cat’s absence distinguishing it from last year’s version. The disappearance of life from his paintings prefigures the death announced in the title of the 1945 novel from which the film is adapted: Pierre Bost’s Monsieur Ladmiral va bientôt mourir. The French term for ‘still life’ – nature morte – captures the artistic dead end at which Ladmiral has apparently arrived. The dilemma on Ladmiral’s mind – suggested from the beginning in the voiceover narration and which he finally confesses to Irène in the guinguette – is his fear that in the pursuit of respectability and stability, he may have remained too sheltered within his personal but limited artistic vision. He realizes belatedly that he has ­sacrificed opportunities to stretch his talent and participate in the great modernist experiment, which he has preferred instead to observe from a disdainful distance. Ladmiral sees his own caution and conservatism reflected in his son and dislikes him for it. Even on a Sunday in the country, Gonzague is trussed up in starched collar, tight tie, vest, and jacket, and his watchful supervision of his sons’ manners is equally constrained. Even the exoticism promised by his name has been tamed by his cheerful but unimaginative wife, Marie-Thérèse (Geneviève Mnich), who inexplicably calls him ‘Edouard.’ In a brief flash-forward, Gonzague imagines himself at his father’s deathbed, a vision that torments this attentive son and provokes him to intensify his futile attempts to please. He and Marie-Thérèse dismiss Ladmiral’s doubts and effusively, if condescendingly, encourage his work-in-progress. The opposite side of the ledger is incarnated by Gonzague’s turbulent sister, Irène, who arrives at the film’s exact midpoint and transforms its pace from somnolent to frenetic. Where Gonzague moves ponderously, wears dark colors, and stays obediently inside the frame, Irène dresses all in white and, with her little dog, embodies energy and movement, making the camera scamper to keep up with her. A series of early intercut shots heralds her approach in her noisy Delage, interrupting the day’s (and the film’s) pastoral tranquility, even before she appears. She is urban, single, has a lover, owns a shop, is not awed by technology, and doesn’t need a nap after lunch. It is clear that unlike her brother, she takes risks in her work and her relationships. In a word, she is modern. She scoffs when she discovers her father is producing yet another coin d’atelier. Whereas Ladmiral treats his

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 74

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

portraits of the artist  75 loving but awkward son in a manner that is patriarchal, judgmental, and even cruel, he feels rejuvenated in the presence of Irène, to whom he opens his heart and confesses his doubts. Such are the narrative and familial oppositions that frame and reveal Ladmiral’s meditations about art. In his painting as in his family, he finds himself caught between competing values. Has he been justified in devoting himself to transmitting a tradition – of table manners, morality, and social class, but also of aesthetic choices? He has painted the way his teachers taught him, he says. Or would it perhaps have been preferable to risk some experimentation? Retrospectively, of course, the question is moot, and Ladmiral’s contempt for his son reveals his unspoken acknowledgment that patriarchal traditions are disappearing into the mists. Technology, the emancipation of women, modernism, and even war are already inevitable. Not only does Ladmiral look wistfully backwards toward his younger years, but the film as a whole suggests an aura of innocent harmony disrupted by the coming of modernity. From the Greek nostos signifying a return home and algos (pain), ‘nostalgia’ literally means homesickness, and is thus inscribed in the story of Irène’s and Gonzague’s visit to their childhood home. Moreover, Gonzague’s flash-forward to his father’s deathbed is counterbalanced by three subjective flashbacks that trace an irrevocable loss of happiness to the disappearance of Madame Ladmiral. The third and most revealing of these begins with Irène contemplating a portrait on the wall. The camera follows her gaze as it shifts to encompass her mother (Claude Winter) beside the fireplace, while the mother’s voice on the soundtrack admonishes her daughter not to expect so much from life: ‘Quand cesseras-tu d’en demander toujours plus à la vie, Irène?’ We have already heard the same voiceover during the opening credits, among other childhood sounds such as songs, piano practice, and rope-skipping rhymes. Irène’s flashback echoes or ‘remembers’ the voice’s earlier occurrence while identifying its speaker and restoring its context, thereby drawing the spectator into Irène’s longing. The flashback moves seamlessly from present to past and back – from portrait to memory and back – within a single shot, thus deepening the sense of bereavement that hovers over the present. The mother’s ghost, not present in the novel, effectively makes visible and audible the emotional distance between the family’s remembered idyll and its present tensions.

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 75

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

76  bertrand tavernier There is no doubt, then, that Un dimanche à la campagne creates a nostalgic mood. At the same time, the film’s highly self-reflective vision makes it into a meditation about nostalgia.6 Where Bernard Rougerie engages with issues, events, and people of the present, the Ladmiral family seems to live in a bubble, outside history. And yet the crepuscular quality of their routine itself reflects their historical circumstances, with the result that the film’s dominant figure is irony. We know what the characters do not: that a cataclysmic war is looming, and their peaceful world will soon be lost forever. Gonzague’s sons will perhaps be called to military service before the war is over. The father’s death that the family members fear thus comes to summarize for us (but not for them) the waning of a civilization. Like Tavernier’s more overtly historical films, Un dimanche à la campagne shows a social milieu as it disappears under the weight of history. In this, it harks back to the Jean Renoir of La Grande Illusion (1937) and La Règle du jeu (1939). Tavernier had already honed this kind of historical irony in Que la fête commence, where the Regent prefigures the Revolution without knowing it, and in Coup de torchon, steeped in the nihilism and appeasement of 1938. These ironic configurations make it possible, too, for the film to deploy a leisurely family portrait while simultaneously pursuing an extended research on artistic form. The whole of Western civilization has brought the Ladmiral family to this moment, poised on the brink of disaster. It is therefore fitting that the film’s form is a compendium of aesthetic development, a kind of encyclopedia of the canon up to that moment. As its characters compete and reminisce, Un dimanche à la campagne looks back through the archive of sister arts that paved the way for cinema in general and this film in particular. Through Ladmiral’s regrets about his career, it provides a vehicle for the spectator’s nostalgia for a rich legacy of European culture and art forms that seem now both lost and impossibly naïve. This nostalgia struck a chord with the public and accounts for the film’s immense popularity. As we review the arts and some of the artists the film evokes, the reader will notice one glaring omission. The absence of cinema is particularly surprising, because the story of the Ladmiral family is contemporaneous with the emergence of cinema as an art form. Un dimanche à la campagne instead situates its relation to 6 For a psychoanalytic interpretation of the film’s nostalgia, see Powrie 1997: 38-49.

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 76

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

portraits of the artist  77 its predecessor arts and thus establishes a sort of genealogy of the cinema. The most obvious intertextual references come, of course, from painting. As many critics have noted, the film pays homage by citing specific canvases and artistic movements while offering the spectator opportunities to share a wink of recognition with the filmmaker. For example, a shot of Mireille standing on an arched bridge overlooking water evokes Claude Monet’s water lilies. One of Ladmiral’s canvases portrays two young girls dressed in white, and on several occasions, he watches (or imagines) two similar girls jumping rope near his house, although apparently no one else is able to see them. These girls evoke several of Auguste Renoir’s paintings, such as ‘Jeunes Filles au piano’ (1892) and ‘Deux Filles lisant dans le jardin’ (1890). Similarly, when Irène takes her father for a drive to an open-air café, it is as if the pair has stepped into Renoir’s ‘Le Moulin de la galette’ (1876) or ‘Danse à Bougival’ (1883), from which they can watch a scene of boaters on the pond that could have been executed by Monet or Renoir (see the latter’s ‘Déjeuner des canotiers’ (1881), for example). The elegant pink sofa with its carved wood trim, the draped shawl with its fringe, and the arabesques in the carpet featured in Ladmiral’s coin d’atelier suggest interiors by Vuillard, and the composition of certain outdoor long shots evoke landscapes by Alfred Sisley or Camille Pissaro (see Neupert 1996). Although Monsieur Ladmiral’s thinking about art was formed by the academism of his teachers, he admires Renoir, Monet, and Caillebotte. He is repelled, however, by the likes of Cézanne and Van Gogh, who provoke him to prefer his own creativity – his ‘petite musique,’ limited though it may be – to imitating the originality of others. His balancing act can be felt in the story’s symmetries: the two parts of his day, the two halves of the film, his two complementary children. Irène exposes her father’s inner conflict when she unearths from the bottom of a trunk in the attic a forgotten painting of an acrobat. She admires this canvas for its sensitivity and fresh emotion, while finding her father’s more recent work ‘trop sage, trop classique.’ Ladmiral’s angst about modernism converges with his hostility toward his son when he remarks acidly that he would have liked to paint a portrait of Gonzague with a purple face. Ladmiral’s ambivalence is further reinforced by his assumptions about gender: the modern erupts as a feminine distraction and as

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 77

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

78  bertrand tavernier a loss of the firm values of tradition, manners, and propriety. He is paradoxically caught between a virile daughter and a weak-willed son, for this is how he sees them. He is put off both by the impulsive Irène (although he adores her) and his predictable and pious daughterin-law, and when his granddaughter attempts (perhaps inspired by Irène’s example) to abandon her habitual timidity and climb a tree, Ladmiral is nonplussed. He finds her behavior inexplicably new and therefore frightening. He manages his panic by obsessively asking Mercédès to serve tea, a reaction that is both comic and pathetic. Once Mireille has been rescued and tea preparations are reassuringly underway, the little girl’s mother offers her a ‘petite madeleine,’ perhaps in an attempt to produce a Proustian return to the values and behavior of the past. In addition to straightforward citation, Un dimanche à la campagne also contains more searching painterly intertextuality. The technical accomplishments of Impressionism are displayed when Ladmiral notices – and the camera tracks – the passage of the sun across the sky, the play of luminosity through the trees, and the color of light filtered into the rooms of the house at different times of the day, a dimension of the filmic work comparable to Monet’s studies of the Rouen Cathedral and of the Gare Saint-Lazare. Each of these series of paintings researched the qualities of light by following an identical scene’s evolution through the day and the seasons. Like parallel studies by Edgar Degas, where the painter analyzes successive moments in a dancer’s gesture or a horse’s gallop, these experiments in the representation of light over time contributed an important piece to the elusive puzzle of animating the image. In the process, they reveal continuities linking Impressionism to the chrono-photographic studies of human and animal locomotion done in the 1880s by Etienne-Jules Marey and Eadweard Muybridge, precursors of the moving picture. For what is cinema, if not the narration of light? Although Ladmiral’s career and his musings have led viewers and critics alike to associate the style of Un dimanche à la campagne with its painterly antecedents, the influence on the film of early color photography is at least as decisive. For Un dimanche à la campagne, Tavernier sought to adapt to film the delicate tones and subtle beauty of early color photographs called ‘autochromes.’ Reinforcing the effects of decor and costumes, this photographic intertext produces the film’s Belle Epoque mood and ‘look.’ This means that even the

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 78

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

portraits of the artist  79 film’s unusual color palette tells a story about the filmmaker’s attachment to the city of his childhood. In 1904, shortly before the story portrayed in Un dimanche à la campagne, Auguste and Louis Lumière – the Lyonnais brothers who had invented the ‘cinematograph’ and, in 1895, hosted the world’s first film showing – patented the earliest reliable method for making color photographs. They dubbed their invention the ‘autochrome’ and began to market the techniques commercially three years later. Although painstaking, their process was less cumbersome, less expensive, and produced more authentic and reliable images than previous methods that required producing and then superimposing many separate monochrome exposures. The Lumière process involved coating a glass plate with a microscopic dusting of tinted potato starch, then covering the granules with an emulsion. During exposure, the granules filtered the light, transforming colors into their complements. A second, reverse operation then yielded a positive image. The resulting autochromes are not prints on paper; they are one-of-a-kind images preserved directly between glass plates, somewhat like slides. They can be projected, but they are most often viewed directly against backlighting. Autochromes are thus composed of millions of microscopic dots, like pixels or a Pointillist painting. The Lumière process was immediately successful and remained the only commercially viable method of color photo­ graphy until the introduction of chemical processing of film some thirty years later (Roumette and Frizot 1986; Wood 1993). After long collaboration with cinematographer Pierre-William Glenn on seven of his previous films (all but Des enfants gâtés), Tavernier chose a new cinematographer for Un dimanche à la campagne. Bruno de Keyzer had already established a reputation for artistry with color, and under Tavernier’s direction, he experimented e­ xtensively with emulsions and filters in order to recreate on film the delicate tones and subtle beauty of early autochromes. This was no simple challenge, especially because the film was to be shot largely in exteriors under unpredictable natural light conditions. Dark greens and reds tended to darken, so that realistic colors had to be replaced with very pale versions: a pastel liquid in a glass and a pink flower when filmed became red wine and a blood-red rose. Special make-up recipes were devised to prevent lips and cheeks from appearing black (DVD, director’s commentary). There is little blue in the film, and vegetation and light take on a golden hue. One can scarcely imagine

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 79

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

80  bertrand tavernier the light-meter complexities required in order to capture the nuances of sunlight through leafy branches and the changes of light and mood at successive moments of the day. It is these evolutions, along with the emotions they evoke, that constitute the film’s deep subject (plates 4 and 5). The quality and character of the images naturally affect the spectator’s experience of the film. John Wood, a scholar of early color photography, maintains that the muted color and diffused light of autochrome photography produce ‘a different kind of looking than we normally perform.’ He finds that for their contemporary viewers, autochrome photographs ‘caught the tensions of the modern world but were tempered by deep, positive emotional responses. That is the real magic of the autochrome.’ In a line of thinking reminiscent of Roland Barthes, Wood speculates that this positive response has to do with the photograph’s reinvention of a lost world. He hypothesizes that ‘In autochromes the past looks possible – and attractive as well,’ and that the early photograph ‘makes yesterday look better than today.’ Finally, in our response today to autochromes, he finds a desire to return to before the turn of the century, specifically before that loss of innocence that was the First World War (Wood 1993: 41, 56–7; Barthes 1981). These techniques of nostalgia that Wood attributes to autochrome photography reinforce the thematic material of Un dimanche à la campagne. Irène contemplating the portrait of her mother is overcome with a longing for childhood so intense that it conjures her mother’s presence and voice. Ladmiral first expresses his ambivalence about modernity when the conversation turns to photography, which he fears might prove superior to painting, because it is easier. ‘Je m’étais toujours promis de vivre avec mon temps,’ he remarks about the new technologies of the image, but ‘[d]ès que c’est nouveau, je frissonne.’7 Spectators, on the other hand, cannot avoid filtering the film’s images and story through subsequent historical events, and so our response to the old-fashioned images is thus inevitably both sentimental and ironic. Tavernier expresses annoyance with critics who assimilate the film to Impressionism, and in fact his experiments with autochromes introduce a certain ironic distance from painting. He points to this 7 ‘I always promised myself I would live in my times, [but] novelty gives me a chill.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 80

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

portraits of the artist  81 film’s conspicuous camera movement, and he explains how the film’s visual depth contrasts with the emphasis on foregrounds to be found in Impressionism (Un dimanche à la campagne, DVD interview). We can also recognize the importance of spatial and temporal movement to the unfolding of the family drama, which contrasts with the stasis of Ladmiral’s paintings. This frees us to enjoy many markedly unpainterly compositions, in which a character moves into or out of the frame or is viewed from the back. The film’s extraordinary depth of field – with the richness and clarity of its backdrops – is crucial to understanding all the characters against their context in the house, the landscape, the family, and the historical era. The Impressionists and Pointillists used color in order to represent light, while the first color photographers strove for the reverse: a way to make light represent color. Un dimanche à la campagne thus traces the historical steps that led from painting through photography to cinema. The film illustrates the distance separating hand-made artisanship from advanced technology and plays with ways in which the former can be evoked or even incorporated within the latter. Tavernier’s use of early color photographs suggests as well that a filmmaker can be both nostalgic and experimental. The aesthetic self-consciousness of Un dimanche à la campagne extends as well to its music. To the ruminations of the aging Ladmiral and the nostalgic tone of the autochromes, Tavernier found a musical analogue in the work of Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924), choosing for inclusion in the film several chamber works for piano and strings from the end of the composer’s life. Tavernier says about Fauré’s composition from this period: Elle est belle, lyrique. Elle m’a suggéré le ton, la construction du film, ainsi que des mouvements d’appareils. Ce sont des oeuvres de vieillesse. […] Nous sommes loin du compositeur sage, joli, mesuré dont on nous rebat les oreilles. C’est une musique sereine, en effet, et déchirée. (Douin 1997: 211)8

Tavernier reports elsewhere that he had ‘found the lighting of Gabriel Fauré,’ adding: ‘I wanted a lighting that had the splendor of a moment before death’ (Yakir 1984: 22). 8 ‘[Fauré’s late compositions] are beautiful, lyrical. They suggested my film’s tone and construction, as well as the camera movements. These are works of old age […] We are far from that well-behaved, pretty, measured composer we hear so much about. This music is serene and heart-rending.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 81

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

82  bertrand tavernier The way Un dimanche à la campagne revolves around Fauré’s music demonstrates the centrality of music to Tavernier’s cinematic vision. Musical choices, with the moods and rhythms they convey, are crucial to each of his films, and have on occasion originated a project. A popular song by Eddy Mitchell inspired Une semaine de vacances, for example, conveying a mood of tentative quest tinged with regret. Tavernier admires musical structures wherever he finds them, such as in Delmer Daves’s crane shots. Daves returned the compliment when he called Tavernier’s style ‘symphonic’ (Douin 1997: 264). This is not a simple conceit. Tavernier’s cinematic practice is permeated with musicality, and he often has recourse to musical selections during production to show his cinematographer or actors what he has in mind. In Un dimanche à la campagne and elsewhere, he often plans camera movement and editing according to musical rather than narrative logic. Un dimanche à la campagne opens as Mercédès and Ladmiral go about their morning activities, each singing a song, and the two voices compete for air space in the house. From this beginning onward, a musical cadence is perceptible in the ordinary, unremarkable background activities that punctuate the day: Mercédès in the kitchen snapping beans, then later mending, finally writing a letter; Mireille napping in a bedroom lit by rays of afternoon sun filtering through the blinds; her brothers lounging under a tree; their parents chatting and dozing in the parlor after lunch. Such non-narrative interludes are most often pauses for repose or remembrance. Even the early intercut shots of Irène in her automobile contribute to these rhythms of ordinary activities. Among the film’s most affecting moments, these images function like musical themes heard fleetingly, then repeated, before a final recapitulation that fulfills their meaning. Like other post-romantic composers, Fauré is known for his ability to depict psychic states and evoke specific feelings, so that his music is well chosen to amplify the film’s melancholy. A requiem mood affords the listener a premonition of impending loss. Writing at the cusp of that cataclysmic historical change and cultural anomie portrayed in Un dimanche à la campagne, Proust, too, thought of Fauré as a model for his fictional composer, Vinteuil. Fauré is composing in the wake of the collapsing tonal system and the end of the ‘common practice’ period of Western art music. As one scholar explains:

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 82

12/10/2011 16:25

portraits of the artist  83

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

The loss of this system suddenly made available unimagined new compositional possibilities. But it also represented something like the loss of a mother tongue; and the course of subsequent 20th-century music can be understood to a significant extent as a series of strategies to compensate for this loss. (Randel 2003: 929)

One would be hard put to find a more fitting description of the Ladmiral family’s personal losses and disillusionments as they attempt to negotiate the transition to modernity. With its transcendent, lyrical qualities, the mood produced by Tavernier’s musical choices counterbalances the film’s more restrained and controlled structures, including the theatrical ones we will consider shortly. This in turn prepares the way for Tavernier’s painter to end the day more optimistically than Bost’s: Fauré opens up a space for Ladmiral to begin a new canvas that might respond to Irène’s criticism that his recent paintings are too ‘sages’ and too ‘classiques.’ Considering the film’s musicality in the ‘light,’ as it were, of painting and photography helps bring out the non-narrative dimensions of Un dimanche à la campagne, favoring instead visual and sound techniques that subordinate storytelling to portraiture. Adapting Monsieur Ladmiral va bientôt mourir must have been particularly challenging, because Bost, like other novelists such as Proust and Nathalie Sarraute, attends to the molecular pixels of consciousness (Sarraute called them tropismes) and to currents of affection and disaffection, desire and disappointment. Tavernier claims that he was drawn to the simplicity of Bost’s novel, and that he undertook to focus his adaptation on the evolution of small gestures and half-understood emotions. In other words, he strove to make a film which has no plot twist, which I consider mostly theatrical, but moves along by virtue of its characters. I wanted to make a film that would be based entirely on feelings. A film where emotions could reach a peak simply because a young woman leaves her father a bit early on a Sunday afternoon – that’s the only dramatic moment in the film. I found it irresistible. (Yakir 1984: 18)

After painting, photography, and music, we might ask why, in the quotation above, the director qualifies Un dimanche à la campagne as theatrical. He often speaks in terms of ‘dramaturgy,’ by which he means the orchestration of a story’s events, however imperceptible these might be. He strives to avoid anything clichéd or anecdotal, emphasizing instead the tiny strokes and perfectly paced rhythms

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 83

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

84  bertrand tavernier that evoke an ambiance, solicit an emotion, even hint at metaphysical significance (Tavernier interview 2006). Tavernier is a habitué of the theater, which he appreciates both as literature and as a rich source of inspiration and of actors. Whereas in public polemics he refers to himself as a professional ‘cinéaste,’ when he speaks of his art, he calls himself a ‘metteur en scène.’ The fact that he has drawn many of his actors from the theater has had a huge impact on his conceptions of filmmaking. Most of the principal actors in Un dimanche à la campagne began their careers on the stage. Sabine Azéma (Irène) trained at the Conservatoire and got her start in the Comédie de Boulevard, acting opposite Louis de Funès in plays by Jean Anouilh. She reports having been terrified the first day of shooting with Michel Aumont (Gonzague), a sociétaire at the Comédie Française. Tavernier met Louis Ducreux (Ladmiral) at gatherings of the Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques, an organization devoted to safeguarding the rights of performing artists. Monique Chaumette (Mercédès) met her husband, Philippe Noiret, when both were young actors at the Comédie Française. More accustomed to sustained rehearsals than their counterparts in cinema, stage actors acquire skill in developing and carrying through the arc of an emotion or series of gestures. Theatrically trained actors adore working with Tavernier, whose appreciation of the stage has shaped his filming protocols. He remains open to creative input from actors and technicians, whom he treats as a troupe. He favors long takes, which allow his actors great freedom of expression. As early as his first film, Tavernier says: ‘I knew deeply in myself that I’d have to rely on the actors. […] [The actor] dictates the rhythm of the film, the pace of the shots. So the camera has to move like him. Not only like he walks but like he thinks’ (Lowenstein 2000: 170). This centrality of actors is a constant in Tavernier’s career, even, paradoxically, in his documentaries. Tavernier’s style has often been considered ‘classical,’ and in giving dramatic form to the spare outline and subtle psychologies of its source novel, Un dimanche à la campagne in fact adheres closely to the conventions of classical French dramaturgy. In particular, the film observes the ‘three unities’ – of action, space, and time – as outlined in 1660 by Pierre Corneille, following Aristotle (Corneille 1963). Observing unity of action as Corneille described it, Un dimanche à la campagne revolves around one event: Irène’s visit, complete with a beginning (her arrival), a middle (a knot or noeud) with its atten-

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 84

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

portraits of the artist  85 dant suspense (her amorous crisis and her father’s confession), and a resolution or dénouement or unknotting (her precipitous departure), which leaves her family and the spectator in a state of relative calm. Most of the characters’ entrances and exits obey the rules of scene sequencing that unify action in French classical theater. The film also largely respects classical limitations on setting (the unité de lieu). Ladmiral’s decor consists of his house, his garden, and his studio. His coin d’atelier itself resembles a self-contained classical stage. These inhibited, static spaces – reduplicated in his paintings – function as a sort of objective correlate to his restricted horizon. Finally, Un dimanche à la campagne fits nicely within the constraints of the classical unity of time: the unité de jour. Corneille’s formulation dictates that the action be circumscribed within one day’s time, but his reference to Aristotle – ‘la durée de son action dans un tour du soleil’9 – makes clear that the word jour (day) also means light, linking theatrical conventions to the cinema and to the modulations of painting and photography. Constraints on time and space are represented differently on the screen than on the stage, however, so that certain cinematic devices can be understood as alternative responses to the conventions of classical dramaturgy. For example, although the narration of Un dimanche à la campagne proceeds chronologically through the day, flashbacks and flash-forwards permit intrusions of past and future events, much as action elsewhere (such as a battle) is recounted by a messenger or observer, rather than enacted on stage. Both devices respect unities of time and place while making it possible to represent heterogeneous motivations, feelings, events, and consequences. Time is further constrained in Un dimanche à la campagne by the day-long visit of the film’s title and by everyone’s acute awareness of impending death, as announced by the title of the source novel. Moreover, translating conventions from the classical stage to the screen is complicated by modern conceptions of how motion itself can be represented. In particular, scientists and artists – including precursors of cinema like Monet, Marey, and Muybridge, not to mention Proust – realized that ‘motion was only the relation of time to space’ (Rabinbach 1990: 108). The Ladmiral family (and the film) register the way modern technologies violently dislocate space and time, in 9 ‘The action’s duration within one rotation of the sun.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 85

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

86  bertrand tavernier turn fracturing subjectivity and narrative unity. Trains, automobiles, and telephones have the power to accelerate life’s tempo and to shrink distances. All three of these newfangled inventions bring the family members together, but also ultimately disperse them once again. We first learn of Irène’s impending arrival, before we know who she is or where she is headed, by means of very brief shots showing her at the wheel of her motorcar as it sputters along the tree-lined roadway, so that the spectator anticipates her appearance as eagerly as her father does. These intrusions reveal the existence of different worlds beyond Ladmiral’s estate and his imagination. Finally, Un dimanche à la campagne is adapted from a novel, the form that most fully resonates with the complexities of cinema. Like Proust, Ladmiral senses modernity’s tendency to dissolve barriers between space and time, but he nevertheless resists this knowledge. The film, on the other hand, draws attention to his subjective experience: his stroll to meet the morning train takes longer each Sunday, but rather than admit that his walking pace has slowed, he fusses about the accuracy of his clocks. Were it not for Mercédès’s gentle mockery, he might claim that perhaps the station was moving farther away from his house! Ladmiral sees the future coming, and he doesn’t like it. Instead, he travels backward through memory to an earlier idyll, when his wife was alive and his children were small. He refuses to think about Irène’s departure, resolving instead to ‘ne plus penser qu’à la couleur des choses,’10 a lovely formulation (not found in the novel) that condenses his resistance to change in matters familial, historical, and esthetic. That the film was adapted from Pierre Bost did not fail to reignite the Aurenchébost controversy and invite speculation that Ladmiral’s conservative anti-modernism reflected Tavernier’s alleged rejection of the New Wave. Tavernier expresses indignation that critics have assimilated him to Ladmiral, asserting that he identifies with almost all his characters (Raspiengeas 2001: 294). It is true that like Ladmiral, Tavernier has been successful and yet not overtly experimental or avant-garde. However, Tavernier can hardly be accused of painting and repainting his coin d’atelier. Not only does the filmmaker deliberately treat each film as a new departure, he also remains engaged with the world around him in a way that contrasts with Ladmiral’s retreat 10 ‘think only about the color of things.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 86

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

portraits of the artist  87 from history. Like Bost’s novel, Tavernier’s film tempers its affection with irony. Ladmiral is shown to be wrong: about his son, about art, about modernism. There is irony too in the fact that whether he chooses to model himself after his conservative maîtres or the unruly wild beasts (the fauves) of modernism, he will end up imitating rather than innovating. Un dimanche à la campagne is in fact quite atypical of Tavernier’s filmography. This film is not demanding; elegiac and bittersweet, it invites contemplation and admiration rather than engagement. Elsewhere, the filmmaker’s sensibility is quite different: running more to complex and sometimes disjointed plots with multiple points of view, his films tend to encompass the past within the present mixing places, genres, and styles. The questions he raises often find no resolution, and he more often prefers to heighten contradiction and disequilibrium instead of avoiding them. In fact, two important moments in Un dimanche à la campagne that are most reminiscent of Tavernier’s other work stand out here as discordant: the visit to the guinguette disrupts the film’s spatial unity, and the ending subverts its temporal closure. Not surprisingly, neither scene figures in the novel. Although much of the adaptation is rendered in dialogues, the film also contains stretches of narration in Tavernier’s own voiceover. Even in spots where the scriptwriters skillfully supplemented the text, the voiceover preserves the confidential, paternal intimacy of the novel’s storytelling and also gives the film a wistful, retrospective tone reminiscent of Truffaut’s Jules & Jim (1962). However, in Tavernier’s added automobile excursion – a departure both from the house and from the story’s classical form – Bost’s narration is rendered entirely in dialogues. This gives Ladmiral the opportunity to confess to his daughter doubts that remain largely unconscious in the novel, where they are known only to the benevolent and omniscient narrator. As a result, Tavernier’s Ladmiral is more introspective and self-aware than Bost’s. The novel ends with Ladmiral’s Monday morning stroll, during which an acquaintance asks him how he spent his weekend. ‘Vous avez eu de la famille?’ the friend asks. ‘Oui, dit Monsieur Ladmiral. Ma fille.’11 Bost’s trenchant final paragraph leaves Ladmiral with nothing 11 ‘Did your family visit? … Yes, said Monsieur Ladmiral. My daughter.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 87

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

88  bertrand tavernier better to do than wait for the next weekend, having with thoughtless cruelty erased his son from the picture. The film, on the other hand, displaces the novel’s final focus from family matters to artistic ones: upon his return from the station, Ladmiral goes to his studio and chooses a blank canvas. In preparing his new work, he will remain indoors – he will be no bolder than that – but he turns 180º away from his coin d’atelier to contemplate the fading evening light falling on his garden. In other words, Tavernier gives him another chance. Will he eventually move his easel outdoors? Will he experiment with color and light, perhaps painting a purple portrait of his son? We don’t know what he will do, but in any case, to adopt the provisional title of Des enfants gâtés, his thinking has taken a small step forward toward modernity. We will have more to say about endings in the next chapter. Suffice it for now to note that in Un dimanche à la campagne, the ending actually represents a subversion of classical form by Tavernier’s habitually more heterogeneous and multiform sensibility. The film does achieve formal discursive closure: the morning train’s arrival has been counterbalanced by its evening departure; the sun has completed its course across the sky; like Ladmiral’s day, the film opens and ends with almost identical shots of a window framing a view of the garden. The Fauré soundtrack reaches resolution. The description is complete. But at the same time, the story, and particularly the artist’s choices, remain open-ended and full of possibility. Tavernier is far too fond of his characters to box them in and make their destiny inevitable. At heart, his vision is anything but classical. Tavernier suggests that the novel indirectly portrays its author, Pierre Bost, who expressed doubts about having abandoned his literary career (Monsieur Ladmiral, written in 1945, was his last novel) and thereafter working as screenwriter, adapting the work of others. If Bost felt that his subsequent work lacked creativity and innovation, however, he was mistaken. Time has demonstrated that the scripts he co-wrote with Jean Aurenche for Autant-Lara’s Douce and La Traversée de Paris (1956), Clément’s Jeux interdits (1952), and other major films – along with adaptations of novels by Stendhal, Zola, Gide, Colette, and others – indelibly marked the history of cinema. Bost died in 1975, shortly after co-scripting L’Horloger de Saint-Paul, and Tavernier’s adaptation of Monsieur Ladmiral va bientôt mourir is, among other things, a memorial tribute to his friend.

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 88

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

portraits of the artist  89 In addition, Tavernier admits that in adapting Bost’s novel, he also had in mind his own father. As Bertrand tells it, after his early career as a poet and activist during the Occupation, René Tavernier dissipated his later career in second-rate writings. The director says that he hoped his film would encourage his father to return to poetry, which in fact he did (DVD director’s commentary; Hay 2000: 104). Perhaps because Tavernier had his father in mind while making the film, and despite its setting outside Paris, the spiritual home of Un dimanche à la campagne is once again Lyon. The paintings that appear in Monsieur Ladmiral’s home were borrowed from a Lyon collection and exemplify the ‘Ecole Lyonnaise.’ Like Ladmiral himself, these paintings are conservative in both content and style, and their creators have remained marginal to art history. As is revealed in Lyon, le regard intérieur, Mercédès’s kitchen is in fact located in the Lyon apartment belonging to Tavernier’s maternal grandparents. Like that film and like L’Horloger de Saint-Paul as well, Un dimanche à la campagne also begins with a train arriving at the station, another tip of the hat to the Lumière brothers. It is significant that the many arts and artists the film evokes – from Corneille and Monet and Renoir to the Lumières and Fauré and Bost – are all French. It is curious indeed that Tavernier, elsewhere so cosmopolitan, so attuned to world culture and international cinema, would show himself to be so insular here. This can be understood in light of the historical context – the early 1980s – in which the film was made. We have already noted that the prestige of French cinema was in decline. These were the early days of François Mitterrand’s Socialist government and in particular of Jack Lang’s tenure as Minister of Culture. Among the initiatives of Lang’s cultural policy was aggressive promotion of French cultural products, including films, on the world market. Un dimanche à la campagne takes us back to the period when French culture was ascendant in many domains, including painting, music, and cinema. And so it is particularly remarkable that cinema does not figure among the many arts evoked in Un dimanche à la campagne. The subject could easily have arisen – Ladmiral advances opinions about painting and photography, after all, and Irène might plausibly have attended a screening in 1912 Paris. But what Tavernier has done instead is to use Bost’s novel as an opportunity to compile a kind of prehistory of the septième art. The film illustrates changes in percep-

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 89

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

90  bertrand tavernier tion and subjectivity brought about by modernization, transformations that made the invention of cinema possible, even inevitable. ‘Modern culture was “cinematic” before the fact,’ declare the editors of a collection of essays entitled Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life (Charney and Schwartz 1995: 1). Ladmiral and his family – and the film as a whole – confront and bicker over what has been called ‘the institutions of the visible’ as these were evolving in the early years of the twentieth century: Impressionism, Cubism, Pointillism, photography, and the other arts of modernism, to be sure, but also less overtly artistic inventions such as the train and the automobile, the storefront and the museum, and the modern metropolis, with its distractions and its crowds, its flâneurs, its gawkers and shoppers. Store windows mobilized and framed the gaze and incited desire in the service of emerging consumer culture. Irène covets the shawl that serves as an element of decor in Ladmiral’s coin d’atelier for the shop she has just launched, even going so far as to pay her father for the goods before she packs the items into her car. This commodification of their belongings and commercialization of their relations mortifies Ladmiral and outrages Gonzague. One scholar points out that another ‘obvious precursor of moving pictures was the railroad’: looking out the window from a moving train ‘eliminated traditional barriers of space and distance as it forged a bodily intimacy with time, space, and motion. The railroad journey anticipated more explicitly than any other technology an important facet of the experience of cinema: a person in a seat watches moving visuals through a frame that does not change position’ (Charney and Schwartz 1995: 6). All these changes in subjectivity are central to the Ladmiral family’s Sunday – a story in which nothing much else happens – and are integral elements in what one critic calls ‘the genealogy of the modern gaze’ (Charney and Schwartz 1995: 321). The limitations in Ladmiral’s artistic vision are those of a pre-cinematic consciousness, and perhaps that is why he does not wish to visit the city. With all its artistic references and re-conceptualizations, Un dimanche à la campagne is an adaptation, of course, but it also allegorizes the very process of adaptation, in two ways. Just as a movie version both is and is not the ‘same’ as the literary text from which it comes, Ladmiral knows that, like all artists, in order to move along with his times, he must negotiate the conflicting attractions of the past and the new. He also vaguely resents the fact that his failure to ‘adapt’ has

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 90

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

portraits of the artist  91 made him obsolete. As the sempiternal debate about fidelity to sources demonstrates, each adaptation must forge its own blend of imitation and innovation. Not content simply to bring a novel to the screen, with Un dimanche à la campagne Tavernier has also adapted specific texts and broader aesthetic ideas from the worlds of painting, photography, theater, and music. In this way, the film functions as a mise en abyme of its own creative process. Along the way, the mirroring relation between the Ladmiral family and the processes of a­ daptation that produced the film means that Un dimanche à la campagne demonstrates the many ways that the history of art can be figured as genealogy. Cinema history is thus once again a question of generations. For the filmmaker, adaptation in all its forms is a process not of rivalry but of teamwork, and of admiration. (We could speculate about the names Ladmiral and Mireille, both evoking looking and reflecting.) Not only is creation not inhibited by anxieties of influence, creativity is not even necessarily an art of being new. Rather, it is an act of establishing conversations with other arts and artists. In the best of cases – of which Un dimanche à la campagne is one – the vision of the ‘parent’ source is modified and integrated in order to produce an independent and autonomous new creation.

Filming Jazz: Autour de minuit Autour de minuit opens in 1959 Paris, where young French jazz enthusiast Francis Borier (François Cluzet), lacking cash for admission to a club, is reduced to crouching near a ventilation grate in the rain to listen to his American idol, bebop saxophonist Dale Turner (played by real-life jazz great, Dexter Gordon). Francis will meet Turner and welcome him as a guest in his home; he will take Dale to visit his parents in Lyon; he will accompany Dale to the United States; and he will rescue his friend repeatedly from alcohol and self-doubt. But when Dale succumbs to his demons, Francis loses his friend, whom he and his young daughter, Bérangère, will nevertheless remember through home movies of their happy times together. Released two years after Un dimanche à la campagne, Autour de minuit once again spotlights an artist, this time through adaptation of a memoir by French jazz fan Francis Paudras about his friendship with bebop pianist Bud Powell (Paudras 1986). Like Ladmiral,

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 91

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

92  bertrand tavernier fictional saxophonist Dale Turner is an aging man with regrets about his personal life and doubts about his value as an artist. As Sunday ends the week, midnight closes the day: after the twilight of Impressionism and the Belle Epoque, here Tavernier portrays the late 1950s waning of bebop incarnated by a musician facing decline in his career and his life. Rather than the vibrant, manic mood of ‘hot’ jazz and bebop in its heyday, the film’s blue tones and languid pace convey instead a weary melancholy. Once again, plot is minimized, as Tavernier explains: I wanted that kind of thing where nothing happens, just people listening. […] The life and the emotion of the musician are a challenge, in a sense, to plots. They have a life which is so based on emotion that any conventional story line is reducing the emotion, is reducing the true spirit. (Dempsey 1987: 7, 10)

With its American musician and French fan, Autour de minuit is, among other things, a tribute to French–American friendship. Tavernier is passionate about the United States. When in the 1990s he fulminated against Jack Valenti, the Motion Picture Association of America, and the lobby opposing the French ‘exception culturelle,’ or when he accuses American distributors of putting French films illegally into the public domain, or when he laments Hollywood’s dominance over French television and box office, his diatribes never overshadow his admiration for American film art. 50 Ans de cinéma américain demonstrates the extent of his passion and the depth of his knowledge: the book contains meticulously researched histories of American cinematic institutions, events, personalities, and films, both major and minor, followed by essays on some seventy-five screenwriters and almost 300 directors. While encyclopedic, the book is also unabashedly personal, and Tavernier’s voice rings true to the films and to his other writings, which reveal his preoccupations: the links between Hollywood and national politics, the ravages of censorship and McCarthyism, the ways laws and financing constrict the arts, the ascendance of the Hollywood industry and the narrowing of opportunities for independent artists. Not surprisingly, the same interests inform Amis américains: Entretiens avec les grands auteurs d’Hollywood, which includes substantial chapters on such Tavernier favorites as John Ford, Budd Boetticher, Delmer Daves, Robert Parrish, Jacques Tourneur, and Robert Altman. The interviews and their prefaces,

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 92

12/10/2011 16:25

portraits of the artist  93

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

like the entries in 50 Ans de cinéma américain, leaven analysis with personal reflection and blend enthusiasm with judicious critique. In an interview, Tavernier asserted: ‘I have a love-hate relationship with America, because I admire so many of its artists and reject so many of its values’ (Coursodon 1986: 19). Expanding on this theme in the preface to Amis américains, he explained: Mes rapports avec l’Amérique sont assez compliqués. J’avais une véritable fascination mais qui ne se séparait jamais d’une certaine méfiance. En plus, cette fascination s’exerçait essentiellement envers une culture marginale: les écrivains de romans noirs, les jazzmen, les auteurs de série B, soit des gens que les Américains ne considéraient pas comme des artistes importants ou représentatifs.12

Moreover, when they have not been ignored, Tavernier observes, these marginal arts and artists have often been co-opted. In bebop, however, he finds ‘the only part of […] American music which has never been recuperated, swallowed by the system’ (Dempsey 1987: 5). When in his massive documentary history of jazz, Ken Burns reached the 1940s and needed a narrator to comment on how ‘jazz goes to war’ in Europe, he chose Bertrand Tavernier. Over Burns’s images of American GIs and scenes of Occupied Paris, Tavernier explains, in his heavily accented but fluent English, what jazz meant to French fans of the era: Jazz for a lot of people was a way – for Jean-Paul Sartre, for Boris Vian, for all those people – it was a way of fighting against the conformism, fighting against the spirit of Vichy, fighting against the German atmosphere. It was a symbol of the Resistance, not only because it was American, but it was a music created by Blacks. And that was important when you are fighting against a racist government.

The Reich apparently agreed. Burns notes that the Nazis banned even the word ‘jazz,’ which meant that dancing in jazz clubs represented an act of defiance in Occupied Paris. Burns shows how during the ‘dark years,’ French young people adopted jazz as the symbol of democracy and freedom it had been from its beginnings for Black and Jewish musicians facing racism at home (Burns 2001, episode 7). 12 ‘My relation to America is complicated. I never separated my fascination from a certain mistrust. And the culture that fascinated me was mostly marginal: pulp novelists, jazzmen, popular films, in other words figures that Americans didn’t consider important artists.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 93

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

94  bertrand tavernier As Tavernier begins to speak, we see American soldiers on troop ships against a background of shells exploding over the Atlantic. These images bring to mind Tavernier’s earliest childhood memories, as he describes them in Lyon, le regard intérieur and elsewhere, of bombs lighting the sky during the liberation of Lyon. It is clear that jazz resonates with Tavernier’s artistic sensibility and his personal mythology. In addition, as his statement above attests, the music reflects his social vision; its connotations in the context of Occupied Europe correspond to his habitually oppositional stance. While admiring many previous jazz movies, Tavernier rejected existing approaches. He did not want to make a bio-pic, with celebrated actors playing the roles of musicians against a dubbed backdrop of original music. Nor did he ask actors to mimic the performances of celebrated musicians. Many movies had already incorporated jazz performances, but such sequences had often been little more than decorative flourishes. Instead, Tavernier wanted to make a movie that was not simply about jazz. Even more than the music itself, he wanted to capture the passion, the lifestyle, the exploitation and suffering, and especially the hard work, a dimension often overlooked in movies, as it had been in the historical accounts. In other words, once again, he aimed to make a film about the creative process. Tavernier knew from the beginning that he wanted to cast a real jazz musician. ‘Je ne voulais pas d’un acteur jouant du saxo, mais d’un saxophoniste jouant la comédie’ (Pantel 1986).13 In the lead, he cast renowned musical giant Dexter Gordon, who played on stage as part of the filming. The choice of musical numbers preceded the story and determined its rhythms. This means that when ‘Dale Turner’ plays his saxophone, we are treated to real musical performances. In this way, despite its invented story and characters, Autour de minuit leans toward documentary. Tavernier called once again on Bruno de Keyzer to develop a color palette running to blues and greys that suggested the Blues, of course, but also the swirl of smoke in the clubs, the mists of memory, and the clouds of alcohol and prejudice that weigh upon the characters. Magnificent sets designed by Alexandre Trauner recreated the ambience of jazz clubs and seedy hotels in the post-war SaintGermain neighborhood. Working with David Rayfiel, Tavernier wrote a script that is the most narratively complex of all his films: it incor 13 ‘I didn’t want an actor playing the saxophone, but instead, a saxophonist playing a role.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 94

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

portraits of the artist  95 porates temporal jumps, abundant flashbacks, montage sequences, films within the film, and multiple overlapping frames. ‘J’ai traité le dialogue comme une partition de jazz, en octroyant aux acteurs une grande marge d’improvisation,’ he declared in the film’s press pamphlet.14 Despite the film’s Paris setting, Tavernier was conscious of his own status as outsider to African-American jazz culture. This sensitivity gave importance to the character of Francis Borier, the French jazz fan loosely adapted from Paudras’s autobiographical account. Many commentators believe that the film could not have been made by an American. Discussing the film’s reception with a reporter from L’Humanité (18 September 1986), Tavernier finds it scandalous that such a film had not already been made in America and notes that African-American culture is much better appreciated in Europe than in the United States. In fact, American producer Irwin Winkler thought so too: when his friend Martin Scorsese introduced him to Tavernier, the filmmaker explained his desire to launch a project about jazz using a real jazz musician as lead actor. Winkler was immediately won over and offered financing. The film apparently succeeded to a large extent in conveying the look and feel of real jazz. Jazz aficionados – at least those not put off by an imaginary biography – praised Tavernier’s respect for the music and the performers. Jazz archivist and record producer Michael Cuscuna thinks that ‘’Round Midnight is the film that no one thought would ever be made. […] Because Tavernier is as secure as he is sincere in his art, he was able to make the first true portrait of the jazz life’ (Cuscuna 1986). One critic calls Autour de minuit ‘un film-jazz,’ and others repeatedly remark on how the film functions like jazz, especially on the ways it takes its cues from emotion and follows the laws of improvisation, affinities that are not limited to the soundtrack: ‘improvisation non seulement musicale mais humaine: variations sur l’exil et la mélancholie, les blessures du coeur et la force des poumons, l’amitié et la fragilité’ (Le Figaro, 21–22 September 1986).15 Participants describe the experience of working on the film in similar terms. Dexter Gordon and the musicians in his band – 14 ‘I treated the dialogue like a jazz score, giving the actors plenty of room to improvise.’ 15 ‘[The film’s] improvisation [is] not only musical, but human: variations on exile and melancholy, heartbreak and lung power, friendship and fragility.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 95

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

96  bertrand tavernier including Herbie Hancock on piano and, on bass, Pierre Michelot, who had played with Bud Powell in Paris – brought a style of moving and speaking belonging to their own generation of educated, urban professionals that was quite different from their rural and sometimes semi-literate predecessors on whom so many stereotypes are based. The whole team was caught up in the spirit of the experiment. Praised by critics and widely appreciated by the public, Autour de minuit won a host of awards, including Césars for Best Soundtrack and (to Hancock) Best Music Written for a Film. The film also won an Academy Award for Best Original Score, and Dexter Gordon remains the only musician ever nominated for a Best Actor Oscar. Dexter Gordon’s extraordinary physical presence, the complex rhythms of the editing, a loose narrative line that incorporates repetitions, digressions, and temporal discontinuities, and an overall mood and visual style hint at deep connections between subject and form. Tavernier told an interviewer, ‘I still believe very much for me that film is very, very close to music, and it should have the same construction’ (Dempsey 1987: 10). Affinities with jazz in Autour de minuit are important not only because in this instance they constitute a wager and an experiment, but also because they are integral to the way Tavernier conceives of cinema. As in the case of Un dimanche à la campagne, however, the precise nature of the connections between Autour de minuit and the music it contains is far from self-evident. Our investigation of Tavernier’s previous portraits of the artist suggests we might ask the following questions: what does Autour de minuit have to say about the social and historical situation of the artist? What relation exists between the film and the music from which it draws its inspiration? What, if anything, does the film ‘learn’ from jazz? To address these questions, we might enlist the help of musician and literary critic Michael Jarrett. In his book, Drifting on a Read: Jazz as a Model for Writing (1999), Jarrett distinguishes between ‘jazzology’ (the study of jazz) and ‘jazzography’: the inscription of jazz in another medium. Jarrett’s focus is on writing, but his analysis can help us think about ways in which jazz might determine not only the movie’s content, but also its form. Jarrett devises what he calls a ‘tropology’: a catalogue of creative techniques used by jazz musicians to generate new material. Within this rhetoric of jazz’s techniques of invention, he identifies four overlapping figures – with the imaginative names satura, charivari, rapsody, and obbligato – that will help us summarize

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 96

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

portraits of the artist  97 the ways in which Tavernier’s film functions simultaneously as a work ‘about’ jazz and as a jazz-like composition in its own right. (1) Satura is a figure of intertextual or dialogic creation. It highlights how art can be drawn from multiple existing sources to fashion a patchwork, a ‘hodgepodge or amalgam’ (Jarrett 1999: 22). This essential figure of jazz performance thus invites artistic encounters that cut across racial and cultural barriers. Satura (from the Latin for ‘mixed dish’) is also like a ‘gumbo,’ which avoids synthesizing flavors into a homogeneous dish, retaining instead the flavor of individual ingredients while fusing or ‘cooking’ them into a new creation. Jarrett’s culinary metaphor would please Tavernier, who often illustrates it literally with a convivial meal scene that facilitates exposition of character and story. Before moving in with Francis and Bérangère, Dale Turner lives in a hotel among a community of expatriate AfricanAmericans, one of whom is always busy cooking up something. He appears in the hall at regular intervals offering samples of his ‘down home’ gumbo or jambalaya. As he combines locally grown French ingredients with spices from his suitcase, this character is himself a perfect example of satura, emblematic of the whole musical and cultural enterprise portrayed in and by the film. Both the literal and the broader definitions of satura were already present in Tavernier’s 1984 filmmaking journey to the United States, Mississippi Blues. Like Autour de minuit, Mississippi Blues spotlights a friendship between two men, one American, one French. Made and narrated jointly with his American colleague Robert Parrish, the film undertakes a quest into l’Amérique profonde in search of the source of the Blues, which they find among folk musicians in rural churches, diner kitchens, and tarpaper shanties. The filmmakers seek to document an undervalued, disappearing culture, a theme whose nostalgic tone matches Tavernier’s preferred lighting, that of the fading day and of autumn. (The film’s working title was Pays d’Octobre.) While most obviously a documentary, Mississippi Blues nonetheless mixes in ingredients from two classical Hollywood genres: the ‘road movie’ and the ‘buddy movie.’ The ‘buddies’ are Parrish and Tavernier, whose conversation serves as narration. In one sequence, the two men stand near a church, as Parrish explains to his French friend what it meant to grow up in a conservative, white Southern Baptist congregation, curious and fearful about this neighboring black church, with its similar architecture but very different style of

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 97

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

98  bertrand tavernier physically and emotionally expressive singing. The film is in color, but one black-and-white shot shows two young boys who stealthily approach a church door, pull it slightly ajar, and peek at the service within (in color). At the sight, they take fright and flee. Visual games that mix black, white, and color are of course meaningful in a film about race. In addition, there are two boys. If one is clearly identified with Parrish, who narrates the sequence as a memory from his youth, the other stands in for Tavernier, who gives himself a fantasy American childhood (and an American nickname: Bert). Faced with such a mixture of American and French; black, white, and color; present and past; documentary, period film, and a pot pourri of genres, one would be hard put to imagine a richer example of satura. Mississippi Blues begins in the ‘Deep South’ and traces jazz’s historical journey northward from the Mississippi River Delta. As Autour de minuit (also entitled ’Round Midnight) continues that journey to France, the satura spirit is particularly discernible in the fact that each of the principal characters represents an amalgam of multiple sources. As both a jazz fanatic and an artist, and a native of Lyon, Francis is Tavernier’s autobiographical stand-in. To further stitch the filmmaker into the patchwork, Tavernier’s friends Philippe Noiret and Martin Scorsese play cameo roles. Dale Turner, too, is a fictional composite, incarnating the bebop movement generally, while incorporating elements from the lives of several jazz luminaries. He inherits Powell’s military credentials and his memories of racial abuse in the army. He adopts Lester Young’s saxophone, along with certain verbal mannerisms, such as calling his friend ‘Lady Francis.’ (Dexter Gordon himself refers affectionately to ‘Lady Bertrand.’) And when Darcy Lee, Dale’s former flame (played by singer Lonette McGee) joins him on stage for a song, the gardenia tucked behind her ear inevitably conjures Billie Holliday – ‘Lady Day’ – for whom Lester was accompanist. Dale’s daughter is named Chan, a reference to the wife of the most famous bebop artist of all, Charlie Parker. It is not surprising that Tavernier was drawn to these particular musicians. The emergence of bebop mobilized the very oppositions that preoccupy the filmmaker: maintaining the creative tension between improvisation and written score/script (i.e. innovation and adaptation); reinforcing collective values and ensemble work while highlighting solo performances; the struggle of independent artists against commercialization; the pleasure of pure artistic virtu-

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 98

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

portraits of the artist  99 osity. Bebop itself arose as a kind of resistance against the immense popularity and facile accessibility of the ‘swing’ style during the war years. It wrested jazz back out of the white mainstream and re-attached it to its roots in African-American culture and experience. All these artistic concerns have been Tavernier’s too. Another important ingredient in the Dale Turner concoction is Dexter Gordon’s own biography: his experience of wartime and post-war American racism and his many subsequent years as an expatriate in Denmark and France. Casting Dexter was a stroke of genius. The saxophonist’s tall awkwardness (he measured 6 ft 6 or about 198 cm), his lanky amble, and his charismatic smile are the source of the film’s mood and rhythms. Himself a luminary of the bebop era, he knew all the others, including Bud Powell and Lester Young. He also unfortunately had an insider’s knowledge of his character’s struggles with drugs, alcohol, and repeated comebacks. In fact, the filming process came uncannily to mirror the story, as Tavernier found he had to tend his star in the same way Francis cares for Dale. Tavernier confronted him and threatened to cancel the project rather than see Dexter destroy himself. Tavernier had already encountered an almost identical situation back in 1967, when he hosted John Ford’s visit to Paris. Ford, too, must thus be included in the satura that adds up to ‘Dale Gordon.’ As Tavernier tells it, his duties as press attaché included preventing his charge from drinking himself silly, a task at which he was only partially successful. In Amis américains, he acknowledges that his work with Ford was among the inspirations behind Autour de minuit (Tavernier 1993: 47). Dale finally remains in New York and Francis reluctantly returns to Paris alone. Shortly afterwards, Francis receives a telegram informing him of Dale’s death, a consequence, it is implied, of a return to the drug use that Francis had tried so hard to prevent. Disheartened and grieving, Francis views taped footage he had taken of Dale, himself, and Bérangère. The films are in black and white, an instance of formal satura that further links Autour de minuit to Mississippi Blues. Francis’s home movies serve as dreamlike flashbacks, both to the happy times with Dale and to the film’s black-and-white opening sequence, which complicate the film’s temporal structure and reinforce its selfreflexivity. As in Mississippi Blues, here the encounter of adaptation with other sources, and the mixing of French and English language,

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 99

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

100  bertrand tavernier autobiography and fiction make the film into a historical nostalgia piece with documentary elements, and Tavernier’s personal tribute to his favorite artists. (2) Where satura is a kind of centripetal force that stirs heterogeneous ingredients into a central vortex, a second of Jarrett’s jazz tropes, the more centrifugal charivari highlights the disorder, subversion, and excess characteristic of carnival, forces that could send the music and the musicians (with the characters and the film itself) spinning out of control. This is the rhetorical figure that understands the extent to which jazz remains outside history and is considered to be inassimilable, indigestible ‘noise’ in relation to Western art music (Jarrett 1999: 163). Examining the film from the perspective of charivari brings ­Tavernier’s oppositional, even anarchist streak into view, along with his habit of challenging established ideas by turning his camera on the margins of traditional culture. At the heart of Autour de minuit lies a tension between creative energy and destructive disorder. Numerous anarchic forces threaten the survival of both the musician and his music: alcohol and drugs most obviously, but also the racism and depressive self-destructiveness that fuel addictions and that have all too often marked jazz history. At the same time, the creative disorder of making music keeps Dale from being domesticated. The jazz is totally masculine, too. Women play the role of disruptive outsiders by imposing conventional structure and responsibility: both Francis and Dale are torn between their friendship through music on the one hand, and their daughters, ex-wife (Francis) or keeper (Dale’s chaperone, Buttercup) who would civilize them and rob them of their creative fire. And let us not forget Rougerie’s co-writer in Des enfants gâtés who believes women incapable of understanding Charlie Parker. Charivari is also discernible in Autour de minuit’s narrative construction, which is so complex as to border at times on incoherence, while nevertheless always managing to hold itself together. The film begins in a New York hotel room, in the middle of what may be a memory of a fellow jazz musician’s death. It ends on another flashback in the form of Francis’s home movie showing himself with Bérangère and Dale at the beach. This nostalgic moment is itself part of a montage that includes later shots taken during Francis’s return to the United States after Dale’s death (a trip otherwise absent from the narrative) and shots of a memorial concert of unspecified

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 100

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

portraits of the artist  101 time and location. In a similar display of temporal dexterity, Dale’s on-stage appearance with Darcy Leigh is intercut with a montage of the couple’s dinner together following the performance, which itself includes flashbacks, the whole accompanied by their song which continues on the soundtrack. These and other self-reflexive moments function metaphorically to represent the film as a whole, thus complicating diegetic chronology and preventing purely linear or causal understanding. A mixture of genres, the film includes a quasi-documentary in which Dale narrates his experience as a soldier during the Second World War, so that Dale’s story risks dissolving into allegory as he tells it. But while these disruptive temporal structures fragment the narrative, charivari at the same time holds things together by creating connections – metaphors or bridges, even in the Blues meaning of the term – between apparently incompatible elements. The final scene, in which Francis reviews his footage of Dale, subverts the film’s drive toward closure. Nothing is more final than a tombstone, but even as we contemplate this iconic image of closure, the music outlasts the protagonists and their story, as it continues to make itself heard over the final credits. (3) Jarrett coins the term rapsody to describe jazz’s power to transgress and reconfigure oppositions. Named after the rapp, a counterfeit coin that circulates as – and thus surreptitiously becomes – the real thing, this figure subverts jazzological discourses that distinguish jazz from ‘real’ music, considering it to be either fake or ‘more genuine.’ He sees such discourses as ‘policing the boundaries’ between reality and representation (Jarrett 1999: 122) and between original and copy, boundaries that jazz performances automatically cross and blur. This rapsodic discourse is thus also inherently political, in that it undercuts social hierarchies and invalidates the segregation of categories and of races by celebrating a culture of ‘passing.’ Tavernier’s version of rapsody is similarly both artistic and social. It is important to remember that what he loves about America is its counter-cultures and its underrated or secondary genres. In his public activism, within his films, and in his writing, he targets corrosive hierarchies and covert contradictions in American values. By moving marginal artists, artistic forms, and social groups to center stage and by crossing borders (national, for example, and generic, not to mention the line separating popular from auteur cinema), his work adopts a rhetoric of rapsody.

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 101

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

102  bertrand tavernier The art of adaptation itself can be seen as a version of rapsody, understood as a way of imitating a model until the embellishment overtakes its source. Autour de minuit takes its title from Thelonius Monk’s famous composition that has been adopted and adapted numerous times since its creation in the early 1940s. We have seen how Un dimanche à la campagne emerges from creative adaptation of various media and styles. Unlike Monsieur Ladmiral, however, and more in the spirit of jazz, Tavernier does not torture himself over whether his art arises from imitation or innovation. His work subverts that opposition entirely, using adaptation to generate something new and autonomous from an existing model. Like the best jazz, superior adaptations always push imitation until it becomes creation. (4) Finally, obbligato is the figure of improvisation. It calls attention to the way music is defined more by ornamentation than by melody, which serves only as a springboard or pretext for invention. The story’s unfolding is always more important than the plot. The embellishment (the detour) becomes the message. As a result, the overriding value of the (musical, cinematic) exercise is to be found in the process of creation itself. If any single feature defines Tavernier’s philosophy of his craft, this is the one. He often emphasizes that the experience of filming is more meaningful – and more enjoyable – than the finished movie. The vicissitudes surrounding the making of Autour de minuit (like many others of his films) are as engaging as the finished film, and in some instances even threatened to overtake it. Much of the dialogue in Autour de minuit is improvised. As usual, the script continued to evolve until the last minute, with Dexter inventing many of his best lines on the set. Tavernier modeled the film’s ending after an informal conversation with Dexter. The director followed Dexter’s lead, as the musician brought his jazz methodology to his acting. ‘[G]race à son aide,’ Tavernier explains, ‘on a pu tourner le film avec la liberté de création de morceaux de jazz: on rajoutait donc des répliques, on faisait sauter la chronologie des scènes. Plein d’idées sont nées sur le plateau’ (Autour de minuit press pamphlet).16 Even camera movement was improvised. As the director explains, ‘We were determining a certain number of [camera] positions, because we never knew 16 ‘[T]hanks to him, we were able to shoot the film with the creative freedom of a jazz piece: we added lines, we rearranged the chronology of scenes. Lots of ideas were born on the set.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 102

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

portraits of the artist  103 where we were going […] because jazz is so much an improvisation’ (Dempsey 1987: 5). These and other strategies made the film itself into an allegory of its process of creation. Both in jazz and in Tavernier’s cinematic practice, this emphasis on process puts the spotlight squarely on performance: the immediate and unmediated live presence of the artist – the actor, the musician – caught in the act of creating. The force and beauty of Dexter Gordon’s participation in the film reside in the gravelly tone of his voice, his breath heard through the saxophone, the loping physicality of his stride. Even his aging is tangible. The music/film is to be found in the materiality of its performances, and the greatness of Autour de minuit is the extent to which the film allows that to happen. As in a jazz concert, each performer takes the spotlight at some point. The most noticeable example is the long sequence in which Dexter Gordon accompanies Lonette McKee’s singing. The soundtrack includes the whole number, complete with repeated refrains. Other moments spotlight other musicians – Herbie Hancock, for example, and the rest of the band at the Blue Note, all renowned musicians. As ‘band leader,’ Tavernier asks to be surprised, and he makes room for everyone’s solo. A party chez Francis affords a moment of glowing stage time to Dexter’s companion, Buttercup, whose role until then had been no more than a plot element. Standing near the piano in Francis’s apartment, however, she becomes a player in her own right, as she lets loose with a joyful and sensuous song. Comparable to a production number in a musical (but with more naturel), the forward motion of the plot is suspended and the camera takes a seat as well, while audiences inside and outside the film pause to enjoy her performance in its entirety. In such moments, fiction is indistinguishable from documentary. In fact, this approach to filming performance demonstrates obvious affinities with Mississippi Blues, where Tavernier exploited the documentary mode of the long take to preserve the integrity of individual interviews, and in several instances, of entire musical performances, such as a church choir rehearsal, an impromptu song by a barber while he gives Tavernier a shave, and a traditional spiritual, sung spontaneously with full harmony in a kitchen. In Mississippi Blues, this systematic tip of the hat to each player extends to production personnel not usually seen on screen – shots of Tavernier and his team learning to play baseball illustrate the opening credits –

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 103

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

104  bertrand tavernier reminding us that cinema, too, is a collective venture. The end of La Fille de d’Artagnan produces a similar effect, when each of the principal actors appears in an onscreen ‘curtain call’ to take a formal bow, as the final credits roll. The device calls attention to the theatricality (the artificiality) of the performances. Connecting these cinematic moments to jazz is the awareness that creation is defined by ‘play,’ in its full semantic range: musical, theatrical, and ludic. This, too, has historically been among the liberating dimensions of jazz. Obbligato, then, the trope that privileges process over product and improvisation over composition, emphasizes that every performance is new. Jazz playing is not a répétition in either sense of the French word: it is neither a rehearsal nor does it reprise a previous instance. Real jazz is live jazz. There have been long debates about whether a recorded performance really counts as jazz, because, as Louis Armstrong is reputed to have remarked, expecting a jazz artist to repeat his performance is like asking a canary to repeat its song. In Autour de minuit, Tavernier plays with these modalities and tries out their usefulness to film art. In the process, he rejoins experimental artistic practices that have been more readily recognized as avantgarde for their ‘productive’ (rather than ‘reproductive’) theories of representation. At the same time that it defines the essence of jazz, however, obbligato poses an insurmountable challenge to filmmaking, because a film is always a recording. No matter how hard it tries, the movie we see always comes after. It is the trace of a more immediate (‘live’) experience. By the time the film appears, the strong emotions, the camaraderie, and the discoveries are already over. This contradiction can be overcome only to the limited extent that the process itself is inscribed in the finished product. Like Barthes’s photographs, a film is thus always already nostalgic, a souvenir or commemoration of its moment of creation. Francis, Tavernier’s stand-in, realizes this at the end, as he watches his black-and-white home movies. Autour de minuit opens an innovative space for experimentation and surprise, and it is open to the gumbo of satura, the chaos of charivari, the reversals of rapsody, and the surprises of obbligato. But it remains a film. Cinema and jazz, two arts that emerged in approximately the same historical era, thus in this respect define the antipodes of modernity: one, made of sound, pushes the limits of art as spontaneous and unique; the other, made of light, marks the apotheosis of ‘the work of

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 104

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

portraits of the artist  105 art in an age of mechanical reproduction’ (Walter Benjamin). Perhaps this is why so many filmmakers have tried – and failed, in varying ways – to make a movie that is not only a film about jazz (a jazzology), but also a film modeled on jazz (a jazzography). Meanwhile, cinema continues to strive toward the ideal state of being that is suggested by jazz. This is perhaps also the impetus behind the ‘making of,’ an emerging genre that also tries (and inevitably fails) to capture the creative process in some ideal unmediated immediacy. In the final analysis, it is not surprising that Autour de minuit ultimately resembles the laments of the Blues more than the subversive energy of bebop. As I hope to have demonstrated in this chapter, Tavernier’s artist films are his laboratory, where he tests the powers and limits of his medium. His desire to capture the living reality of a past moment is carried forward in his historical films. His project of filming events ‘as they happen’ (in the very moment, but also in the same way) will be pursued in his experiments with documentary. These two modes will be the focus of the next two chapters.

References Barthes, Roland (1981), Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, trans. Richard Howard, New York, Hill and Wang. Bost, Pierre (1945), Monsieur Ladmiral va bientôt mourir, Paris, Gallimard. Burns, Ken (2001), Jazz, PBS (DVD). Charney, Leo and Vanessa R. Schwartz (eds) (1995), Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life, Berkeley, University of California Press. Corneille, Pierre (1963), ‘Discours des trios unités d’action, de jour, et de lieu,’ Oeuvres completes, Paris, Seuil, 841–6. Coursodon, Jean-Pierre (1986), ‘’Round Midnight: An Interview with Bertrand Tavernier,’ Cinéaste, 15. Cuscuna, Michael (1986), www.members.tripod.com/~hardbop/midnight. html (accessed 26 May 2011). Dempsey, Michael (1987), ‘All the Colors: Bertrand Tavernier Talks about ’Round Midnight,’ Film Quarterly, 40 (Spring). Jarrett, Michael (1999), Drifting on a Read: Jazz as a Model for Writing, Albany, SUNY Press. Laszlo, Michel (1977), ‘Vivre sa ville aujourd’hui: Des enfants gâtés un film de Bertrand Tavernier,’ Rouge, 7 September. Lowenstein, Stephen (ed.) (2000), My First Film: 20 Celebrated Directors Talk about Their First Film, London and New York, Penguin. Neupert, Richard (1996), ‘Painterly Pastiche in Un dimanche à la campagne,’ The French Review, 70: 1, 56–64.

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 105

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

106  bertrand tavernier Pantel, Monique (1986), ‘Interview with Tavernier,’ France Soir, 25 September. Paudras, Francis (1986), Danse des infidèles, Paris, Eds de l’Instant. Porter, Melinda Camber (1986), Through Parisian Eyes: Reflections on Contemporary French Arts and Culture, New York, Oxford University Press. Powrie, Phil (1997), French Cinema in the 1980s: Nostalgia and the Crisis of Masculinity, Oxford and New York, Clarendon Press. Rabinbach, Anson (1990), The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins of Modernity, Harper Collins. Randel, Don Michael (ed.) (2003), The Harvard Dictionary of Music, 4th edn, Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press. Raspiengeas, Jean-Claude (1999), ‘De quoi j’me mèle?’ Télérama, 2565 (10 March). Roumette, Sylvain and Michel Frizot (eds). (1986), Early Color Photography, New York and Paris, Pantheon Books and Centre National de la Photographie. Wood, John (1993), The Art of the Autochrome: The Birth of Color Photography, Iowa City, University of Iowa Press. Yakir, Dan (1984), ‘Painting Pictures,’ interview with Tavernier, Film Comment, 20. See also Select Bibliography.

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 106

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

1  The filmmaker in his native Lyon

2  Bertrand interviews his father in Lyon’s Parc de la Tête d’Or

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 107

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

108

3  Noiret & Rochefort in the Parc de la Tête d’Or

4  Autochrome of Madame Auguste Lumière (1907)

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 108

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

109

5  Sabine Azéma as Irène Ladmiral (1984)

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 109

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

110

6  Laurence Cuers and her father (Jean Dasté)

7  Caroline and Daddy: ‘These Foolish Things’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 110

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

111

8  Béatrice implores, but the statue remains mute

9  ‘Macache, bono, bézef!’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 111

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

112

10  Isabelle Huppert as Rose leading the people

11  Conan and Norbert

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 112

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

113

12  Tavernier and Noiret during the filming of La Vie et rien d’autre

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 113

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

114

13  La Mort en direct: Katherine Mortenhoe’s death for sale

14  Ça commence aujourd’hui: Daniel is a teacher (or is it Torreton?)

15  Hogman Patin (Buddy Guy) knows more than it is safe to tell

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 114

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

4 Tavernier’s historiography

With only rare exceptions, all Tavernier’s characters move in explicitly delimited historical contexts. From the father and son of L’Horloger de Saint-Paul, whose actions and reactions are shaped by the recent turbulence of May 1968 and the disillusionments that followed, through the detective sheriff of post-Katrina Louisiana in Dans la brume électrique to the courtly milieu during the Religious Wars in La Princesse de Montpensier, his characters must contend not only with their own personal dramas, but with struggles arising from their time and place. A significant sub-corpus of Tavernier’s oeuvre ties character and action so closely to historical situation that the films demand to be called historical fictions. The category is somewhat arbitrary, to be sure: Un dimanche à la campagne, for example, could not have been set in any other era, nor could Autour de minuit or L’Horloger de Saint-Paul. Nevertheless, the category of historical fiction – with its reliance on real public figures and specific events – can help us focus in this chapter on Tavernier’s use and philosophy of history, his ­historiography. Tavernier’s predilection for historical drama might seem to align him with the heritage film, ascendant in France since the early 1980s and popular throughout the 1990s. Beginning in 1981, the genre received encouragement and financial support from Jack Lang’s Culture Ministry, as a policy aimed at stemming the tide of Hollywood imports. Heritage films such as Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources (both Claude Berri, 1986), La Reine Margot (Patrice Chéreau, 1994), Germinal (Claude Berri, 1993), Les Visiteurs (Jean-Marie Poiré, 1993) and a host of others draw on the public’s general familiarity with key building blocks of national history. They have tended to

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 115

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

116  bertrand tavernier play on ­conservative impulses both politically and aesthetically, as they reinforce and celebrate collective identity, often through adaptations of canonical literary works. Although Tavernier’s films share the heritage genre’s high production values and its focus on French historical material, however, his choices have been eccentric, to say the least. Instead of the major milestones and model historical personages that figure in the curriculum of L’Education Nationale, his oft-noted preference for periods of historical transition and instability tends to distance him from the codes of the heritage tradition. Instead of glorious moments that might foreground the coherence of French identity, Tavernier turns his spotlight on fault lines in the continuity of national history. He favors discontinuities and liminal moments, when one regime (of power, of understanding) disintegrates as another begins to take shape. Even Un dimanche à la campagne, among the least overtly historical of all Tavernier’s creations, shows the extent to which Monsieur Ladmiral and his family are shaped by the historical pressure of the fading Belle Epoque and the ominous approach of world war. We could take the solar eclipse that opens and closes Coup de torchon as an emblem of Tavernier’s historical vision. All periods are only as ‘transitional’ as they are shown to be, however, and Tavernier’s films are transitional because Tavernier makes them so. His characters combine lingering nostalgia with an inchoate sense – is it fear or anticipation? – that the future will be radically different. They are half-conscious of living in the throes of a paradigm shift, without yet being able to make out the contours of the new era. They are also impeded by their own flaws. What ­characterizes all Tavernier’s films, but especially the historical ones, is the way characters are forced to define themselves, to navigate crises, and to imagine the future in the absence of any clear political, epistemological, or moral understanding of the rules of the game. Such characters walk a high wire without benefit of safety nets, making actions stand out in stark contrast to the uncertainties of the backdrop. Tavernier explains his approach in an interview about Que la fête commence: Le Régent est un personage formidable. […] J’ai essayé de faire un film qui soit à la fois marrant, un peu agressif, un peu démystificateur, et avec un peu d’émotion sur l’époque et sur un personnage qui me plaît bien, parce que c’est un personnage qui était en avance sur son temps et qui n’a pas eu la force ni la volonté ni la possibilité d’accomplir

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 116

12/10/2011 16:25

tavernier’s historiography  117

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

les choses dont il rêvait. […] Je trouve que c’est un personnage prodigieusement moderne.1

This statement highlights the way Tavernier blends emotion with irony and even social critique. It also conveys his understanding of history as a laborious and disjointed stumbling toward modernity. Sociologists use the term ‘anomie’ to describe the dilemmas faced by people in transition. In 1893, Emile Durkheim examined the sociological consequences of modernization, observing that in periods of rapid change, traditional roles disintegrate, and values fail to evolve fast enough to keep pace. Norms no longer function to regulate relations between individuals and society. Anomie is thus a by-product of transitions into modernity. Symptoms of such rapid shifts include individual deviance, anarchism, religious revivals, or even feelings of experiencing an apocalypse, but there is also extraordinary opportunity and freedom to envision other worlds. These are precisely the kinds of conditions that fascinate Tavernier. He is curious to know how people behave when the guardrails crumble. For his historical fictions, he unfailingly chooses moments that foreground the uneven jolts of progress, when, as in Hamlet, ‘the time is out of joint.’ Then he follows his characters as they negotiate the attendant anxieties, temptations, and opportunities. Thus in Coup de torchon, Lucien Cordier notices that the police, the church, and the state have abdicated their moral authority. He takes matters into his own hands, applies his own increasingly demented logic to his personal grievances and his public duties as a local sheriff in a colonial outpost, and eventually provokes an apocalypse. François de Cortemart, the returning warrior-father in La Passion Béatrice, laments the disappearance of God and chivalric codes as guiding principles, and is engulfed by his own cruelty and suicidal despair. And Captain Conan, a top-notch sniper and unrivaled leader in hand-to-hand combat, finds himself after the Armistice bereft of the rules of war and unable to adjust to those of peace. The suicidal drives of all three of these protagonists – we might call them antiheroes – embody the self-destructive and contradictory forces of their 1 ‘I tried to make a film that would be simultaneously amusing, a little aggressive and demystifying, that would have some of the period’s emotions, with an appealing character who was ahead of his time, but who had neither the force nor the will nor the opportunity to accomplish the things he dreamed of. He’s a character I find prodigiously modern.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 117

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

118  bertrand tavernier historical moment. Reacting more optimistically to similar quandaries, Major Dellaplane in La Vie et rien d’autre (1989) swims upstream of historical waters, as he fights to establish value and recreate norms, re-imagining the possibility of life after the disaster by restoring the identities of the dead and near dead. Tavernier’s historical films can be disorienting if one demands or expects unproblematic realism in the plot. On the other hand, no expense is spared in reconstructing detailed material conditions of the era depicted, all to enhance realism in the personalities, motivations, and worldview of the characters. He insists on the strict accuracy of his decors, and he derides films whose mise en scène mindlessly reproduces the exact historical moment portrayed: for Que la fête commence, for example, he surrounds his protagonists with styles from the previous reign, the ‘Regency style’ having become current only toward the end of the period. He points out that nobody – even a monarch – has all new furniture (Tavernier interview 2006). He consistently seeks to recreate the tangible daily life of past eras, planting his characters in environments they take for granted and barely notice, an approach for which he has received praise from Annales historians. Scholars of this school of historiography also emphasize that the past is always inevitably understood within the frame of the present. This insight informs the ways Tavernier plays with the narrative conventions of genre. His films most obviously mobilize spectator expectations deriving from heritage cinema, but they also relate systematically to the thriller, the romance, and especially, as we shall see, to melodrama. This sort of artistic self-consciousness can produce humor (through calculated anachronisms, for example). It can be the occasion for deep reflection on the significance and impact of the past. It also frequently reveals the vision of a cinéaste engagé.

‘Engagement’ and emotion Each of Tavernier’s historical films participates, if sometimes only obliquely, in ongoing public debates. As Zants points out, for example, his first three features form a sort of trilogy, treating questions of justice and the law in three historical periods faced by characters (all played by Noiret) from differing social classes (Zants 1999). Social problems raised by his historical films include: the oppressive effects

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 118

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

tavernier’s historiography  119 of institutions such as schools, hospitals, and the Church; war, torture, and genocide; the death penalty; appeasement and resistance; the heritage of French imperialism; and patriarchal gender ideology, especially the nature of heroism and masculinity. While he is a committed artist-intellectual, however, Tavernier is also recognized as a ‘cinéaste de l’émotion’ (Bion 1984). For while the films opine, sometimes stridently, about individual and collective responsibility for social ills, equal attention is given to the inner torments of the characters – even the evil ones – and the emotional and moral texture of their experience. In fact, the two impulses – the emotional and the social – are inseparable: his historical fictions reconcile lyrical character portraits with the crusading spirit that is equally close to his heart, so that the particular ways he joins emotion and engagement help define Tavernier as a recognizable auteur. Also woven into the mix is a discernible religious, metaphysical preoccupation, and a preoccupation with divine as well as human justice informs all this chapter’s films. Tavernier’s protagonists are desperate to know what role God might play in the cataclysms of history, and each seeks solace in his own way. The clockmaker of L’Horloger de Saint-Paul, heavy-hearted with grief and doubt, takes refuge in his local church, the cathedral in Lyon’s old quarter. Bypassing the main altar and the chapels, he chooses instead to contemplate the church’s famous sixteenth-century astronomical clock. His meditation is inspired, however, neither by the Lyonnais bishops and martyrs depicted there, nor by the mysteries of the creation and of the heavens and earth that are hourly re-enacted. He seeks neither God the father nor God the clockmaker. Rather, as a modest father and clockmaker himself, he finds comfort in the timepiece itself and the mechanical regularity with which it measures the hours, minutes, and days. The real clock’s chime, adapted for the soundtrack by Philippe Sarde, infuses the entire film and serves as a leitmotif for Descombes’s spiritual evolution. In another key, the Regent Philippe d’Orléans permits himself to lament, ‘Dieux est méchant, Madame,’2 as he ruminates about the larger question of judgment after life. Joseph Bouvier, the serial killer in Le Juge et l’assassin, calls himself the ‘anarchiste de Dieu,’ and in fact he does seem to possess heightened insight into social injustices that 2 ‘God is wicked.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 119

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

120  bertrand tavernier more sane and law-abiding citizens can afford to ignore. Individuals, societies, and souls are similarly at stake in La Passion Béatrice, where François de Cortemart returns with his son from English captivity after the French defeat at Crécy. Disillusioned, bitter, and brutal, he expresses his despair through cruelty to his family. Faced as a child with his mother’s betrayal and his father’s death in battle, Cortemart curses God: ‘Mon Seigneur Dieu, je vous haïs.’3 His actions as an adult cause his daughter Béatrice to pronounce the identical verdict a generation later. For Lucien Cordier, policing the petty criminals of a remote West Africa village is so overwhelming a task that he takes upon himself the job of purging society of all its miscreants by either murdering them himself or inciting them to massacre each other. Seeing himself as an avenging angel, he consults the local curé for advice about whom to eradicate first. Eventually Cordier’s eccentricity blooms into full-scale existential insanity that is poignantly individual, but also social and even cosmic. The protagonists of the First World War films, too, are extraordinarily lucid about the historical forces that shape their outlook and frame their actions. For Dellaplane in La Vie et rien d’autre, rescuing the unknown dead and wounded from anonymity has the dimensions of a spiritual quest. Similarly, while returning from the Eastern Front after the armistice with his brigade, Captain Conan’s friend, Lieutenant Norbert (who narrates the 1984 source novel by Roger Vercel), attempts in many small ways to remedy the useless violence that has left countless dead and so many more just barely alive, mutilated in body and spirit. Even La Fille de d’Artagnan evinces Tavernier’s characteristic blend of social and spiritual preoccupations. In that film, the young Louis XIV, still under the tutelage of the wily Cardinal Mazarin, presides over the eclipse of the swashbuckling era of Les Trois Mousquetaires. D’Artagnan’s daughter, Eloïse, leaves the convent where she was raised resolved to bring her father out of retirement in order to avenge her murdered Mother Superior and save the young king from a multitude of nefarious and far-fetched conspiracies. The film being a comedy, Tavernier cheerfully parodies his own intellectual and social crusades. Who is better suited, after all, than d’Artagnan to embody the notion of dedication to a cause? The unity of this sub-corpus is further suggested by the near omnipresence of Philippe Noiret, the actor Tavernier claims as his 3 ‘My Lord God, I hate you.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 120

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

tavernier’s historiography  121 autobiographical alter ego. After playing the father in L’Horloger de Saint-Paul, Noiret incarnates the Regent, the Judge, the colonial Sheriff, and Captain Dellaplane. Among the pleasures of La Fille de d’Artagnan is that of seeing Noiret as the aging d’Artagnan, the hero we knew him to be all along. Lovable even in villainy, however (as in Coup de torchon), Noiret invites us to sympathize with these characters damaged by history and by their own limitations and even to identify with their destructive (and self-destructive) urges, as the spectator becomes implicated in the emotional, social, and moral dilemmas the films explore. The crusading spirit evident in Tavernier’s fiction films, combined with his warm affection for the characters who populate his stories, has earned him comparisons with socially engaged filmmakers such as Ken Loach and Jean Renoir. We might also situate him in a distinguished tradition of activist literature that includes figures such as Victor Hugo, Emile Zola, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Albert Camus. With Hugo, Tavernier shares an epic vision of historical periods marked by transformations in collective consciousness. It is not accidental that Hugo set his Ruy Blas in a period of declining monarchy. As he pointed out in his famous 1838 preface to that play, when codes break down and anomie sets in, men’s true mettle is revealed. Hugo explains that the tale may demand disjointed narrative and an unsettling mixture of genres: his hybrid ‘drama’ form results from an encounter of comedy and tragedy that is both esthetic and social. Not only does Hugo’s approach thus violate classical genre codes, he systematically seeks to address a heterogeneous public by appealing simultaneously to desires for strong emotions, instruction, and entertainment. Tavernier could not have put it better! Like Hugo, Tavernier has the ability to attract – and sometimes enrage – both popular and elite audiences. Just as he blends engagement and emotion, Tavernier also obeys the classical injunction that a work of art should both entertain and instruct (‘plaire et instruire’). Hugo observes in his preface to Ruy Blas that when institutions collapse and dynasties approach extinction, some nobles close their eyes and give themselves over to sensuous pleasures. His statement takes the Tavernier fan directly to the pre-Revolutionary court society of Que la fête commence. And when Hugo says that with Ruy Blas he wanted to give a sense that ‘la fin du monde approche,’4 one is compelled to 4 ‘the end of the world is near.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 121

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

122  bertrand tavernier recall the first (and repeated) spoken line of Coup de torchon: ‘J’ai cru que c’était la fin du monde.’5 With Zola, Tavernier shares an approach to creating characters. Zola is mentioned in Le Juge et l’assassin in connection with the Dreyfus affair, in which he intervened by publishing his famous open letter entitled ‘J’Accuse.’ The episode is often credited for launching the use of the term ‘intellectual’ as a noun, and also with the idea of mobilizing the prestige of public intellectuals in political and social causes. Tavernier’s anti-clericalism and his conception of the citizenartist evoke Zola, as does his desire to demystify power and expose injustices. In his Le Roman expérimental (1880), Zola explains how he con­­­ ceives of the ‘Naturalist’ novel as an application of scientific methods to literature. Basing his reflections on Claude Bernard’s treatises on experimental medicine, Zola illustrates in his novels the interactions of social forces with biology, particularly genetics. The novelist does not seek to prove a thesis, Zola explains, but rather to investigate varieties of human behavior and motivation within the framework of fictional narrative. Zola sought to invent familial, social, and historical situations in the way that scientists control certain variables, in order to observe characters as they negotiate given material conditions. The goal of this experiment is to better understand not facts of nature, but human truths. Although biology is not his point of departure, Tavernier’s agenda for his historical fictions is strikingly comparable. Moreover, the areas of his attention (criminality, personality flaws, family dysfunction, historical forces, and social processes), his indignation with the indifference and corruption of those in power, and his crusader’s outrage resemble Zola’s. Also like Zola, Tavernier is more concerned with human truths than with narrative realism. Historian Theodore Zeldin characterizes Tavernier’s approach in terms that call to mind Zola’s use of Claude Bernard. Without even a nod to Zola, Zeldin describes Tavernier’s methods as follows: Ses films sont un laboratoire. Au Collège de France, le Professeur Jean-Marie Lehn mène des expériences visant à découvrir comment les molécules qui, normalement, n’ont pas d’interaction peuvent être amenées à se combiner. […] A sa manière, Tavernier fait la même 5 ‘I thought it was the end of the world.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 122

12/10/2011 16:25

tavernier’s historiography  123 chose: étudiant les individus comme s’il s’agissait de molécules, il les comprime et les bouscule, les place dans toutes sortes de situations inconfortables, afin de découvrir comment eux aussi peuvent se combiner.

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

The goals, too, of Tavernier’s experimentation echo Zola’s. Zeldin continues: Presque chacun des personnages, si odieux soit-il à première vue, est caressé par la caméra jusqu’à ce qu’il émette une étincelle, une chaleur rédemptrice. [Tavernier] n’est pas content s’il ne nous amène pas à éprouver au moins un peu de sympathie pour eux ou, en tout cas, à percevoir la profondeur de leur mystère, à comprendre qu’on ne peut les juger. […] Les faiblesses du système d’éducation, du système politique, de tous les systèmes sont des cibles auxquelles il ne peut résister. (Zeldin in Douin 1997: 321–3)6

Laboratory indeed! How will a father behave, the filmmaker wonders, when he learns that his son has committed a murder? How will that father’s personality and emotions, his profession, his social situation, and his historical consciousness conspire to shape his behavior and his decisions? Or again: what personal desires and fears lay behind the actions of a historical figure like the Regent Philippe d’Orléans, so often mentioned in the history books, and yet so little understood? Or this: how might we expect an imaginary policeman, weak-willed but clever and intuitive, to carry out his duties in conditions of historical debacle? What goes on in the damaged mind of a serial killer who has been abandoned by all the people and institutions that might have salvaged him? Tavernier’s (and Zola’s) approach to observing both historical and invented characters in real historical situations also calls to mind JeanPaul Sartre. Sartre’s existentialism can be understood to explore the 6 ‘His films are his laboratory. At the Collège de France, Professor Jean-Marie Lehn conducts experiments to discover how molecules that normally would not interact can be made to combine. […] In his own way, Tavernier does the same: studying individuals as if they were molecules, he compresses and jostles them, placing them in all kinds of uncomfortable situations in order to discover how they combine. Almost every one of his characters, as odious as he might seem at first, is caressed by the camera until he emits a spark of redemptive warmth. [Tavernier] does not rest until he leads us to feel at least a little sympathy for them or, at least to perceive the depth of their mystery, to understand that we cannot judge them. […] The weaknesses of the educational system, of the political system, of all systems are targets he can’t resist.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 123

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

124  bertrand tavernier implications of Zola’s (and Tavernier’s) approach to creating fictional characters. He argues that individuals are free and responsible for their acts, which therefore define who they are. However, people are also inevitably shaped by situations not of their choosing, such as the institutions they encounter, their historical circumstances, their gender. At the same time, they are conscious beings responsible for choosing among available options. We might also compare Tavernier’s characters to the emblematic eponymous hero of Albert Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), who is faced with the ultimate defining choice: the possibility of suicide. There are several suicides in Tavernier’s corpus, and many of his most memorable characters – Philippe d’Orléans, Bouvier, Lucien Cordier, François de Cortemart, Captain Conan – are haunted by the question of why they should go on living. Each film traces out one possible response to the question, as its character grapples with the implacable logic of suicide. Tavernier’s mise en scène reinforces historical context by providing the visual ‘situation’ in which character unfolds. Influenced by American Westerns, he takes care to situate his characters in geo­­­ graphical contexts. Many commentators have remarked how his use of CinemaScope serves to locate even the most private scenes in vast and detailed landscapes. Sets and locations – a tree, an article of clothing or furniture, or a poster on a wall – all express the character’s subjectivity. The filmmaker often encourages his actors to furnish their own fictional or historical habitat. Some characters are planted in their place and time, and they go with the flow: the Judge, Cordier the sheriff, Conan the warrior. Others fight back to impose their own selfdefinition against the forces of history and circumstance: Dellaplane and Norbert, but also Bouvier (the assassin) and the Regent. Among this latter group can also be found some key women characters. Rose, the Judge’s abused mistress, mutely finds her way out of abuse and toward revolt; Anne, the practical and compassionate schoolteacher in Coup de torchon, is the film’s ‘moral compass’ or conscience; Emilie, the Regent’s favorite prostitute, retains her humanity despite her profession and the degradations she has experienced. Each of these women could say, with Irène Ladmiral, that she wants to live her life as she has dreamed it. Each is modern in her own way, and it is through these characters that Tavernier expresses a qualified optimism. At the same time, this spirit of researching human behavior in historical context often involves greater concern for the logic of

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 124

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

tavernier’s historiography  125 emotion (story) than for narrative coherence (plot). As a result, ­narrative disjointedness sometimes produces flagrant breaches of verisimilitude. Close scrutiny reveals the fault lines, and one can point to numerous instances of plots that falter, of unsettling discontinuities in genre and mood, and of problematic endings. These breaches explain the paradoxical assessments of some critics who call ­Tavernier the most gifted director of his generation while at the same time finding the films themselves seriously flawed. Rather than settle for value judgments such as these, however, it is instructive to examine instead the artistic and ethical choices that produced these effects. In the historical films, such choices can often be understood through the lens of a particular (and particularly complex) genre: melodrama.

A melodramatic imagination Melodrama is not a very ‘French’ genre. It runs counter to those classical virtues of sobriety, reason, and understatement that have been so central to French national self-perception since the seventeenth century. By contrast, melodrama is defined in terms of such features as hybrid or changing tones, and, in the words of Peter Brooks, ‘the indulgence of strong emotionalism’ and ‘inflated and extravagant expression.’ Such traits also distance it from ‘high ­literature,’ giving it lower status than the purer classical genres. As a result, the term ‘has a bad reputation and has usually been used pejoratively’ (1976: 11–12). Tavernier’s formative adolescent literary tastes ran in this very direction, toward this less respectable underside of the national consci­­ ousness: the Baroque, the Romantic, the popular, and, of course, to what Brooks calls ‘the contemporary form that most relayed and supplanted melodrama, the cinema’ (1976: 14). The young T ­ avernier appreciated ‘B’ movies, his voracious reading privileged the likes of Hugo, Zola, Dumas, and Michelet, and he remains somewhat of a swashbuckler as an adult. He is sometimes childlike in his expressions of indignation and enthusiasm; and his idealism, his sentimentality that runs to nostalgia, his predilection for hyperbole, and especially his sense of outrage are notorious. Even his use of music to structure his editing correlates with melodrama’s etymological roots in musical drama.

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 125

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

126  bertrand tavernier On a deeper level, what undoubtedly draws Tavernier to melo­­ drama is its capacity for connecting intimate, domestic, and emotional stories with broader social and political concerns. Thomas Elsaesser points out that melodrama enjoys greatest popularity in periods of social upheaval and ideological crisis, which it is able either to mask or to encode and represent in a palatable, popular form (1991: 68–9). Placing Tavernier’s work within the framework of melodrama can help us understand how he articulates engagement with emotion, fiction with history, and tradition with modernity. It can shed light on his preoccupation with death, the sacred, and the existence of God. It provides a new perspective on family struggles and relations between generations. Theories of melodrama can also elucidate formal features such as Tavernier’s use of musical motifs, his emphasis on mise en scène, and his breaches of narrative realism. Finally, melodrama combines auteur and genre cinema in ways that serve his goal of reaching both popular and art-cinema audiences. Given the complexity and range of its manifestations, it is not surprising that there exist many definitions of melodrama. Many analysts argue that it is not a genre at all, but can better be understood as a style, a mode, or a broad-spectrum worldview or sensibility. Ben Singer helpfully defines melodrama in terms of a cluster of features that appear in varying permutations. The traits he enumerates – pathos, overwrought emotion, moral polarization, non-classical narrative mechanics, and sensationalism – all prove useful for understanding Tavernier’s historical vision. In the early cinema that Singer studies, sensationalism is expressed through emphasis on extreme situations: roller coasters of fastpaced action, thrills, violence, sudden astonishing revelations, and ‘spectacles of physical peril.’ Audiences have enjoyed this kind of adrenaline-laced fiction from The Perils of Pauline (1914 serial) to today’s action-adventure flicks and video games, where improbable plots coexist with ostensible adherence to basic codes of realism. In Tavernier’s work, this tension plays itself out in hybrid genres: in Laissez-passer, for example, we are whisked with dizzying speed from the historical realism of a bombing raid to a semi-farcical seduction scene, and from a tender exchange between a couple and their child, to a seat-of-the-pants escapade that leaves vraisemblance in the dust. La Fille de d’Artagnan is more implausible still, with its breathtaking chase sequences, outrageous coincidences, and slapstick swordfights.

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 126

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

tavernier’s historiography  127 Advertising for Laissez-passer announced that ‘Rien n’est plus passionnant que des histoires vraies,’7 opening the film to charges that it had violated historical fact in various ways – by emphasizing heroic resistance while overlooking the collaborationist activities of certain movie stars and directors, for example – and the debate over the film’s realism or lack of it led to a vigorous polemic. T ­ avernier defended his choices, saying that he had not sought to give an overview of the cinema industry or of the Occupation, but instead to understand the personal struggles of specific individuals, to convey their emotional truth. The debate thus largely overlooked the kind of spectator responses the film strove to inspire. Viewing the film as melodrama might also have brought into focus a second of the genre’s core features: pathos, melodrama’s goal of engaging its audience’s emotions, particularly pity. Spectators empathize with characters threatened by ‘perils’ that might be physical (such as a bombing raid) or sentimental, as one finds in Hollywood melodramas and indeed in television soap operas. Tavernier’s characters also face moral or social injustices that heighten sentiments and intensify spectator ­nvolvement. That Tavernier’s spectators might be drawn into empathic identification by perceived injustices evinces a third defining feature of melodrama: moral polarization. Melodrama tends to make clearly legible distinctions between good and evil, a feature that is most palpable, of course, in early examples of the genre, where bad guys wearing black hats persecute innocent and vulnerable victim figures (often women). Tavernier’s characters are far more complex and his stories more ambiguous, but his moral and social sympathies are always clear, and his spectators are invited to make sophisticated moral distinctions. A film such as L’Horloger de Saint-Paul makes simplistic moral categorization impossible, because both the policeman and the young murderer have multifaceted motives, while the father’s feelings about the law evolve considerably. The values espoused are unequivocal, however: hypocrisy, dishonesty, and slavish rule following are denounced, while self-knowledge, nurturing, and rebellion are applauded. Some scholars have suggested that the moral clarity of melodrama emerged in response to the ambiguities of our modern condition. Brooks argues that melodrama is ‘an important and abiding mode 7 ‘nothing is more exciting than a true story.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 127

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

128  bertrand tavernier in the modern imagination’ (1976: xiii). He traces the origins of melodrama back through nineteenth-century novels by Balzac, Hugo, Henry James, and others, to the French stage in the era of the French Revolution, in the theatrical dramas of Pixéricourt and Beaumarchais, where things are never what they seem, and where identities and allegiances are disguised until a final truth is dramatically revealed. For Brooks, melodrama arose from a progressive loss of faith in absolute authority, and he characterizes modern life as ‘post-sacred.’ In traditional societies dominated by a sacred worldview, morality was legible on the surface of things. However, with the waning of time-honored patriarchal sources of authority – God, king, father – certainty becomes harder to sustain, as moral ambiguity becomes pervasive. For a post-sacred, secular world, melodramatic literature maps a terrain on which quests for the ‘moral occult’ may be undertaken. Tavernier’s characters, too, must delve below surface ambiguities to find moral anchors. Their drama often consists of knowing only a part of the story, so that many of the films involve untangling a mystery. Occasionally, the ‘plots’ are literal, for example those against the monarchy in La Fille de d’Artagnan and Que la fête commence. In La Vie et rien d’autre, the mystery to be solved is that of the identity of the dead and wounded around Verdun in 1919 (and beyond that, the mystery of war and human atrocities). Time and time again, his films document the disappearance of moral guidelines and the doubt and anxieties that ensue. Tavernier’s favored periods of historical upheaval and anomie make the concerns of melodrama particularly pertinent. For example, the conflict between Irène Ladmiral and her brother derives from their opposing responses to novelty, and Un dimanche à la campagne is structured by a series of binaries (Paris/countryside; automobile/train; academy/avant-garde, etc.) that pit the traditional against the modern. Gonzague possesses a security born of confidence that his values must prevail, whereas Irène’s outlook, like that of the acrobat in the painting she loves, is precarious, full of uncertainty, risk, and doubt. Her approach to life is melodramatic. His is not. It is clear where Tavernier’s sympathies lie, but he also takes care to show the angst that Irène’s awakening involves. Identifying Tavernier’s imagination as melodramatic can help us understand some of his most dearly held values and most recognizable traits: the cloud of mourning, melancholy, and nostalgia that pervades his films, his

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 128

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

tavernier’s historiography  129 obsession with intergenerational misunderstanding, his systematic doubt (and self-doubt), and also his moral outrage and crusading temperament. When God is absent, human agency must intervene to set things right. Tavernier’s vision thus encompasses both the social responsibility and the terrifying freedom of Sartrian Existentialism, along with the nostalgia for God-given moral meaning that underlies melodrama. Brooks and others have linked the melodramatic imagination to an inherently democratic perspective to be found both in its content and its accessibility. Originating in the era of the French Revolution, it represents an epistemological shift toward a kind of ‘bourgeois tragedy.’ As Brooks puts it: ‘Melodrama does not simply represent a “fall” from tragedy, but a response to the loss of the tragic vision. It comes into being in a world where the traditional imperatives of truth and ethics have been violently thrown into question’ (1976: 15). Descombes and Dellaplane, Conan and Bouvier, both the Judge and the assassin suffer this loss, as does Irène Ladmiral, while her father only vaguely senses it and her brother remains completely oblivious. In Un dimanche à la campagne, the film’s ‘voice-of-God’ voiceover, with its ironic distance, highlights these differences of vision. For Tavernier’s historical protagonists, while emotional and metaphysical, these struggles are also overtly political, so that the loss of moral clarity is a historical force against which the characters’ best efforts are doomed to fail. They are not even afforded the satisfaction of epic or tragic grandeur. Instead, their struggles are profane, daily, ordinary, and bourgeois, waged against their own inescapable limitations. All definitions of melodrama include reference to excess. Characters’ extreme emotional response to sensational or unsettling situations – what Brooks calls ‘heightened drama’ and Singer terms ‘overwrought emotion’ – constitutes a fourth defining feature of the melodramatic imagination. The ‘melo-’ in melodrama refers to the music (stereotypically, violin music) that signals and emblematizes moments of affective overload. Attached to Romanticism by its emphasis on individual feeling and introspection, melodrama heightens the emotions of both characters and spectators. Tavernier’s historical films manifest the variety of ways in which the melodramatic imagination expresses itself through narrative forms. The final defining feature Singer adduces is ‘non-classical narrative structure and mechanics.’ As its players seek moral intel-

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 129

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

130  bertrand tavernier ligibility amidst ambiguous post-sacred realities, melodrama often involves double registers: the surface and the ‘moral occult’ (Brooks 1976). These in turn correspond to disjunctions distinguishing clarity from doubt and physical reality (or realism) from the truth of feelings. In a similar vein, Zants suggests in her book on Tavernier (tellingly sub-titled Fractured Narrative and Bourgeois Values) that splintered realities yield fragmented stories. We might add that in Tavernier’s historical vision, fractured narratives and double registers are often embodied in mixed genres. Brooks describes the melodramatic plot as a process of extracting the true from the real. Because of its emphasis on truth over realism, melodrama exhibits ‘greater concern for vivid sensation than for narrative continuity’ (Brooks 1976: 47). By exploiting these disjunctions, melodrama gains the ‘power to expose important underlying dimensions of experience’ (Singer 2001: 51). In classical Hollywood melodrama, this double register is discernible in the ways that filmmakers such as Douglas Sirk portray the public sphere (socio-political issues such as class, gender and race) indirectly through domestic stories. In this way, melodrama flirts with allegory. 50 Ans de cinema américain testifies to Tavernier’s thorough familiarity with Hollywood melodramas of the 1940s and 1950s, and his own work demonstrates a melodramatic worldview in a multitude of ways. As a voracious reader of literature and fan of the literary stage (and a graduate of the French educational system), he is equally informed about the theatrical development of melodrama since the eighteenth century. Melodrama suits several of Tavernier’s seemingly incompatible goals: to use accessible and enjoyable narratives to reach a broad public while raising complex intellectual and moral questions; to engage with controversial social and political problems while inviting his spectators’ emotional investment in his storytelling; to build on his appreciation of Hollywood genre cinema while asserting the Frenchness of his perspective. He also likes to play at the edges of established esthetic forms without indulging in artsy formal abstruseness. In fact, Tavernier’s melodramatic imagination helps explain the perplexity of many critics faced with an oeuvre that is of unquestionably high quality, but that sometimes confounds their expectations about the well-crafted tale. Tavernier’s is a post-sacred, secular universe of shifting and uncertain values, where God’s absence forces characters to chart their own course. It is also post-tragic: of the cosmic certainties that make for

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 130

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

tavernier’s historiography  131 tragedy nothing but nostalgia remains. His characters lack tragic grandeur. Instead, their behavior and assumptions, their self-doubt and self-irony, are deeply bourgeois. The films are imbued with what we might call a twilight aura: old age, wistful reminiscence, a sense of loss or of having arrived too late, the melancholy musical compositions of Gabriel Fauré. Through the lens of melodrama, Tavernier’s nostalgia comes into focus not only as an emotion but also as a historical dimension and a gateway to social engagement.

Family melodramas: Caroline, Eloïse, Béatrice, and their fathers In Daddy nostalgie, Caroline (Jane Birkin) drops the film script she is writing – a melodrama! – and rushes to the bedside of her stricken father (Dirk Bogarde). During her visit to her parents’ Côte d’Azur town, she spends her time indulging her father’s yen for adventure and his furtive cravings for drink, squabbling with her pious and fearful mother (Odette Laure), and trying to forge a relationship with the Daddy who has somehow never before made time for her. A cigarette that bears a lipstick’s traces An airplane ticket to romantic places. […] Oh how the ghost of you clings! These foolish things remind me of you.

In keeping with melodrama, this musical motif – sung together by father and daughter and repeated almost subliminally on the soundtrack – highlights the film’s pervasive melancholy. The film’s title says it all: loss of the father is an iconic event in Tavernier’s fiction, and fear of the father’s death haunts many adult children. Daddy nostalgie probes that painful wound, where children are nostalgic long before the event. Caroline’s anxious attentiveness recalls Gonzague’s mournful demeanor, which emanates from his flash-forward to his father’s deathbed. Irène scoffs at the idea of her father’s decline, but she treats him with exaggerated tenderness and a touch of forced cheerfulness. Other daughters, too, in the midst of personal crisis, rush to their ailing father’s side. When Katherine Mortenhoe, the protagonist of La Mort en direct, discovers she is dying, she travels by bus to the small town where her parents live. In an almost identical scene, Laurence Cuers, the teacher in Une semaine de vacances who suffers a bout of depression and a crisis of confidence,

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 131

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

132  bertrand tavernier takes a bus from Paris to her parents’ home. In both instances, as in Daddy nostalgie, the film’s brisk forward pace abruptly slows when the daughter sits beside her invalid father and holds his hand (plates 6 and 7). Readily understood as family (or domestic) melodrama, Daddy Nostalgie throws into relief the melodramatic elements present in Tavernier’s other, less transparent, cases. The loss of certainty and of patriarchal authority – of the sacred, if you will – is literally embodied in the father. The pressure of a crisis (Daddy’s illness) brings longstanding subliminal conflict to the surface. When Daddy reminisces about his travels to Singapore and Hong Kong as a sales representative, Caroline’s sharp words reveal her pain and resentment of his chronic neglect. Flashbacks, sparingly used and always significant in Tavernier’s work, take Caroline back to her vaguely colonial childhood, when she was unable to capture her father’s attention at a party to show him a poem she had written. Now as an adult writer, she still suffers from his lack of interest. These scenes have a labyrinthine, dreamlike quality, as if she will seek him endlessly, and he will perpetually recede from reach. An almost identical incident occurs in Un dimanche à la campagne, when Mireille repeatedly tries to show her father her drawing, but she too gets rebuffed. While such vignettes may evoke Tavernier’s experiences as a fledgling artist seeking parental approval, the script for Daddy nostalgie was written by Colo O’Hagan Tavernier, who makes no bones about its barely fictionalized portrayal of her own family.8 Colo’s bilingual and multi-national background is captured in the casting: Bogarde – of Dutch ancestry, raised in England – is an affecting Daddy, whose angst about loss of potency and autonomy surpasses even his fear of dying. Jane Birkin’s accented French embodies the tension in Caroline between her pious and provincial French mother and her cosmopolitan English father. In an interview on the DVD, Jane and Colo reminisce about their own parents’ visits during the filming and about their final encounters with their fathers. Daddy nostalgie was Bogarde’s last film. René Tavernier, too, died in 1989, so that Bertrand lost his father during the making of Daddy nostalgie. 8 If further confirmation is needed, we can look to Dans la nuit aussi le ciel (2000), by Tiffany Tavernier, daughter of Colo and Bertrand. The novel is dedicated ‘A mes deux grands-pères, Daddy et René, l’un pour les voyages, l’autre pour la poésie.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 132

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

tavernier’s historiography  133 It is entirely understandable that these real and fictional grown children should express sadness about the passing of a cherished father. I would argue, though, that in addition, the films trace the contours of a more far-reaching and fantasmatic story: for children, especially for daughters, the father’s demise threatens the stability of the world. In traditional societies, daughters face the threat of a precipitous worsening of their circumstances when the man on whom they depend disappears from the picture. Even in so-called modern societies, where fathers are rarely all-powerful and daughters have jobs (Irène owns a shop; Caroline and Katherine Mortenhoe are writers; Laurence is a teacher) there persists an atavistic prescience of the chaos and anomie that loom should the father falter. The paternal contribution to the daughter’s wellbeing and identity is shown to be of overriding importance in all these films, where the mother is absent, or nearly invisible, or herself treated as an impediment to the daughter’s stability. Daddy nostalgie, like La Passion Béatrice, and La Fille de d’Artagnan, was created during a period of French cinema in which Ginette Vincendeau finds numerous examples of a strong ‘father-daughter master-narrative.’ She observes that this narrative template expresses itself either as literal fathers and daughters or symbolically in pairings of older men and young women, a pattern that extends across both popular and art cinema. She further notes that this obsession with the mature man/young woman pair is frequently accompanied by ‘exclusion of the mature woman,’ and although she finds these motifs in earlier periods, she detects in the period under study the presence of anxieties about female power. Variations on this pattern, if not full-fledged exceptions to it, can be found in the work of filmmakers – mostly women – who present the father–daughter duo from the daughter’s point of view. Vincendeau mentions Daddy nostalgie as an example of such a variant and she praises the film for probing, rather than taking as given, the mother’s exclusion (1991: 14–17). La Fille de d’Artagnan and La Passion Béatrice, too, privilege the daughter’s point of view, and in both films the mother’s absence is an important plot motivator. Both daughters seek the presence and crave the approval of a distant father. In addition, Tavernier’s version of this father–daughter master-narrative – which I am situating within the general contours of family melodrama – highlights the daughter’s relation to her father in its social and historical (in fact, feudal) frame-

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 133

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

134  bertrand tavernier work. The interest of these films – and of melodrama generally – is that beneath their surface plots, these films reveal the workings of the larger patriarchy. Configuring authority as paternal forges a direct and sometimes explicit genealogical chain leading directly from father to king, and thence to God, so that the domestic story always throws light on the semi-mythical foundations of the whole society. When one of the paternal figures in question is the Sun King, the familial, social, and cosmic implications of melodrama can be seen to converge.

The adventure variant, or the perils of Eloïse In La Fille de d’Artagnan, the mother has died twice. Eloïse d’Artagnan (Sophie Marceau) has lived sequestered in a convent since her mother’s death, and the film begins with the murder of her beloved Mother Superior by a marauding landholder pursuing a runaway slave. Seeking to avenge the murder – and also to escape into love, adventure, and adulthood – Eloïse disguises herself as a young man and heads for Paris, where she plans to enlist the help of her retired father (Noiret again). During her journey, she meets a bumbling poet (Nils Tavernier), who discovers her disguise, becomes smitten with her, and offers his aid. Following the tender reunion of father and daughter, d’Artagnan agrees to join Eloïse’s mission. They round up their Mousquetaire comrades and gallop around the countryside, lurching dizzily from one almost insurmountable obstacle to the next, followed by the hapless poet. Along the way, they discover that the Marquis de Crassac (Claude Rich, as a villain you love to hate) and La Dame en Rouge (Charlotte Kady) are plotting to kill the young Louis XIV before his coronation. Our heroes scale walls, fend off attacks, and fall down chimneys in their quest to circumvent the wily Cardinal Mazarin and alert the king about the conspiracy against him. The plot is foiled, Eloïse defeats the wicked Marquis in a spectacular hand-tohand swordfight, and the king is crowned. Eloïse has earned permission to marry her poet, and father and daughter gallop off side by side into the sunset. Following the disappointing box-office results of the more serious La Passion Béatrice, this film marks a radical change of pace: a lighthearted cloak-and-dagger romp that entertains while making few intellectual demands on its audience. In fact, a cautionary parable

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 134

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

tavernier’s historiography  135 warns us against over-interpreting the film’s implausible narrative. Before he is informed about the actual threat to the king, the paranoid Mazarin focuses his suspicions on two written documents intercepted by his spies. One, a verse sent to Eloïse by her poet-suitor, is so lamentably bad, deduces the Cardinal, that it surely must be a coded message about a plot against the king. The second, retrieved from a captured runaway slave, is stained with blood, so Mazarin (with our heroes following suit) figures that if it was worth dying for, it must be … a coded message about a plot against the king. (In fact, the paper is a convent inventory.) Elaborate attempts to decode these two documents contribute to the comic fun. Having thus discouraged fruitless attempts to find depth where there is none, the film instead invites the audience to indulge in the pleasures of exaggerated emotionalism and roller-coaster adventure. Conveniently for our purposes, the melodramatic components of this story are fully legible. Moral polarization takes the form of comically caricatured good and evil characters. Numerous stock set pieces include suspenseful chase scenes and narrow escapes from far-fetched perils: Eloïse is almost unmasked, almost skewered, barely escapes being sold into slavery and shipped off to Louisiana, and so on. Although the project was Tavernier’s, he did not initially assume the director’s role. The idea came from Riccardo Freda (b. 1909), an Italian director of popular historical adventure films of the 1940s and 1950s that included Il Figlio di d’Artagnan (1949), whose plot is almost identical to the new project: there, d’Artagnan’s imaginary son is raised in a convent, which he leaves in search of his father following the murder of the Father Superior. Father and son go on to accomplish exploits that include, in the words of André Bazin, ‘force coups d’épée, acrobaties et gallopades’ (Bazin 1951).9 Like Il Figlio, La Fille de d’Artagnan is loosely based on the d’Artagnan novels by Alexandre Dumas, with characters drawn from Les Trois Mousquetaires (1844) and its sequels: Vingt Ans Après (1845) and Le Vicomte de Bragelonne (1847). However, there is nary a trace in any of these sources of a daughter (or son, for that matter). Eloïse is entirely Freda’s brainchild. Tavernier, already an avid reader of Dumas, had met Freda back when he was an aspiring young filmmaker and had served as press attaché for Freda’s Roger la honte in 1966. He also wrote a script for Freda’s 9 ‘much clashing of swords, acrobatics, and galloping about.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 135

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

136  bertrand tavernier 1967 Coplan ouvre le feu à Mexico! More importantly, Freda had introduced Tavernier to Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost. Twenty years later, Tavernier returned the favor by inviting Freda to serve as historical advisor for La Passion Béatrice (Piazzo 1994: 18). Then in 1993, much as Eloïse sought out her father, Tavernier enticed his aged colleague out of retirement to direct one more film. Tavernier would stay on the sidelines as producer (Poindron 1994: 373). However, Tavernier’s gambit did not work out nearly as well as Eloïse’s. His modern methods and production standards proved incompatible with Freda’s habitual emphasis on very fast shoots. Freda was also unaccustomed to the care and nurturing of stars, which led to conflicts with Sophie Marceau. Offended and discouraged, Fréda finally abandoned the project, and Tavernier had no choice but to take over the direction alone. La Fille de d’Artagnan is Tavernier’s only comedy, yet it continues to demonstrate many of his characteristic preoccupations. His predilection for the French historical and literary heritage mixes well with the adventure film (including echoes of the Western), adding up to a specifically French alternative to Hollywood action genres. Like many of his other films, this one portrays a society soon to be eclipsed. We have already seen how L’Horloger de Saint-Paul and Un dimanche à la campagne explore characters’ varying ability (or inability) to adapt to the demands of modernity. Like these earlier films, La Fille de d’Artagnan pokes fun at nostalgia by evoking genre conventions: while d’Artagnan playfully laments his creaking joints, he doesn’t hesitate to jump on his horse and make a fool of himself. It’s never too late to try something new. Stop the self-pity and navel-gazing, the film seems to suggest; get off your duff and go roust a few villains. Or as d’Artagnan puts it, ‘Même rouillé, je reste une grande lame.’10 Along the way, he will reconcile himself to changing times and come to admire not only his daughter’s beauty, but also her courage and wit. La Fille de d’Artagnan has been one of Tavernier’s most successful films. Shown in small towns across France before its official release, by the end of its initial run, it had clocked almost a million and a half spectators. That it is a comedy undoubtedly explains the film’s popularity. So too might the fact that it is by a long shot Tavernier’s most conservative film. Its conclusion restores the moral certainty 10 ‘I may be rusty, but I’m still a great blade.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 136

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

tavernier’s historiography  137 of the traditional order, in both the domestic and the social realms. The final credits pay mock tribute to the hyperbolic theatricality both of the movie itself and of the monarchy: once the threat has been averted, the characters take a bow to the king that is also a tip of the hat to the cinema audience. The world is a stage, a play of surfaces and extravagant performances. Eloïse has proved herself a hero: she has avenged an injustice, solved a mystery, and rescued the king, clearing the way for the Royal Coronation. Her divergence from a traditional woman’s role is made palatable by comedy and by the lastminute resolution of her status as heroine, when she has successfully completed the transition from adolescent tomboy to adult femininity and receives her father’s permission to marry. Saving the realm has been all in a day’s work for the d’Artagnan family. At the same time that the exploit has been a rite of passage for the daughter, however, it is also a reminder of the father’s virile authority. Despite jabs at cinematic conventions, gender roles, changing family dynamics, and even divinely ordained monarchy, by the end, traditional values are reassuringly restored. That the father is Noiret – and a benevolently comic one at that – helps mitigate this backward-looking message, but it is nevertheless inescapable. The film’s conservative thrust is further driven home in the English-language version, where a change in its title – from d’Artagnan’s daughter to The Return of D’Artagnan – shifts the focus and social power back to the real protagonist. The Sun (King) is restored to the center of the universe. Father, king, and patriarchal order are once again in charge. Such is the traditional function of melodrama. Violins, please.

Melodrama as morality play: La Passion Béatrice La Passion Béatrice unfolds in the context of another historical paradigm shift: the Hundred Years War and the slow erosion of feudalism in the late medieval period, between the demise of chivalry and the Renaissance. Here again the film’s central theme – its obsession – is nostalgia for reassuring paternal authority, this time across several generations. This is no comedy, however, and although its meticulous historical research and authentic recreation of period mentalités earned the film accolades from historians such as Emmanuel Leroy-Ladurie and Jacques Le Goff (who compared Tavernier to Froissart!), the film was

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 137

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

138  bertrand tavernier both a critical and a box-office failure. At once intellectually rigorous and emotionally harrowing, the brutal story was filmed by Director of Photography Bruno de Keyzer (his third Tavernier collaboration) in the harsh winter cold of a castle decor, using only natural, period lighting. Tavernier deserves his reputation for creating landscapes that express character, and here the film’s decor comes to symbolize its human inhabitants. Archaic motifs such as witchcraft and magical objects serve to intensify a trancelike level of horror, in turn intensified by an eerie score that blends Ron Carter’s and Yves Chabert’s otherworldly jazz bass and Cheikh Tidione Fall’s percussion with sacred music by Lili Boulanger and troubadour songs by Guillaume de Machaut. In a world that pre-dates psychology, Tavernier succeeds in drawing close to primeval myth or nightmare. What is terrifying here is that absolute paternal power goes pletely unchecked. A feudal landholding knight, François de com­­­­­ Cortemart (Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu) suffered the 1346 French defeat at Crécy and has spent several years in English captivity. He returns home with his son Arnaud (Nils Tavernier), licking wounds of body and spirit. He proceeds to re-enact his humiliation by inflicting it sadistically on others. To entertain guests assembled to feast the warriors’ return, he viciously narrates Arnaud’s battlefield cowardice, and later forces the young man to dress as a girl and run before the hounds in a grotesque parody of the hunt. He rapes a peasant woman who has just given birth and threatens to kill her. He and his companions roam the countryside, pillaging and burning villages on whim. The cosmic, suicidal overtones of his rampage become most apparent when he sets out to break his spirited daughter, Béatrice (Julie Delpy), who had managed his estate during his absence. Le Goff summarizes de Cortemart’s trajectory as follows: De ses désespoirs est née la hantise de se venger d’un Dieu qu’il hait, de se venger de lui-même qui ne se supporte plus. Pour atteindre Dieu, pour s’atteindre lui-même, il va s’obstiner à humilier, à souiller la pureté même, la meilleure part de lui-même, la chair de sa chair, sa fille Béatrice. (Le Goff 1987)11

11 ‘His despair fuels his obsession with vengeance against a God he hates, vengeance against himself, whom he can no longer stand. To get back at God and himself, he is bent on humiliating and soiling purity itself, the best part of himself, flesh of his flesh, his daughter Béatrice.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 138

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

tavernier’s historiography  139 François destroys everything that is precious to Béatrice, beginning with her beloved brother. Then he rapes her and plans to marry her himself, despite her desperate protests. When she consults a sorceress to rid her of her oppressor, he invites her to kill him. When she finally does, he has succeeded in obliterating not only her life, but also her soul, along with his own. This film more than any of Tavernier’s others narrates the loss of the sacred that Peter Brooks finds at the heart of the melodramatic imagination. The film opens on a primal scene: the blessing of the troops, as François’s own father departs for a crusade, entrusting his young son with his dagger and the task of protecting his mother. Running back to the castle, exulting at his adult responsibility, the boy finds his mother in bed with a lover, whom he stabs to death. This establishes his ­permanent hatred of and ascendancy over her. His mother’s betrayal and his father’s death in battle lead the boy to curse God: ‘Mon Seigneur Dieu, je vous hais.’ Jumping forward in time, the adult François himself returns from Crécy psychically numbed and enraged, worse than dead. Suffering from what today we might call post-traumatic stress disorder and suicidal depression, François uses his despair as an excuse for his atrocities. Only Béatrice understands that he is unhappy, but his treatment of her will lead her to curse God in her turn. Because de Cortemart’s underlying impulse is suicidal, his brutal­ity is exemplary, even mythical. His extreme and unmitigated cruelties highlight the film’s pervasive allegorical dimension, so that François, shown most often in shadow, comes to represent evil incarnate, especi­­ally in contrast to Béatrice’s virtue and purity, enhanced by back-lighting and the halo of her shining hair. As the story unfolds, the viewer can trace connections between the crumbling of royal and feudal authority in military defeat, followed by the loss of paternal power and protection in de Cortemart’s meltdown, and finally the absence of divine intervention that might redress imbalance and correct egregious injustice. Cortemart’s atrocities can be understood as his desperate attempt to provoke God into demonstrating His existence; but pillage, rape, murder, and blasphemy are met only with cosmic silence. All this adds up to a wholesale collapse of the entire feudal hierarchy of patriarchal power, resulting in predictable chaos and anomie. In short, the film’s post-apocalyptic world no longer offers readable

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 139

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

140  bertrand tavernier signs of God’s designs. Flowing from the characters’ powerlessness to control the cataclysmic forces that buffet them, and underlying the collapse of their social order, there is one overriding melodramatic force that dominates and overwhelms the film: the disappearance of moral clarity. God’s plan is no longer visible in the physical world. Access to the sacred has been irrevocably lost, and the ‘moral occult’ has taken its place in the dawn of a ‘post-sacred’ era (Brooks 1976). The world no longer speaks with God’s voice; it is no longer morally legible. It has become mute. In a chapter entitled ‘The Text of Muteness,’ Brooks reminds us that melodrama is about the expression of moral and emotional feeling. He points out that in extreme situations and climactic moments, melodramatic theater tends to revert to non-verbal modes of representation. This harks back to the silent, expressionist origins of the genre in popular entertainments such as pantomime, ballet, and puppetry. It is also, of course, well suited to the visual nature of theater (and film too, beginning with silent cinema, le muet). Within such non-verbal forms, exaggerated gestures, frozen tableaux vivants, and the iconic figure of the mute recur repeatedly. It is as if linguistic codes were inadequate, and only non-verbal, indexical signs were immediate (unmediated) enough to express the story’s emotional and psychological impasse. When the drama reaches crises so extreme they might otherwise seem incoherent or chaotic, overtly physical modes of paralinguistic communication offer ‘the opportunity to see meanings represented, emotions and moral states rendered in clear visible signs.’ The result is ‘something like the mythical primal language, a language of presence, purity, immediacy’ (Brooks 1976: 62, 66). The landscape of La Passion Béatrice is a vast expanse that has lost its capacity to convey meaning. The film narrates the eclipse of the world’s spiritual and social legibility. With God’s plan no longer clearly legible, Béatrice resorts to an intuitive animism that helps her interpret occult signs and read the mediated languages of objects. Some of the most arresting images in Tavernier’s film depict her frenetic attempts to find God’s messages in the physical world. Praying for the return of her father and brother, she talks to her special tree, hangs objects on its branches, and performs a ritual dance around it. Birds, too, reappear with weighty significance, and Béatrice listens attentively to them, perhaps because like prayers, they can fly into

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 140

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

tavernier’s historiography  141 the heavens. She coddles and talks to her pet magpie, and when her father kills the bird, she understands this as an announcement of his deadly intentions. More noteworthy still is one minor character, a small mute boy named Jehan, who is irrelevant to the plot but deeply implicated in the film’s melodramatic tenor. Jehan follows Béatrice like a shadow, listens to her every word, buttons her gown, brushes her hair, scampers to execute her commands. In return, she pampers, protects, and cuddles him like an adored pet. ‘The mute role is remarkably prevalent in melodrama,’ Brooks writes, and he is tempted to speculate that different kinds of drama have their corresponding sense deprivations: for tragedy, blindness, since tragedy is about insight and illumination; for comedy, deafness, since comedy is concerned with problems in communication, misunderstandings and their consequences; and for melodrama, muteness, since melodrama is about expression (Brooks 1976: 57). In this ‘dramaturgy of muteness,’ Jehan fulfills Béatrice’s need to believe that the physical world does indeed communicate and can be clearly read, if not linguistically, then emotionally and morally. After she is raped, Béatrice feels defiled and sends Jehan away. He is both the physical manifestation of her innocence and the objective correlate of her conscience. In a sense, he represents God’s eyes, so that she can no longer bear to have him around. With this character, Tavernier is able to fuse his intuitive understanding of medieval belief systems with a dramaturgy of emotion and with a surprisingly modern (while not anachronistic) representation of psychic processes. Still more explicit evidence of the moral occult can be found in the primitive wooden statue of the Virgin Mary and child. Several times, Béatrice implores the statue to intercede on her behalf. But the statue looks on, impassive, as Béatrice is raped. Finally, after fatally stabbing her father at his behest, she once again distraughtly entreats the statue, smearing its face with her bloody hands. In this final shot in an unremittingly grim movie, the statue remains mute (plate 8). The loss of the sacred determines the fate of these characters, transforms their era, and shapes the genre of their story. History is God’s silence. Like others of Tavernier’s films, La Passion Béatrice thus also recounts the fading of certainties and the painful birth of the modern.

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 141

12/10/2011 16:25

142  bertrand tavernier

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Detour on gender and genre Thus far in this chapter, we have seen the restoration of authority and social stability in La Fille de d’Artagnan and its meltdown in La Passion Béatrice. In one case, our heroes foil a plot, assure the potency of the monarch(y), and restore the Sun (King) to his orbit. In the other, François de Cortemart embodies the feudal chivalric class, and his suicide marks its demise. In both films, domestic melodrama functions as a microcosm of a larger social landscape. La Fille de d’Artagnan is unusual in Tavernier’s oeuvre in that it ends with unambiguous, definitive narrative closure: the fathers regain control, and patriarchal power is secured. Many of his other films are more searching and open-ended, sometimes to the point of incoherence. Nevertheless, the focus on paternal authority persists, albeit less overtly. The rest of this chapter will examine the five remaining historical melodramas in light of their more subtle critiques of patriarchal masculinity. Four of these portraits are incarnated by Philippe Noiret. Endings remain crucial: although Tavernier’s endings are sometimes flawed, they always reveal the underlying ideological and emotional stakes. As if he is too indignant to be coherent, these endings are where he drives home his social agenda. This is a good place to ask: what is the status of women in Tavernier’s overall oeuvre? Among its other social commentaries, Béatrice displays an array of options open to women under medieval feudalism. A peasant woman gives birth, smothers her daughter in the snow, and immediately suffers rape. Her abductor (Cortemart) is not concerned that she has killed her daughter, because, as he explains, ‘Les garces n’ont pas d’âme.’12 Béatrice watches as other women resort to sorcery, become hermits, are burned at the stake. Her widowed grandmother endures punishment in perpetuity at the hands of her self-righteous son. Her brother suffers the worst humiliation imaginable: to be dressed as a girl. The film surveys a systematic inventory of female powerlessness. We might note too that mothers are given short shrift. In the films already discussed, they are invariably elsewhere or out of commission: deceased (L’Horloger de Saint-Paul, Un dimanche à la campagne, La Fille de d’Artagnan), divorced, separated, or otherwise at a distance (Autour de minuit, Des enfant gâtés), absent without explanation (Lyon, 12 ‘Bitches have no soul.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 142

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

tavernier’s historiography  143 le regard intérieur), or present but neutralized or invalidated in some way (Daddy nostalgie, Une semaine de vacances, La Passion Béatrice). In the films still to be discussed, mothers are no less marginalized. This does not mean, however, that there are no female characters, or that women lack importance. In fact, Tavernier’s work offers extraordinarily sympathetic and fully drawn women characters, even very minor ones. Many critics have observed that these women often function as a moral compass or anchor. Michel Descombes consults his former housekeeper, Madeleine, for solace and advice. Mercédès gives quiet if sometimes ironic support to the tumultuous Ladmiral family. Francis Borier’s young daughter, Bérangère, stays the course when her father and Dale Turner lose their bearings. Both Béatrice and Eloïse have sensible heads on their shoulders. This is a pervasive pattern that we will encounter again. Although Béatrice and Eloïse are eponymous heroines and Daddy nostalgie begins and ends with Caroline, and although these women’s stories are represented from their own point of view, it is equally incontrovertible that the most compelling character in every one of Tavernier’s fictional films is a male authority figure, most often a father. And as we have seen in the feudal or monarchic system in Béatrice and La Fille de d’Artagnan, a direct genealogy links father to king and God. This means that beyond the particular family drama recounted, the films engage at a more allegorical level with the entire patriarchal system of representation. Do his sympathetic treatment of women characters and his scathing critiques of patriarchal authority mean Tavernier can be called a feminist? I would say yes, but not because of his women characters. I would argue instead that Tavernier’s contribution to the study of gender lies in his portraits of men. Tavernier’s historical films – in fact almost all his fictional films and his documentaries too – can be understood as a history of masculinity in crisis. Like Zola, Tavernier puts fictional characters into historical situations, outlines the forces that shape them, and imagines how they will manage the imperatives of their circumstances. Very often, the circumstances Tavernier chooses involve the particular dilemmas of men: in the family, in society, before God. Paternal and patriarchal authority in crisis is also what ties these films most tightly to melodrama. As we have seen, it is the loss of this anchoring authority – disappearance of security, of the sacred –

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 143

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

144  bertrand tavernier that unleashes the chaotic hyperbole, overwrought emotion, frenetic polarization of good and evil, and spectacles of endangered innocence in a world out of kilter and off its axis. These excesses have stereotypically been associated with female characters and viewers, while realism is commonly considered more masculine. But what happens when these generic features are deployed to portray men? When, as in Tavernier’s cinema, melodrama serves as a vehicle for explorations of masculinity, we might have recourse, with Christine Gledhill and others, to a notion of ‘male melodrama’ (Mercer and Shingler 2004). Such a designation might help us understand why Tavernier’s cinema sometimes provokes critical malaise: his work bridges conceptual gaps that elsewhere reassuringly distinguish popular from art cinema, emotion from political engagement, and melodrama – often nicknamed the ‘women’s picture’ or ‘the weepies’ – from supposedly masculine genres such as documentary and the Western. Although in its 1950s Hollywood manifestations, melodrama often took the conservative turn we have found in La Fille de d’Artagnan, with ‘father knows best’13 as an insistent underlying message, the capacious generic template of melodrama also accommodates more subversive possibilities. The work of Douglas Sirk is often invoked in discussions of melodrama’s disruptive potential. Films such as All That Heaven Allows (1955) and Written on the Wind (1956) are widely understood to reveal fault lines of race, class, age, and gender in American life. In 50 Ans de cinéma américain, Tavernier takes note of Sirk’s political uses of melodrama. He finds that Sirk’s early career was already marked by cette prédilection pour les intrigues sentimentales, les passions ­excessives qui mettent à nu certains rites, certains rapports sociaux, pour les portraits de femmes marquées ou meurtries, pour une ironie [… ] vis-à-vis des institutions, des hierarchies sociales, de la justice, de la police.14

He praises There’s Always Tomorrow for its character’s ability to expose petty-minded hypocrisy (Tavernier 1995: 882–3). As many scholars have suggested, even the excesses of melodramatic form are 13 Father Knows Best was the title of an American radio and then television series that ran from 1949 to the early 1960s. 14 ‘that predilection for sentimental plots and extreme passions that expose social rituals, for portraits of abused women, for an ironic stance toward institutions, social hierarchies, the justice system, and the police.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 144

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

tavernier’s historiography  145 sometimes insufficient to contain the contradictions of the gender system. Repression of certain truths is required in order to maintain narrative coherence and achieve the closure of a legible ending. Sirk sometimes concludes abruptly with tacked-on happy endings that seem false and fail to hide deeper troubles. What results is an ‘occult’ that is both moral and social, suggesting that one way to locate a film’s social critique is to examine points where the coherence of character or narrative breaks down. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith proposes a psychoanalytic model for understanding the extreme emotions and narrative disruptions of melodrama. He identifies junctures in the story when an underlying truth erupts, despite the surface narrative’s efforts to contain it. He describes such breakthrough moments in terms of ‘conversion hysteria.’ A story’s ‘hysterical moment’ occurs when occult or repressed material succeeds, if only momentarily, in rising to the surface. Unsurprisingly, this ‘return of the repressed’ often dislocates realism and plot continuity. Eighteenth-century stage melodramas often featured implausibly convoluted plots, deus ex machina, mixed genres, and extravagant departures from cause and effect (Brooks 1976: 46). Whether post-sacred or post-Freudian (or both), the characters of melodrama inhabit carefully contained and claustrophobic lives in which unacceptable or occult realities threaten to burst through and disturb the smooth progress of their story. Nowell-Smith explains it this way: The undischarged emotion which cannot be accommodated within the action, subordinated as it is to the demands of family/lineage/ inheritance, is traditionally expressed in the music and, in the case of film, in certain elements of the mise-en-scène. That is to say, music and mise-en-scène do not just heighten the emotionality of an element of the action: to some extent they substitute for it. The mechanism here is strikingly similar to that of the psychopathology of hysteria. In hysteria (and specifically in what Freud has designated as ‘conversion hysteria’) the energy attached to an idea that has been repressed returns converted into a bodily symptom. (Nowell-Smith 1991: 272)

While such moments may involve symptomatic outbursts on the part of a character within the story, breaches can also take the form of lapses in the narrative itself. This notion helps account for the disjointed and hybrid quality of Tavernier’s filmic texts.

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 145

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

146  bertrand tavernier Examples of both types occur in the pair of films we will consider next. In particular, both Que la fête commence and Le Juge et l’assassin conclude on a scene where the dramatic tension has become so climactic that the action finally freezes. This is a typically melodramatic device for which Brooks uses the term ‘tableau.’ Harking back to the silent (pantomime) origins of melodrama and related to the figures of muteness we have already encountered, the dramatic tableau is a way of rendering the inexpressible in visual form. Like the hysterical moment, the tableau is a deflected expression of ‘extreme moral and emotional conditions’ (Brooks 1976: 56). Both devices are the consequence – and thus become the deflected expression – of unmanageable emotions or knowledge that overflows the confines of realistic, verbal dramatic form. In Tavernier’s hands, hysterical moments and tableaux contribute to character portrait (they are ‘symptoms’) while simultaneously serving as expressions of historical crisis. Unsurprisingly, these moments are accompanied by conspicuous music, signaling excess emotion that cannot be contained within words and images. In other words, whether it is God’s silence or a kind of masked and malevolent social logic that produces the disorder, it is as if the contradictions were such that neither the character nor the aesthetic form can satisfactorily resolve them. This is exactly what happens in Que la fête commence and Le Juge et l’assassin. In both cases, the contradictions of a specific historical social order prove too much for the characters and also for the narrative itself to bear. Both characters and story then suffer from symptoms that can be considered ‘hysterical.’ We could say that the Regent and the Judge have their thumb in the dike in a desperate attempt to hold back hidden truths that might otherwise overflow and overwhelm them. And since they are actors on a national political stage, their repressed is also that of their era. We should note that these two films, released in 1975 and 1976, along with L’Horloger de Saint-Paul of 1974, prolong the spirit of May 1968 by challenging the authority of established patriarchal institutions such as the church, the law, and the traditional family. All three films were made in the same intellectual climate that produced Michel Foucault’s lectures at the Collège de France unmasking the workings of power. All three showcase character portraits of paternal figures plagued by doubt and uncomfortable with their own authority. Naomi Greene credits Tavernier with creating ‘counterportraits’ of official

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 146

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

tavernier’s historiography  147 history, and she believes that ‘if [his] historical films reread the past, they also mirror […] the changing cultural and political landscape of the present’ (1999: 99) Greene’s description of Que la Fête commence actually applies to many of Tavernier’s historical films. She says that ‘Tavernier drew upon eclectic sources: weaving together disparate strands of inspiration, he created a film that is at once a swashbuckling adventure tale, an Annales-inspired portrait of earlier mentalités, and a New Left or gauchiste meditation on the nature and reach of power’ (Greene 1999: 102). Béatrice and François de Cortemart are all-or-nothing True Believers who doggedly follow their destiny to its inevitable conclusion. Their faith in God’s judgment remains intact and pure, giving their catastrophe a cosmic dimension. The protagonists of Que la fête commence and Le Juge et l’assassin, on the other hand, live in a secular world: they take for granted that there is no Grand Design and resign themselves to a quotidian world of ambiguity, duplicity, paradox, and unpredictability. Their stories are ironic, and their perspective is correspondingly more modern. The Regent and the Judge are defined by their personal limitations. They are plagued by suspicion and selfdoubt. Their lack of grandeur and mythical scope means that they predictably fail to be tragic. At the same time, their spiritual dilemmas are too serious and they are too noble to be comic. What they are instead is deeply bourgeois. In other words, they are the very stuff of melodrama, characterized by Brooks and others as ‘bourgeois tragedy.’

History as bourgeois tragedy: Que la fête commence and Le Juge et l’assassin Que la Fête commence transports us once again to the theatrical world of the ancien régime, where much is hidden by appearances – and official history. The year is 1719, in the midst of another transition crisis: Louis XIV had died four years before, leaving his now nineyear-old great grandson to inherit the throne. Philippe d’Orléans, the deceased king’s nephew, will serve as Regent from 1718–23. The royal coffers have already been strained to the limit by the Sun King’s wars and will be further depleted by war with Spain. John Law, appointed by the Regent to the post of Controller General of Finances, has created an innovative banking system, introduced the use of paper

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 147

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

148  bertrand tavernier money, and encouraged speculation in the newly acquired territory of Louisiana through sale of shares in his Mississippi Company. His speculations will run disastrously aground the following year. Ineffectual conspiracies at court and in the provinces aim to oust the Regent and replace him with Philippe V of Spain, another descendant of Louis XIV. The film opens just after the death of the Regent’s favorite daughter, the Duchesse de Berry, who was known for her debauchery and possibly her insanity. Our first view of the Regent announces the film’s main project, which is to contrast the character’s public, historical persona with his lesser-known domestic and private sphere. We first glimpse the Regent in a mirror, in a long tracking shot that begins by caressing the surface spectacle of a royal household and ends with an image of a sleeping man from a vantage point at the foot of his bed. The shot thus also articulates the domain of melodrama, where public social conflicts are mapped onto the private realm. Throughout the film, we follow the private dilemmas behind a familiar but little understood public figure. Tellingly, although official portraits of the Regent show him regally posed in majestic costume complete with flowing wig, the Regent of Que la fête commence rarely wears a wig at all, uses a token one for official functions, and only dons the familiar elaborate wig at his extravagant orgies, during which he is clearly engaging in deliberately outlandish self-parody. One of the film’s three lead actors, Jean Rochefort, calls Que la fête commence a ‘chronique poético-réaliste’ (DVD interview), and in fact the film draws from both historiography of a sort (the gossipy memoirs of Louis de Rouvray, duc de Saint-Simon, the Regent’s closest friend) and the romance novel (Alexandre Dumas’s Une fille du régent, published over a century later, in 1845). In his novel, Dumas demonstrates the Regent’s facility with sarcastic repartee, much of which is adapted for the film. Saint-Simon portrays the Regent as an intelligent and charming man, approachable and unpretentious, eloquent and compassionate. The Tavernier-Noiret portrait is equally sympathetic, while highlighting the contradictions posed by the Regent’s faults of deed and character. Many of the film’s anecdotes are based on SaintSimon, from the Regent’s political machinations, his orgies, and the chocolate he drank during his public meetings, to the larger-than-life ambitions of his minister, the Abbé Dubois, and the Abbé’s habit of expressing his exuberance by jumping on the furniture.

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 148

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

tavernier’s historiography  149 Although the Regent is its protagonist, Que la fête commence spot­­ lights the interplay of three character portraits, played with brio by three first-rate actors: the Regent himself, known as the first ‘bourgeois’ monarch (Noiret); his minister, the Abbé Dubois, an atheist cleric with outsized political aspirations (Rochefort); and a petty Breton nobleman and would-be revolutionary, the Marquis de Pontcallec (Jean-Pierre Marielle). The Abbé conspires with the Protestant English, who seek to strengthen the monarchy against its detractors, while Pontcallec and his quixotic band of rebels seek the help of Spain. The Breton rebellion plays right into the Abbé’s plans: Pontcallec’s public execution will be just the flamboyant public display of power he needs to attract English support. The fly in his ointment is the Regent, who has a conscience: he is horrified by violence and refuses to execute the hapless Pontcallec just to satisfy his minister’s ambitions. Dubois holds ascendancy over the weak-willed Regent, however, and gets his way. The Marquis was already legendary before Tavernier and Aurenche got a crack at him. The historical Pontcallec, affronted by the Regent’s attempts to tax the Bretons to finance his war with Spain, fomented a rebellion of impoverished noblemen and saw himself as the father of an independent aristocratic Breton Republic. We first see him on the cliffs, a flamboyant manipulator of those who are even more naïve and deluded than he. His adventures and mishaps evoke classic melodrama: arrested by the Abbé’s henchmen, he narrowly escapes deportation to Louisiana, only to be rescued by the same Abbé in order to be held up as a revolutionary threat. His capture and execution inspired a song, ‘Morv Pontkalleg’ (‘The Death of Pontcallec’), which features prominently toward the film’s end. For 1974 filmgoers, the story no doubt resonated with ongoing regional independence movements such as Breton separatism, which also inspired a revival of the ballad by Breton singer-activists like Alan Stivell and the group Tri Yann. Perhaps inspired by the same echoes from past to present, historian Pierre de Condamine published an account of the incident in which he sees the 1719–20 rebellion as a foreshadowing of the Revolution of 1789. The Abbé Dubois, a second principal character and also a historical figure, was tutor and confidant to the young Duke Philippe and had saved his life in battle against the Austrians at Neerwinden. An able diplomat, Dubois is nevertheless primarily remembered for his

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 149

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

150  bertrand tavernier vices. This is largely thanks to Saint-Simon, who detested him, felt superior to him, and was jealous of his hold over the Regent. In the film, Dubois encourages the Regent’s dissolute lifestyle in the hopes of furthering his own ambition to become bishop, archibishop, and eventually – who knows? – even pope. An atheist, he nevertheless consents reluctantly (and swearing all the while) to learn to recite the mass. The Regent agrees under pressure to name him archbishop but will regret the move to the end of his life. As played by Rochefort, the character is devious, manic, and demented, but at the same time a deliciously diabolical villain. All this would add up to comedy or even farce if it were not for Philippe d’Orléans himself. A jovial but somewhat timid man, valiant in battle but averse to violence, forward-looking and insightful but weak and unable to follow through on his vision, he gave himself over to the worst debaucheries, without the slightest pretense of discretion. As painted by Tavernier/Noiret and by historians, he resembles François de Cortemart in some respects, in that his sardonic denials of God’s existence and his disdain for law of any kind sound like a plea to be proven wrong by some Divine manifestation. The film shows how his immoral behavior masks profound spiritual anguish. ‘Dieu est méchant, Madame,’ he declares to his shocked wife after the death of their daughter. About another daughter’s decision to become a nun, he remarks sadly: ‘Ma fille se prétend l’épouse de Jésus-Christ, autant dire que je ne suis pas bien avec mon gendre.’15 The Regent even dabbled in diabolism, a historical detail evoked when his favorite prostitute points out that his attempts to raise the Devil suggest a belief in God. His quest for the ‘moral occult,’ his longing for a spiritually legible material world is just as desperate as Cortemart’s, but his era is less attuned to such questions. He agonizes over, but is unable to prevent either Dubois’s accession to his coveted cardinalship, or the execution of Pontcallec. In this context, his self-abusive orgies begin to look suicidal, which according to Saint-Simon was also the opinion of the Royal Physician (Lewis 1961: 200). In short, the Regent’s sensibility made him ill suited to his place in history. Saint-Simon sees him as a kind, generous, and accomplished man with a weak will, easily manipulated by his cynical tutor-minister 15 ‘My daughter claims to be the bride of Jesus Christ, which means I don’t get along with my son-in-law.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 150

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

tavernier’s historiography  151 (Saint-Simon 1926: vol. 2, 190–7). A personality Tavernier considers ‘prodigieusement moderne,’ as we have seen, he sensed what needed to be done in order for France to move forward. He proved himself an able soldier, supported the arts and was an accomplished composer whose music, adapted by Antoine Duhamel, graces the film; he reformed the prisons and liberated galley slaves; he moved the court from Versailles back to Paris, where he showed genuine concern for the tribulations of common people. But he was too weak to effectively follow through, drowning his anxieties instead in libertinage and debauchery. As a consequence, he is primarily remembered for his euphemistically evoked ‘petits soupers’ – his ‘little parties’ – a reputation he foresees and impotently laments. The Regent was clearly a man of contradictory drives. It is therefore useful to consider the film’s three male protagonists as dimensions of a single complex portrait of an age: it is as if the Regent is a version of the other two, or they are distorted projections of his inner contradictions. More or less caricatures when viewed in isolation, Dubois and Pontcallec function as the Regent’s alter egos, his doppelgangers, in a configuration that is no less reminiscent of fairy tale for being historical.16 Dubois incarnates Philippe’s libertine, ambitious side, while Pontcallec reflects his visionary idealism. Both suggest his talents and his unbalanced, excessive, and ultimately suicidal tendencies. Tavernier himself describes the three characters as three complementary political positions: reformism (the Regent), cynicism (Dubois), and idealism (Pontcallec) (Engelbert 1989: 112). All this helps explain Saint-Simon’s inability to draw a clear line that would separate the Regent from his tutor, Dubois, and he ends up describing them together, in a single portrait. That Philippe d’Orléans is so fundamentally out of sync with his era, and so unable to help it move forward, is undoubtedly what Tavernier finds appealing. In a biography of the Regent, W. H. Lewis portrays a thoughtful and visionary man who saw both sides of any question, who hated hypocrisy, who rewarded talent and daring rather 16 According to Saint-Simon, the Regent’s mother explained her son’s paradoxical nature by recounting the following story: shortly after Philippe’s birth, a band of fairies paid her a visit, and each bestowed a special talent on the newborn. At the end of the party, there arrived an old fairy that everyone had forgotten. Vexed by her exclusion, she took her revenge by giving the baby an inability to use any of the other gifts he had received (Saint-Simon 1926: Vol. 2, 195-6).

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 151

12/10/2011 16:25

152  bertrand tavernier

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

than flattery, who was sympathetic to the grievances of the people, and who might have done great things, had not a vicious education and a long enforced idleness not stunted his moral growth; and it is the measure of the good in him that even Dubois’s training succeeded only in turning him into a roué and not into a monster. Lewis’s assessment of the Regent’s place in history alludes to the very traits Tavernier foregrounds in his film: What mark did the Duc d’Orléans leave on France and on his period? To begin with he must be held largely responsible for the spread of that skepticism breeding a spirit of independence, which under Louis XV challenged the whole divine right theory of Monarchy and set the country sliding downhill to the Revolution. (Lewis 1961: 202–3)

If the Regent is tragic at all, then, this lies in the fact that he sees the Revolution on the horizon but is unable to prevent it. Instead, he buries his knowledge under ostentatious and futile misbehavior. Revolution thus functions as his own – and the era’s – repressed. By the film’s conclusion, Philippe reaches the dead end of his moral and spiritual quandaries. Furious at having been unable to stop Dubois from executing Pontcallec, humiliated at having consented to the Abbé’s promotion, and frightened by his physical collapse at the end of a night’s carousing, he begins to hallucinate that his hand is rotting. No one around him smells the stink he perceives, so he decides, maliciously, to force Dubois to amputate his hand. The squeamish Abbé hastily prepares to convey them to a surgeon. Racing across the countryside, the Royal carriage overturns a peasant girl’s cart and kills her young brother. The Regent descends from his disabled carriage, calls for a fresh one, and approaches the fallen boy with real distress in his eyes. Falteringly, he offers money to the sister. At this point, the music changes and there is a shift in the film’s tone, rhythm, and color. Other peasants run to help the boy’s sister, as she frenetically sets fire to the Regent’s abandoned carriage and turns her brother’s sightless eyes to watch the blaze, telling him this will be the first of many. The film ends on a frozen tableau vivant of the girl and her brother in a Pietà-like pose. Her righteous resolve – and the allegorical tenor of the scene – prefigure the coming Revolution in the very terms used by Condamine: Sur la conspiration de Pontcallec se projettent les premiers feux de cette mise en combustion des esprits qui, à son terme, embrasera le

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 152

12/10/2011 16:25

tavernier’s historiography  153

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

gigantesque bûcher où disparaîtront presque simultanément les structures provinciales et la monarchie. (Condamine 1973: 272)17

The Regent’s repression of his knowledge of the coming upheaval – and the impasse to which it leads him – can be understood both psychoanalytically and politically. His body speaks the truth that his intellect has been unable to articulate. His hysterical symptom is literal: his rotting hand is a physical manifestation of his moral collapse and that of the realm. Official accounts mention neither this symptom nor Philippe’s proposed remedy explicitly, but the image is brilliantly evocative. It calls to mind Lady Macbeth desperately attempting to wash her hands of her crime. It also recalls the Biblical injunction: ‘if thy hand offend thee, cut it off’ (Mark 9: 43). It suggests the metaphorical castration implicit in the Regent’s impotence to intervene in Dubois’s deadly machinations. Finally, it prefigures the guillotine that will amputate more vital appendages from future members of the royal family. The final crisis also constitutes a hysterical moment in the filmic text, along the lines theorized by Nowell-Smith. The Regent is aware that the people are oppressed, but he is no more capable of resolving the social contradictions of his public role than he can extricate himself from the moral quandaries of his private life. What is more, neither he nor Pontcallec, for all their visionary prescience, can be the ‘father’ of the Revolution, because revolutions, as we saw in L’Horloger de Saint-Paul, are made by sons. The final tableau thus represents a historical dead end and an epistemological impasse, where family and public dramas converge. There can be no resolution, and the film comes to a painful full stop. The closing mute tableau articulates the social with the intimate and the personal with the political. If not historically accurate, this shift into allegory figures emotional, moral, and melodramatic truths. Set in 1893, Tavernier’s third feature, Le Juge et l’assassin, examines the personal compulsions and social repressions of the Belle Epoque through another epic confrontation between two men, both based on historical figures. The assassin of the title is modeled on the case of Joseph Vacher, the ‘Ripper’ who roamed the Cévennes countryside 17 ‘Onto Pontcallec’s conspiracy is projected the first blaze of this intellectual combustion which, in the end, will light the gigantic conflagration that will simultaneously consume both provincial social structures and the monarchy.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 153

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

154  bertrand tavernier during the 1890s engaging in a murder spree that terrorized the nation. Like Vacher, Tavernier’s Joseph Bouvier, played by Michel Galabru, was raised (and, the film suggests, molested) by Marist Brothers and then entered the army, from which he was discharged because of his violent outbursts. Rejected by Louise, the young woman he had hoped to marry, Bouvier shoots her and then turns his pistol on himself. Miraculously, both survive. Following brief internment in a psychiatric asylum, he seeks refuge in the Church and then with Louise’s family, but he is repeatedly turned away and so becomes a homeless vagrant, criss-crossing France on foot. The bullets lodged in his brain do nothing to alleviate his murderous rages or his mystical frenzies – he proclaims himself God’s Anarchist, sent to purify an unjust and corrupt society – and soon the landscape is strewn with the mutilated corpses of his young victims. Meanwhile, Judge Rousseau (Noiret) is equally obsessed. Convinced that the scattered murders are the work of a single assassin, he tracks the hypothetical criminal’s itinerary on a map of France, assembles evidence from witnesses, correlates details, and circulates a composite portrait of a suspect. Gradually, we realize that the Judge’s fascination is a tad unhealthy, and that his overriding motive for capturing the killer is not justice, but career advancement. Perhaps he will even be awarded the Légion d’honneur! Once he arrests Bouvier, however, it soon becomes apparent that the assassin is insane. Rousseau tricks Bouvier into believing that if he confesses, he will be found mentally incompetent and thus spared and even receive treatment. In reality, however, Bouvier’s confession will be used to secure his execution, thus ensuring the Judge’s glory. The focus is on the conversation between the two characters, with caustic dialogues signed once again by Aurenche, working this time with Tavernier but without Pierre Bost, who died in 1975. The script won a César, and the quality of the acting under Tavernier’s direction assured the film’s success. Rarely has Philippe Noiret played a more thoroughly repellent individual than Judge Rousseau, whose brutal impulses are barely masked by elegant manners and whose ambition remains unmitigated by self-understanding. Only the actor’s depth and subtlety rescues the role from caricature: a quiver of a lip or a slight modulation of voice conveys the fragility and fear behind the façade. One can easily endorse Noiret’s statement in an interview on the DVD of the film that had his hundred or so roles been reduced

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 154

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

tavernier’s historiography  155 only to the few he played for Tavernier, ‘j’aurais eu une belle carrière.’18 If Noiret was already famous and well loved, Michel Galabru’s assassin was, as they say, a ‘revelation.’ Although like Noiret he had started his career at the Comédie Française, Galabru was known for his clownish roles in over a hundred popular stage and film comedies. As the spectator begins to comprehend Bouvier’s frenzied and murderous concoction of mental derangement, religious fervor, and social crusade, Galabru renders his character troublingly affecting, a performance for which he was awarded a César. Galabru describes Tavernier as reassuring and ‘un passionné’ and the experience of working with him as ‘une épopee’ and ‘une période bénie’ (Le Juge et l’assassin, DVD interview). The film adheres closely to the historical record, which can be found in newspapers of the time, in Vacher’s letters, and in accounts of his trial. More details can be read in a 1976 book also entitled Le Juge et l’assassin and co-authored by Henry Garet, along with none other than René Tavernier. Many of the events, including the trial, occurred in the region around Lyon, which might explain the two Taverniers’ familiarity with and interest in the story. The film changes the Judge’s name from Fourquet to Rousseau and embellishes his personal story to include emotions and motivations, a doting mother with whom he lives, a working-class mistress named Rose (Isabelle Huppert), and a friend and fellow magistrate, de Villedieu (Jean-Claude Brialy), recently repatriated from a post in Indochina. With the conversation between the two antagonists at its heart, the story finds its context in the fears and collective imagination of its era, a climate that one reviewer characterized as a ‘social apocalypse’ (L’Express, 8 March 1976). Following Vacher, Bouvier embodies in one multi-faceted, quasi-mythical figure many of the alien forces that threatened the anxious bourgeoisie’s fragile sense of order and security. Stirrings of working-class discontent reawaken fears that the events of the 1871 Commune, still vivid in public memory, might be repeated (as they are, symbolically, in the film’s tableau finale). Rousseau and those in his circle are staunch anti-Dreyfusards, and posters proclaiming ‘Mort à Dreyfus’ can be seen in the street. Panic about terrorist attacks is also in the air since a series of anarchist bombings culminated in 1892 with the public execution of the legendary Ravachol. Like 18 ‘I would still have had a fine career.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 155

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

156  bertrand tavernier Vacher, Bouvier imitates Ravachol by calling himself a visionary and ‘l’anarchiste de dieu’ and by wearing a conspicuous white hat and carrying an accordion, on which he improvises songs as he wanders. Additionally, Bouvier evokes the era’s large and worrisome population of itinerant hobos. Also like the legendary anarchist – and not unlike the Marquis de Pontcallec – Bouvier’s execution transforms him into a martyr of sorts, a symbol of the era’s exclusions. Like Tavernier’s two previous features, Le Juge et l’assassin meticu­ lously recreates a historical context that also resonates with the mentalités of the 1970s. The film contributed to post-1968 critiques of the normalizing function of institutions such as the church, schools, the justice system, and the medical establishment and to challenges to ideological assumptions underpinning social class, the family, and the gender system. Psychiatric institutions and practices, seen as potential tools for social control, were a particular target at the time. Intellectuals such as Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Félix Guattari outspokenly shaped public debate. In his analyses of what he called the ‘doxa,’ Barthes investigated the ways in which invisible or unquestioned assumptions are considered ‘natural.’ Deleuze and Guattari found in the ravings of the mad insights into the organization of the social unconscious. And Foucault understood that the incarceration of the mentally ill served to reinforce ­boundaries and buttress categories of thought that defined French society, helping to protect insiders from alien and frightening Others. Bouvier broadcasts contradictions hidden by bourgeois propriety that only a visionary or a madman can afford to see, and his rage against the injustice of being deemed unstable enough to be discharged from the army, but sane enough to stand trial would have found sympathy among many soixante-huitards. Other contemporary works of imagination echoed these same issues. For example, Greene compares Tavernier’s film with Moi, Pierre Rivière, ayant égorgé ma mere, ma soeur, et mon frère … directed in 1976 by René Allio, after a book of the same title by Michel Foucault (Foucault 1973; Greene 1999). It could also be compared with Milos Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest of the previous year and with Peter Brook’s 1967 Marat/Sade: The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum at Charenton. All these films raise questions about the repressive political implications of the ‘care’ of the mentally ill.

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 156

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

tavernier’s historiography  157 In short, the film’s two contexts – the 1890s and the 1970s – share an anxiety about what exactly constitutes ‘normal’ and ‘civilized’ behavior. Confronted with the clairvoyance of his assassin, Noiret’s Judge Rousseau, elegantly dressed with top hat and walking stick, maintains strict control over the hatred and fear that are nevertheless perceptible below his surface. His tense voice hovers on the verge of hysteria, so that you can almost feel the sweat under his collar. Along with his entire social class, Rousseau is bombarded from all sides with perceived threats. Everything he does aims to buttress and protect his distinction from and dominance over dreaded Others: anarchists, foreigners, Jews, workers, women, and a mad murderer at large. Convinced of the norm from which others deviate, what he fears above all is loss of these differences and his distinction, which he believes is both meritorious and innate. Any weaknesses that suggest he might be the same as ‘Them’ must be repressed or projected. At the same time, the very complexity of all these groups – and his proximity to and growing understanding of them – threatens to blur the boundaries on which his superiority depends. The enthusiastic reception of Le Juge et l’assassin was no doubt enhanced by a lurid crime that occurred in Troyes a few months before the film’s release. On 30 January 1976, Patrick Henry kidnapped a boy of seven, on his way home from school. Henry killed the child immediately and then demanded a million francs in ransom. During the investigation, Henry was arrested briefly but released. He was subsequently interviewed on television, where he declared that kidnappers of children deserved to die. When the child’s body was found in Henry’s rented room, he was arrested again and brought to trial in early 1977. The heinous nature of the crime, exacerbated by the criminal’s public declarations, provoked the prosecution – and the court of public opinion – to demand the ultimate retribution. The case became a cause célebre, however, when defense lawyer Robert Badinter succeeded in obtaining a sentence of life imprisonment, despite opposition from President Giscard d’Estaing. The Patrick Henry case was a turning point in the debate over the death penalty: five years later, as Minister of Justice to newly elected President François Mitterrand, Badinter introduced legislation that led to the abolition of capital punishment. Le Juge et l’assassin was filmed in 1975 and released in March of 1976, so it could not have been influenced by the Patrick Henry case. Nevertheless, the Vacher/Bouvier story resonated with

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 157

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

158  bertrand tavernier the case, and the film became part of the ongoing debate. What some found even more shocking than the brutality of the Troyes murder was the outcry for Henry’s execution, which made the public appear more bloodthirsty and uncivilized than the criminal, thus echoing the moral and social questions raised in and by Tavernier’s film. Vacher’s interest as a historical figure, and the reason he captured the public imagination of his time – like Tavernier’s Bouvier in ours – lies in the way both serve as fantasmatic, kaleidoscopic vectors for surrounding discourses. In magnified and distorted form, Bouvier expresses the violent and sexual urges that must be repressed in polite society. Intensifying this pressure cooker of fears and emotions is a rigid Victorian morality that hides anything troubling or disruptive behind elaborate public rituals and displays of respectability. Bouvier represents the beast within, jeopardizing all the Judge’s carefully maintained hierarchies, and this is why Rousseau is so threatened – but also so fascinated – by his crimes. In response to Bouvier’s expostulations about how he has been victimized, Rousseau at one point explodes with trembling but righteous anger: ‘Il faut refrener ses instincts quand ils sont mauvais.’19 Otherwise, what would our society become? The Judge refuses to consider the possibility that Bouvier is insane, not only because a conviction will advance his career, but also because a madman escapes from the categories on which society depends. But Bouvier shouts, ‘Je me fous de votre société.’20 Defined as a monster by others, claiming to be an anarchist, a victim, and god’s messenger, he inflicts an unwelcome dose of the uncanny: from the depths of his ‘madness,’ his outbursts of startlingly lucid social criticism articulate knowledge of oppressions both eras sought to mask. The film expresses all this barely contained turmoil through its rich color scheme, coded mise en scène, and histrionic music. We are deep in the territory of melodrama. In fact we are once again in the domain of Sirkian melodrama, where social critique is articulated within the double register of public and private life. The first French film to be shot in Panavision, Le Juge et l’assassin contrasts the sweeping Ardèche countryside of Bouvier’s wanderings with the opulent but claustrophobic bourgeois interiors of the Judge’s milieu. The film thus stages a visual confrontation of two social classes and two worldviews. In keeping with the morality of 19 ‘Bad instincts must be controlled.’ 20 ‘Screw your society.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 158

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

tavernier’s historiography  159 his class, Judge Rousseau strictly segregates his public persona from his private life. Just as the wall between ‘normality’ and its Others must be firmly maintained, so must the respectable magistrate living chastely with his mother be kept separate from the secret life he shares with his working-class mistress and her children. Rousseau travels the distance between his two homes surreptitiously on foot. When his mother gives him a jar of cherries in eau-de-vie to take to Rose for her birthday, the good Judge walks a short distance, glances furtively over his shoulder, and lobs the gift into the river. Although he serves wine and spirits at his mother’s home, chez Rose he righteously forbids alcohol of any kind, even a baba-au-rhum. So distinct are the Judge’s official and private roles, that, like many Victorian melodramas, Le Juge et l’assassin is split between two stories whose allegorical interconnections only gradually become apparent. The Judge’s lack of self-knowledge is demonstrated by the disparity between his public postures and his private conduct, so that the film’s narrative structure embodies the hypocrisy that is its target. Until the end. Like others in his milieu, Rousseau is able – but just barely – to repress awareness of the contradictions underlying institutions such as the army, the medical establishment, and the law. The film shows to what extent the Judge’s certainties depend upon repression of contradictions that are both psychological and social, making Judge Rousseau into a site under pressure where melodramatic ‘conversion hysteria’ can burst forth. And sure enough, private and public stories converge in a ‘hysterical moment’ when norms break down, and the Judge’s claims to civilized and patriarchal authority collapse. If in Que la fête commence what was repressed was the people (in a foreshadowing of 1789), in Le Juge et l’assassin, other ‘Others’ threaten to dissolve individual and national identity and bring Judge Rousseau’s career to an end, along with the entire Belle Epoque. As it turns out, the submerged voices that ultimately shred both the social fabric and the narrative are those coming from the colonies, and from women. The film’s scattered allusions to the French colonial empire may seem merely anecdotal, but they constitute an important pressure. In the first such instance, we learn that the Procureur, Monsieur de Villedieu, has brought a servant home with him from Saigon. Over dinner, he explains that he hired the young man as a cook after condemning his brother to death. When Madame Rousseau inquires

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 159

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

160  bertrand tavernier politely whether the Prosecutor might not therefore be in some danger of being poisoned, de Villedieu replies that there’s no need for worry, as he took care to convert his cook to Christianity before hiring him. A related exchange brings the colonial subtext bubbling more menacingly to the surface. This occurs when Rousseau visits Bouvier in prison in an attempt to extract enough details of his crimes to secure a conviction. But Bouvier has begun to suspect that his Judge is feigning solicitude in order to betray him. While the Judge is locked with him in his cell, Bouvier pulls out a knife and attacks. In his fury, Bouvier spits out a strange phrase: ‘macache, bono, bézef!’ (The spelling is from the film script, Tavernier and Garet 1976: 27.) What might this mean? I would suggest that Bouvier’s expostulation closely approximates a Maghrebian Arabic sentence: ‘Makaynsch bna bezaff.’ The sentence means: there is not [makaynsh] much [bezaff] between us [bna] (plate 9). The film reveals only that Bouvier had been discharged from his post as an army sergeant, but the New York Times report of Vacher’s execution gives further details that might help us decipher Bouvier’s strange outburst. The ‘Southwest Ripper’ had been at the time of his discharge a sergeant in a unit of Zouaves. It is plausible to suppose that the fictional Bouvier shared this service in North Africa with his historical prototype. (Significantly, too, Galabru was born in Morocco.) That would mean that his body and his secret language harbor not only the sexual and political repressions of his age, but also its dirty colonial secret. Bouvier’s outburst contains at least three relevant overlapping meanings: (1) there is nothing (no further conversation) between us. This transaction is over. The deal is off. Bouvier feels betrayed and will no longer cooperate with the Judge, whom he begins to see as the ambitious manipulator that he is. (2) There is nothing (no barrier) between us. Nothing protects you from me, an implication Bouvier demonstrates by pulling out his knife. With surprising nimbleness, Rousseau is able to disarm his attacker, but his authority, his power, and his very masculinity have been assailed, and he is visibly shaken. He leaves the prison and goes directly to Rose’s house, where he brutally sodomizes her. It turns out that his own ‘instincts,’ so carefully controlled, so forcefully denied, have been unleashed by his unexpected encounter with violence. This lapse allows a third meaning to emerge: (3) there is nothing (no difference) between us

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 160

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

tavernier’s historiography  161 that might distinguish us from each other. Your urges are just as brutal as mine. You are just as much at the mercy of your uncivilized side, your ‘rages,’ as I am. This third meaning touches on the heart of the melodrama and constitutes the return of its repressed, its ‘hysterical moment.’ It reveals the reversibility and thus the arbitrary nature of the distinctions between civilized and savage, privileged and poor, criminal and executioner, judge and madman. In this moment, judge and criminal become equals. The question, as the film’s ambiguous title suggests, is who is more immoral, the Judge or the assassin? It’s preferable to be a criminal than to make criminals, Bouvier tells Rousseau. In the same vein, and with only a touch of self-protective irony, de Villedieu remarks: Nous sommes tous des meurtriers, au moins en puissance. Mais ce besoin de meurtre, nous le canalisons par des moyens légaux: l’industrie, le commerce colonial, la guerre, l’anti-sémitisme. Moi, j’ai choisi l’anti-sémitisme. D’abord parce que c’est pas dangereux, c’est à la mode..., et puis c’est béni par l’église.21

Despite his disillusioned sarcasm, the Prosecutor’s suicide suggests his realization that ‘justice’ itself is guilty, so that his act is in fact a self-execution. Depicted in a single shot of de Villedieu’s body in the opulent decor of his apartment, the hyper-aestheticized mise en scène effectively abolishes the distance between civilization and brutality. If Rousseau’s confrontation with the assassin shatters hierarchies separating judge from criminal and the civilized from the mad, the incident also provokes a breakdown of gender difference. Rousseau is sure of himself as long as crucial distinctions are scrupulously maintained, but he gets queasy when difference breaks down. He even refuses to visit a hospital, explaining that he is afraid of the sick. Of course, as we have seen, all this careful policing of distinctions requires adherence to the imperious law of repression, which, under the floodlight of irony, allows a domestic drama to function as social critique. When the Judge and the assassin change places, the result is anomie, or what René Girard calls a ‘sacrificial crisis’: a loss of the 21 ‘We are all potential murderers, but we channel this need for murder through legal means: industry, colonial commerce, war, anti-Semitism. I myself have chosen anti-Semitism. First, because it’s not dangerous, it’s fashionable, and also because it’s approved by the church.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 161

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

162  bertrand tavernier distinct categories upon which society depends. The moment also marks the loss of the sacred, when the moral universe becomes illegible and occult. Bouvier’s outburst and Rousseau’s response disrupt the coherence not only of the Judge’s social world, but also of the narrative. Judge and assassin are abruptly abandoned, and the spotlight shifts to Rose. While understated, her character has been gentle and dependent, but outspoken when necessary. She rejects the Judge’s dismissive and moralizing view of her former factory job, and she exhibits curiosity about Bouvier and sympathy for his distress. Once the Judge’s actions force her to acknowledge his brutality, she acts decisively, if somewhat unexpectedly, on behalf of her class and her sex. A brief scene shows her establishing solidarity with Louise. Rose then returns to her factory to lead the workers in a strike. The film leaves narrative realism behind to end in a melodramatic tableau vivant that condenses the iconography of France’s romantic mythology of popular uprising. Bearing a red standard, Rose leads the workers in a revolutionary anthem composed for the film and whose refrain evokes the Commune and the Internationale. Just as the cherries dumped in the river can be read as a covert allusion to the Commune-era song ‘Au Temps des Cerises,’ Rose’s name evokes the symbol of socialism. The image of Isabelle Huppert brandishing her red flag conflates familiar images of the Republic incarnated as a woman, such as Eugène Delacroix’s painting of ‘Liberty leading the People,’ with the memory of the Communard ‘Pétroleuses’ and even the feminists of the 1970s. This overdetermined coda embodies a return of repressed feminine power, and with it, all the explosive potential for social and narrative upheaval that the Judge and the film have struggled to contain (plate 10). Critics almost universally praised the film’s compelling story, engaging characters, and prodigious actors, but expressed less enthusiasm about its ending, Tavernier himself readily declares the final tableau less successful than the similar conclusion of Que la fête commence. Greene finds it more pessimistic as well: whereas Que la fête commence looked forward to the Revolution, Le Juge et l’assassin looks nostalgically backwards to the Commune. And while Rose’s revolt may represent an expression of sympathy with the feminist aspirations of 1975, gender liberation is quickly displaced onto worker liberation. The abrupt shift into allegory, with its symbolic mise en scène, its pathos, and its song, suggests an inability to articulate further

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 162

12/10/2011 16:25

tavernier’s historiography  163

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

solutions to troubled power relations in either era. Like the famous freeze frame at the end of Truffaut’s Les 400 Coups, this ending signals an impasse for the characters and the historical moment. The film thus reads as a double melodrama that dramatizes the repressed of two eras.

Apocalypse then: Coup de torchon Coup de torchon marks the completion of a trajectory begun with L’Horloger de Saint-Paul and carried through Que la fête commence and Le Juge et l’assassin. Tavernier retained for all these films the team of partners who helped launch his career: Noiret, Aurenche, and cinematographer Pierre-William Glenn. All four films convey an increasingly dark disillusionment that finally overwhelms any hope for progress. Made in 1980 and released in 1981, Coup de torchon signals the end of the post-1968 era, just as the 1981 election of François Mitterrand marked a turning point after Giscard d’Estaing and the Gaullist years. While the film’s mood is apocalyptic and sardonic, its protagonist (but not its filmmaker) is also nostalgic: for the possibility of salvation; for a time when the moral universe was legible, when God was not laughing at His creation; for the heyday of coherent genre, particularly the Western, with the vision of patriarchal authority and masculine progress it embodied. Showing the moral universe at its most occult, Coup de torchon demonstrates how the Western is a variant of melodrama. It is Tavernier’s most modern work. It is also, to my mind, his masterpiece. The action begins in July of 1938 in the backwater village of Bourkassa in French West Africa (the film was shot in Senegal), where Lucien Cordier (Noiret) plays at being colonial Sheriff. Lucien knows that he was appointed to the post because his incompetence and laziness will preserve the status quo. He appeases bullies and turns a blind eye to pimps, police corruption, military ineptitude, and church indifference. He plays childish pranks on his shrewish wife Huguette (Stéphane Audran) and her moronic lover, Nono (Eddy Mitchell), whom she passes off as her brother. He stands by while his mistress, Rose (Isabelle Huppert), is beaten by her husband, and then hurries to comfort her afterwards. Weary of being disregarded and humiliated, however, he finally takes it upon himself to purge the

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 163

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

164  bertrand tavernier town of all its miscreants, including his personal enemies into the bargain. The plot, such as it is, consists mostly of Lucien’s growing despair at the inhumanity around him. His attempts to remedy the situation are of the same stuff as the problem itself, however, and he gradually capitulates to the overwhelming forces of evil in which he is rapidly submerging. He comes to believe he is Jesus Christ, returned to cleanse and save the world. Transformed by this mission into a demonic blend of avenging judge and maniacal assassin – another ‘anarchiste de dieu’ – Cordier orchestrates the massacre of almost everyone. The film signals a pessimistic dead end to individuals’ capacity to intervene in forces determined by God or history. Even protest is pointless, and the only way forward is to wipe everything away with a coup de torchon and begin again with a ‘clean slate’ (the film’s Englishlanguage title). An early ending did just that: combining science fiction and burlesque, the final sequence posited the death of humanity. At a village ball, as Cordier and the newly arrived schoolteacher, Anne, revolve in a slow dance, they and the other dancers disappear and are replaced by gorillas. One of the gorillas wonders where everyone has gone. The other responds that they have all died. ‘Merde!’ replies the first gorilla, ‘Il va falloir tout recommencer’ (‘Deuxième Fin inédite,’ Coup de Torchon, DVD interview).22 Reminiscent of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), this conclusion takes the whole human enterprise back to the beginning to start from scratch. Tavernier wisely settled on a different ending, and the strategy he does adopt conveys his message far more effectively. The film is framed by two takes of a scene that is radically disconnected from the narrative. The opening sequence shows a desert landscape, where Lucien watches a group of emaciated children dig in the sand for grubs to eat. A solar eclipse darkens the horizon, and the children begin to shiver. Lucien comes forward to build a small fire that would warm them. We might be at the dawn of civilization. Lucien seems both protective and paternalistic, at once Prometheus, Christ, and the original colonizer, bringing warmth and Enlightenment ideals into a scene of poverty and darkness. The scene is mute except for Philippe Sarde’s thoroughly alarming and disorienting score, part jazz, part space music. The ending returns abruptly to the same locale. Lucien squats under a baobab tree with an anguished and inscrutable expres 22 ‘We’ll have to begin again.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 164

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

tavernier’s historiography  165 sion on his face. He fingers his pistol, which he aims alternately at the children and at himself. Although this ending is continuous with the film’s beginning, now, after so much mayhem, the scene is inflected differently. Lucien has failed to cast out darkness and hunger, and he has redefined his job as putting people out of their misery. No longer Prometheus bringing Enlightenment, Lucien has turned into the ultimate anti-hero: Lucifer, bearer of light, in the form of a firearm. Coup de torchon does not simply conclude; it blazes out with all the trappings of an apocalypse. Its first spoken words – ‘J’ai cru que c’était la fin du monde’23 – will recur twice more before this final vision of the eclipse of a way of life. The scene’s repetition creates claustrophobic circularity, its narrative discontinuity serving to figure the breakdown of everything. In contrast to Tavernier’s two previous experimental endings, the end of Coup de torchon transforms flaws into virtues. Rather than creating problems with endings, Coup de torchon is about endings. Not coincidentally, the story begins in the late summer of 1938, just before the Munich Accord that has become synonymous with appeasement and cowardice, and ends with the declaration of the Second World War. Yet it is almost a comedy or, as one critic put it, ‘un jeu de massacre abominable et drôle’ (Nuttens 2009: 40).24 Aurenche’s dialogues set a strongly satirical tone, and the grimy palette of Alexandre Trauner’s sets creates a strong sense of timeless entrapment in place and moment. Coup de torchon contains numerous outrageously allegorical moments, from a priest who advises Lucien to eliminate his enemies, all the while nailing a Christ figure to the cross, to the town entrepreneur who, with a little help from Lucien, falls into the stagnant cesspool of the outhouse he has refused to remove. Moments like these contribute to the film’s hilarity while amplifying its allegorical and metaphysical overtones. The camera sways and staggers along with Cordier, creating for the spectator the nauseating sensation of a world out of control. Contributing to its aesthetic and moral complexity is the film’s judicious mixture of genres, which meshed nicely with the market trends of the moment. The most popular movies of the late 1970s and early 1980s were comedies of the Louis de Funès type, the polar or police/crime film, and – after the relaxing of censorship laws in 1974 23 ‘I thought it was the end of the world.’ 24 ‘an abominable and drole game of massacre.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 165

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

166  bertrand tavernier – pornography, with 1981 marking the crest of the wave. In addition, 1980 was the ‘année du patrimoine,’ with heritage films enjoying a high profile. Coup de torchon displays elements of all these genres, but all are treated ironically. The coherence of the film’s vision, however, lies in its mobilization of the spiritual quest and social allegory that define melodrama. Excess and hyperbole, sensationalism and pathos, and moral polarization are present in abundance, and it would be hard to imagine a more extreme vision of the ‘moral occult’ than this. With Aurenche, Tavernier adapted his screenplay from American pulp novelist Jim Thompson’s Pop. 1280, set in Texas. Published in 1964 during the Civil Rights movement, the novel focuses on the legacy of slavery and a merciless portrayal of petty-minded racism. In addition, Tavernier confesses that he was inspired by Louis Ferdinand Céline’s Voyage au bout de la nuit (1932). Thompson achieved greater fame in France than in his native United States, thanks perhaps to his manner of combining pulp themes with a distinctly modernist écriture.25 Pop. 1280’s Nick Corey, the model for Lucien Cordier, is a damaged man. Like Thompson’s other anti-heroes, he carries a hidden ‘sickness’ that manifests itself in vengeful violence. Thompson’s genius was to convey his characters’ slide into perdition not simply as a symptom of post-traumatic shock, but as a cosmic evil force, an original sin with which they grapple, but which they fail to overcome. What is more, first-person narration sucks the reader directly into its demented protagonist’s mind. Stanly Kubrick, for whose Paths of Glory (1957) Thompson wrote the screenplay, said of one such Thompson novel that it was ‘probably the most chilling and believable first-person story of a criminally warped mind I have ever encountered’ (Polito 1995: 344). The novelist’s feral protagonists never become entirely unsympathetic, though, because the source of their ‘sickness’ is social as well as individual. Their flaw is their lucidity, and this explains Tavernier’s interest in the novel. He was no doubt also drawn to the challenge of filming a work that both Thompson and filmmaker Alain Corneau had declared, after their failed joint attempt, impossible to adapt (Polito 1995: 498).26 25 In 1966, Pop. 1280 was selected for translation into French and published as the 1000th volume in Gallimard’s Série noire, inexplicably losing five souls along the way (the French title was 1275 Ames). 26 Corneau adapted Thompson’s A Hell of a Woman as Série noire (1979), with a screenplay by experimental New Novelist Georges Pérec.

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 166

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

tavernier’s historiography  167 From the American West to French colonial Africa is not a long stretch. In fact, I would suggest that Coup de torchon’s predominant generic model is the Western, from which Tavernier adopts and adapts certain patterns typical of his favorite American directors. The Western is a genre of expansion, conquest and nation building. The official rationale for Horace Greeley’s famous injunction to ‘go West, young man’ is the American Manifest Destiny to spread civilization into the wilderness. But the Western film hero – that lone man profiled against a barren landscape – is caught between two incompatible imperatives: ostensibly forging westward in order to spread civilization, he is often also motivated by an urge to escape civilization. In the process, the Western engages issues concerning modernity and national and masculine identity that have consistently been Tavernier’s themes of choice. Westerns such as Victor Fleming’s The Virginian (1929) and Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) dramatize the fundamental American contradiction between the institutions of America’s more established East (schools, law and order, the garden or farm, the drive to statehood) and the spirit of the frontier (‘frontier justice,’ the ranch, the desire to remain a territory). In this code, horses signify the West, whereas civilization always arrives by train. Two heroes in Liberty Valance embody the two sides of the conflict: John Wayne incarnates the Western loner, more apt to shoot than to converse; Jimmy Stewart plays a lawyer and US senator whose education and fine manners single him out for ridicule. Stewart is polite to the ladies, helps out in the kitchen of the rooming house where he is a guest, and opens a makeshift school in order to teach local youngsters (and adults) to read. Through Stewart’s character and mannerisms, the film’s iconography makes clear that civilization is coded feminine. Stewart even goes to his ill-fated shoot-out wearing an apron. In The Virginian, civilizing institutions arrive on the scene in the form of a schoolteacher, Molly. Molly’s native Vermont is contrasted with Wyoming, and female with male; the train makes its way among unruly cattle (which Molly, of course, calls ‘cows’). Molly appears trim and tidy alongside the dusty and disheveled cowboys who arrive on horseback to greet her. Molly’s educated speech clashes with the local idiom: ‘Whatcha gonna learn ’em, ma’am?’ Molly’s arrival, with all its institutional and sentimental implications, means trouble for the hero (Gary Cooper, one of Tavernier’s favorite actors), because it will

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 167

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

168  bertrand tavernier unmask his ambivalence. He inevitably falls in love with her, which means he will have to choose between remaining a solitary (but ‘real’) man, or becoming feminized and domesticated. When the inevitable crisis comes – when Cooper is shot bringing his best friend to justice for cattle rustling – Molly will have to decide whether she will remain in Wyoming and risk being corrupted by the lawlessness of the West, or follow the injunction to go ‘back where you belong’ (a crucial phrase that recurs throughout the genre). By explicitly tying geographical oppositions to moral ones, such choices highlight the workings of a split consciousness, a projection of the literally unconscious hero’s internal dilemma. (Unsurprisingly, Fleming also directed Dr Jeckyl and Mr Hyde.) These oppositions also define the Western as a variant of melodrama. In Coup de torchon, the arrival of the schoolteacher, Anne (Irène Skobline) in Bourkassa is closely modeled on Molly’s in Wyoming. Anne’s elegant clothing and hat and her precise diction convey a metropolitan sophistication that contrasts starkly with Lucien’s casual slouch, his drawl, and his disheveled appearance. In shots almost identical to those in The Virginian, Anne’s gestures and pose, like Molly’s, suggest her eagerness to step off the train into a new life. Following the conventions of the Western, Anne even brings the possibility of a love story that will ‘civilize’ Lucien. In the same sequences, though, a blind traveler urgently repeats the question ‘What time is it?’ and ‘We are entering the virgin forest,’ hinting at the presence of a mythical Surrealist dreamscape, while prefiguring the lunacy and moral blindness that will soon overtake Lucien. Anne’s moral showdown is much more ambiguous than Molly’s. Arriving in her classroom to find Lucien’s confession of his murders and his declaration of his role as God’s appointed avenger inscribed on her chalkboard, she explains to the children that the words are those of the French national anthem. She then proceeds to teach them ‘La Marseillaise.’ Instead of Molly’s moral clarity – ‘I won’t teach the next generation to justify murder,’ she declares – this schoolteacher, gentle and sympathetic as she is, does quite literally do just that, and in the name of La Patrie. It is difficult to imagine a more ironic example of appeasement or a more scathing denunciation of the colonial mission civilisatrice. The scene points at the duplicity of a system that creates more slaves while singing of liberation. Lucien summarizes that hypocrisy when he remarks that Anne has come to

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 168

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

tavernier’s historiography  169 teach the ­youngsters to read, so that they can read the names of their fathers on the monuments aux morts. If its Western desert is America’s primal scene, as Jean Baudrillard (1986) has remarked, then the African desert plays that role in the French imaginary as portrayed in Coup de torchon. Superimposing the French civilizing mission on the American Doctrine of Manifest Destiny requires only a semantic shift in the term ‘West.’ Coup de torchon stands in stark contrast with other films of the period, such as Fort Saganne, Alain Corneau’s 1984 historical epic of French North Africa before La Grande Guerre. That film recuperates colonialism as a heroic narrative of conquest and brotherhood and as a crucible for manhood. Its protagonist, Colonel Charles Saganne (Gérard Depardieu), shows how European adventurers experienced the same ambivalence as Fleming’s and Ford’s cowboys. As Saganne explains to ministers and journalists back in the metropole, France must maintain its presence in the desert because it serves as an ‘école d’énergie’ for those who have the honor of serving there. ‘Au Sahara, les hommes sont eux-mêmes, débarrassés de tous les faux semblants.’27 Neither in Coup de torchon nor anywhere else does Tavernier evince this sort of nostalgia for France’s colonial past. Indeed, his entire oeuvre emphatically rejects the heroic and heavily ideological master-narrative outlined in Fort Saganne. He criticizes the colonizing role of institutions such as churches and schools, and he sees the flip side of the civilizing mission, where the missionary isn’t civilized. Most scholars of the Western argue that the genre’s classical age was over by 1940. André Bazin believes that the Second World War transformed the genre, and that the post-war Western – what he calls the ‘superwestern’ – is more self-conscious and the values less naïve. ‘The superwestern,’ he writes, ‘would be ashamed to be just itself, and looks for some additional interest to justify its existence – […] some quality extrinsic to the genre and which is supposed to enrich it’ (Bazin 1971: 150–1). Auschwitz and Hiroshima – and before that, the appeasements of Munich in 1938, the year in which Coup de torchon is set – brought an end to the naïve idealism of conquest and the moral superiority of the West. Lucien Cordier is much more cynical than your standard cowboy sheriff. Tavernier’s film is undoubtedly a superwestern, if not what we might call a post-Western, a story about nation un-building, an end-of-the-West Western. 27 ‘In the Sahara, men are their true selves, freed from false appearances.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 169

12/10/2011 16:25

170  bertrand tavernier

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

From aftershock to reconstruction: La Vie et rien d’autre and Capitaine Conan After the cataclysmic view of history demonstrated in Coup de torchon, there was nowhere to go but up. In his two films about the First World War, Tavernier could have depicted the Grande Guerre as many writers and filmmakers have done: as heroic or tragic (or both). Instead, the overall vision of both La Vie et rien d’autre and Capitaine Conan is once again ironic. In different ways, the two films are fiercely critical of war and the institutions that promote, glorify, and profit from it. Among those institutions is narrative itself, especially the cultural masternarrative of the heroic warrior. Both films continue in the universe of melodrama, but where Tavernier’s previous films tell stories about the paternal authority of fathers within a family dynamic, Conan and La Vie et rien d’autre focus directly on individual men as soldiers. We have seen how François de Cortemart’s wartime traumas render him unable to prove his masculinity without losing his humanity. His treatment of his son reminds us that patriarchy is a political system, war is its testing ground, and military masculinity its mode of enforcement. In his two First World War movies, Tavernier uses the conventions of melodrama to examine the effects of this system. Tavernier began his career at a time when France was turning away from formalist, self-conscious experimentation in literature and film and toward a renewed interest in the national past, particularly that of the Occupation. In Le Syndrome de Vichy de 1944 à nos jours (1987), historian Henry Rousso charted a series of phases in the repression and re-awakening of post-war memory of the Occupation. The Liberation was followed by a long period of national unification under the banner of an official Gaullist account of nearly universal heroic ­Resistance. In the aftermath of the 1968 revolts, this com­placent collective self-image began to disintegrate, as a post-war generation challenged the authority of official institutions and discourses, including historical ones. Marcel Ophüls’s Le Chagrin et la pitié played a crucial role in launching this ‘broken mirror’ stage. Filmed in 1969 and released to a small number of theaters in 1971, Ophüls’s fourhour documentary has been credited with destroying the monolithic ‘resistancialist’ (Rousso’s term) historiography and making room for counter-narratives that would shed light on the variety of responses to the Occupation, including collaboration. 1974, the year of L’Horloger de Saint-Paul, is widely understood as another watershed. In that

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 170

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

tavernier’s historiography  171 year, Louis Malle’s Lacombe Lucien, with its script by novelist Patrick Modiano, helped launch a full-scale ‘mode rétro,’ a trend involving intensified reflection about France’s role in the Second World War. Finally, a period of ‘obsession’ has brought out a diverse range of representations and made it imperative to address the history of French participation in the Shoah. While Tavernier belongs to the ‘génération ’68,’ his oeuvre is remarkable for the curious absence of a full-fledged mode rétro feature film. That is not to say that the Second World War is absent. As we have seen, Tavernier’s interview with his father in Lyon, le regard intérieur contains important material about the ‘intellectual Resistance’ in Lyon. There, however, memories of the Occupation are subordinated to the commissioned topic. Nor in Laissez-passer is the emphasis on probing the war years, however belatedly. The director’s purpose there was to represent (and according to some, to defend) the integrity of the period’s cinema industry while fleshing out portraits of its forgotten luminaries. Even the furor surrounding the extradition from South America of Klaus Barbie, the Nazi ‘butcher of Lyon’ and his much publicized 1987 trial in Lyon itself does not merit so much as a brief allusion in any of Tavernier’s films. Throughout this period when the country, along with its cinema, gradually became obsessed with the Occupation, Tavernier turned his attention instead, as we have seen, to the Middle Ages, the Regency, the early monarchy of Louis XIV, the Belle Epoque, and contemporary France. Finally, he zooms in on the First World War. Throughout his career, Tavernier has gone out of his way to avoid participating in a ‘mode’ of any sort, so it is not surprising that he might have steered clear of the obsession du jour. On the other hand, he does seize opportunities to weigh in on current debates, often from unexpected perspectives. I would therefore suggest that his two major films about the First World War constitute his oblique intervention in reflections about traumatic memory, commemoration, and post-war reconstruction of individual and collective identity. Meditations about survival, guilt, and the nature of heroism in Tavernier’s work echo similar themes in mode rétro fictions about the Second World War. In fact, his reprise of these threads in the context of an earlier war suggests that the mode rétro itself was replaying themes and worries that had been latent in the national consciousness at least since 1918. In an interview, Tavernier argues that the Grande Guerre defined

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 171

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

172  bertrand tavernier the twentieth century: the era’s major struggles were born there, he believes, including the fight against fascism (La Vie et rien d’autre, DVD interview). Co-scripted by the director with Jean Cosmos, both films dramatize issues we have already encountered in other guises. Both begin after the war’s official end, and, as in Tavernier’s earlier historical fictions, both concentrate on paradigm shifts devolving from a historical moment of transition and anomie. With the exception of a ceremony inaugurating the unknown soldier memorial in La Vie et rien d’autre, neither film is set during the First World War’s celebrated heroic moments or in its iconic locales. Instead, both represent marginal episodes often obscured by official histories. Both downplay plot and rely instead on engaging characters and meticulously researched historical situations in order to explore the war’s immediate aftershocks, when losses and consequences must be reckoned up. Together, the two films offer an assortment of individuals struggling to emerge from apocalypse, to find meaning in chaos, and to redefine themselves and their relations with others. At the same time, communities strive to formulate and institutions to impose an official version of history. What is more, the post-war 1920s shared with the post-1968 era an anxious focus on transformed gender identities that were opening new opportunities for women and placing new demands on men. Both films also selfconsciously question the role of stories in constructing myths of the past. Without focusing specifically on the Occupation, then, Tavernier nevertheless remains attuned to the narrative approaches and historical preoccupations of his day, while adopting a characteristically eccentric perspective. Beginning in October of 1920, La Vie et rien d’autre unfolds in the war-devastated countryside where several characters’ paths cross. An aristocratic young woman, Irène de Courtil (Sabine Azéma), travels from hospital to hospital in search of her missing husband. She meets a young schoolteacher, Alice (Pascale Vignal), who awaits the return of her lost fiancé. In one of the hospitals, Irène runs across Commandant Dellaplane (Noiret), the officer charged with identifying soldiers so badly damaged, they no longer know who they are. Although under pressure to act the part of an unthinking bureaucrat, Dellaplane dedicates himself to systematically measuring, recording, and classifying these casualties, with the mission of matching them with the lists of the missing. Through their encounters with each other, these

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 172

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

tavernier’s historiography  173 three lost souls will themselves return to life: Irène and Alice by accepting the loss of the man they both loved and who betrayed them both, and Dellaplane by acknowledging his love for Irène. Among the filmmaker’s many adaptations, Capitaine Conan adheres most closely to its literary source, Roger Vercel’s 1934 Goncourtcrowned novel of the same title. Vercel draws on his own experience of the war – which he began as a stretcher-bearer and finished as an officer in the Balkans – to tell a story destined to appeal to Tavernier, who first read the novel as a teenager. As in the novel, the film’s action begins in the fall of 1919 near the Bulgarian border and continues in the Balkans after the Armistice. Soldiers in a French army unit expecting to be demobilized and sent home find themselves instead traveling by train eastward toward Romania to open a new front against the Bolsheviks. A patriotic war has been replaced by an ideological one, former allies have become enemies, and the men are understandably disoriented. Powerful scenes of military engagement alternate with episodes showing the soldiers in town, where their behavior is rowdy and sometimes violent. At the film’s heart are the contradictions of war and the difficulty of being a hero, especially to oneself. Like Vercel’s novel – and like numerous of Tavernier’s films – the story is built on the contrast between two different but complementary protagonists. Lieutenant Norbert (Samuel Le Bihan) is a schoolteacher and military volunteer whose credentials as a middle-class intellectual earn him an unwilling assignment first as defender, then as prosecutor in court martial cases. In contrast, Conan (Philippe Torreton), a provincial shopkeeper’s son, proves an instinctive fighter whose raw talent, uncompromising courage, and sheer tenacity have raised him from working-class recruit to the ranks of Lieutenant and finally Captain. Had it not been for the war, these two men might never have met. As in two earlier celebrated First World War films, Raymond Bernard’s Les Croix de bois (1932) and Renoir’s 1937 La Grande Illusion, the two men are set apart most starkly by their social class. Conan’s war is up close and personal: his corps franc specializes in stealth attacks, in slitting enemy throats one by one, using knives and bayonets. In battle, Conan’s commandos are disciplined and skillful. Once billeted in town, however, they are uncouth and combative, their fighting prowess unsuited for civilized society. Conan sees the regular troops, including their officers, as ‘soldiers,’ while he reserves for himself and his men the term ‘warrior.’ The others only

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 173

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

174  bertrand tavernier fought the war, he boasts, while men like him were responsible for winning it (plate 11). As is so often the case in Tavernier’s work, the rhythms and style of filming in Capitaine Conan are integral to the characters’ physical and moral perspective. ‘The film is always shot from the point of view of the people who live it,’ says Tavernier, ‘not from the point of view of a general or somebody with superior knowledge. […] I wanted to give the impression that the scenes were not staged; that they were happening by accident and that the cameraman was constantly in danger’ (West and West 1988: 20). In keeping with this approach, Alain Choquart’s camera follows Conan, whose frenetic activity sometimes escapes the frame. The spectator sees the war the way soldiers see it, in violent bursts and incomprehensible fragments. Like Stendhal’s Fabrice del Dongo at Waterloo (La Chartreuse de Parme, 1839), they will learn the official meaning of their experience only much later – if ever. Intuitive and physical, Conan never stops to reflect about abstractions. Norbert, on the other hand, knows that war is hell and its moral contradictions irreconcilable. Presenting his defense for one group of miscreants, Norbert is reduced to handing the impasse over to the jury: ‘Ils sont d’admirables compagnons d’armes,’ he concludes, with the qualifier that ‘Ils sont aussi d’ignobles assassins de femmes.’28 Tavernier summarizes the film’s moral dilemmas this way: The film speaks of themes which interest me very much, in particular the consequences of war. The real theme of the film is how do you stop a war? A war cannot be stopped like a football game; you cannot blow a whistle and say it’s over, this is the armistice, we won. I wanted to show characters who cannot adapt themselves to the new situation. They have been so caught up in violence and a certain way of living that they have lost certain values, and they cannot stop themselves. Conan’s people are lost geographically and morally; in fact, the film is about people who are lost. (West and West 1988: 21)

In an epilogue, Norbert in fact discovers that Conan has proved unable to adapt to peacetime. Finding himself in Conan’s village, Norbert seeks Conan in the bar where he spends most of his time, and the sight of him is a shock. We can barely believe we are seeing the same actor. The vibrant, highly-strung, fire-in-the-belly young warrior has transmogrified into a relic: flabby, gnarled, depressed, and 28 ‘They are admirable companions in arms. […] They are also disgraceful killers of women.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 174

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

tavernier’s historiography  175 riddled with cirrhosis. Nor is he overjoyed to see his friend. He would have preferred, he says, that Norbert remember him from when he was alive. When asked how he spends his days, he replies that he is wrapping up the business of dying. For him, peacetime is already a kind of death, to which he would have preferred a warrior’s end. So while Dellaplane chooses life, Conan is another of Tavernier’s (and history’s) brilliant but suicidal casualties. ‘How do you stop a war?’ Tavernier’s two First World War films constitute another reflection about endings. That Vercel’s novel presents itself as a retrospective memoir suggests that we might understand Capitaine Conan as a kind of flashback from the vantage point of its epilogue. This might make it easier to grasp why the scenes of battle and comradeship, of strategizing and survival, even those of fear and death are infused with an aura of flamboyant braggadocio and intense nostalgia. On the battlefield, Conan is a free spirit who is never seen following orders. (When a courier brings an order Conan doesn’t like, he sends it back!) Many moments of combat and comradeship radiate a hallucinatory intensity that surpasses ordinary visual realism. The scenes are tautly acted, the dialogue terse and emblematic; the sounds are crisp and the emotions raw. Combat sequences are precisely choreographed – sometimes unnaturally speeded up or slowed – as in a trance. Lushly colored images highlight the strange beauty of battle. The heightened emotion and symbolic mise en scène of melodrama here serve the historical record: as veterans from many wars report, these are the kinds of memories that soldiers share only among themselves of the time when they felt most truly alive. In The Construction of Memory in Interwar France (1999), historian Daniel J. Sherman distinguishes between the unmediated perceptions and fragmentary memories held by individual soldiers on the one hand, and on the other, official, collective representations generated more deliberately over time. Sherman argues that social memory helps create and naturalize a consensus version of events, making it appear inevitable. The period after the First World War saw the need to bring together divergent memory groups in order to forge a common understanding of the past that could reconstruct and reunify the nation. Public mourning and speeches, monuments, and public rituals are widely shared forms of memory. Such commemorations revolve around the soldiers’ sacrifice, and yet paradoxically, the unique and private nature of each soldier’s trauma – what gives him

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 175

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

176  bertrand tavernier a claim on the country’s gratitude – is felt to be ‘incommensurable,’ that is, fundamentally impossible to share. Thus, as Sherman points out, memory divides as much as it unites, and this is all the more true when it comes to bridging the gulf that separates the fighting men on the front lines from civilian populations. This paradox must be overcome in order for national memory to coalesce. Sherman’s analysis here parallels Rousso’s designation of the period immediately following the Occupation as ‘unfinished mourning.’ As it was the focus of the mode rétro, the personal and cultural work of constructing memory is at the heart of both La Vie et rien d’autre and Capitaine Conan. Both films take us back to that unstable moment of post-war anomie, before a consensus version of events has emerged to institutionalize their meaning. Each soldier’s experience is meaningful in the context of his particular background and rank, social class and personal experience of war. Conan, the proletarian recruit, is promoted to Captain, and although pleased and a bit abashed, he still considers himself a warrior. (Sherman notes that use of the term ‘poilu’ disappears above the rank of Captain.) Norbert, though a Lieutenant, sees the war through the lens of his education. Thus on the train at war’s end, he is able to orient himself by recognizing Sofia and Bucharest. The others look at the sun and wonder why they are traveling in the wrong direction. At officers’ mess, we share Conan’s alienation from his superiors, whose behavior appears buffoonish and driven by abstractions: the aristocratic de Sève, for example, holds to a moralistic and heroic ideal of honor that demands the exemplary execution for cowardice of Jean Ehrlane, a frail and terrified young volunteer. Conan and Dellaplane express the frustrated rage of those who do the dirty work of war against the incomprehension of the upper military hierarchy, the government, and the public at home. Dellaplane rails against the press, politicians, and families who refuse to hear about the realities of war, clinging instead to reassuring, romanticized inventions. From such fragmented perspectives must be fashioned an official narrative of the war that can serve as a national institution. In both films, Tavernier and Cosmos have created characters whose suffering is exacerbated because their situation prevents them from finding closure: Dellaplane’s job requires him to remain immersed in the war’s destruction, even while the country has begun the business of healing. The Balkan war prevents Conan’s group from enjoying

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 176

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

tavernier’s historiography  177 what historian Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau calls ‘l’économie morale de la reconnaissance’ (La Vie et rien d’autre, DVD interview): the morale-building rituals of homecoming and the national expressions of gratitude, including ceremonies and speeches, parades, medals, and monuments, which would constitute a rite of passage into peacetime. In any case, Conan’s psychological makeup prevents him from ever finding (or wanting) an exit from the battlefield (Capitaine Conan, DVD interview, bonus disc). While, like Conan, Dellaplane, Irène de Courtil, Alice, and the unnamed families of the dead in La Vie et rien d’autre mourn privately, several secondary narratives target with ferocious irony what Sherman calls ‘the emergence of commemoration’ (1999: 1–12). In one side plot, Dellaplane’s military and governmental superiors demand imperiously that he provide an ‘unknown’ (and certifiably French) corpse to be buried under the Arc de Triomphe, with an eternal flame and a grand national apotheosis, complete with ceremonial speeches full of mystifying mumbo-jumbo. Dellaplane understandably rejects this order, for to consign one casualty to eternal anonymity is contrary to his mission. For him, there are no unknown soldiers, only those not yet identified. By contrast, private memory infiltrates the film in many guises: Cosmos drew details from his father’s and brothers’ service in the Grande Guerre, and Dellaplane uses Noiret’s own father’s boots, medals, and mess kit. And although the exact characters and situations are invented, La Vie et rien d’autre, like Capitaine Conan, is based on intensive historical research. Audoin-Rouzeau, who co-directs the Historial de la Grande Guerre, a museum and research center at Péronne near Verdun, enthusiastically attests to the film’s accuracy. A second comic side plot has Dellaplane encountering a commercial sculptor euphoric at the prospect of the hefty commissions offered for designing municipal monuments to the dead. So many towns, he exults, and so many dead! Like the proposed national monument, these government-mandated local memorials, sculpted following traditional esthetic ideals and inscribed with pompous and abstract discourses, are anathema to Dellaplane, who naturally reacts with the outraged derision that the Tavernier-Noiret duo regularly reserves for bureaucratic hypocrisies. Dellaplane makes no room for abstractions, as he doggedly works at snatching individuals back from physical and psychological wreckage. He has nothing but contempt for memorials. In this, he might agree with Art Spiegelman (2004), who remarked

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 177

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

178  bertrand tavernier about the terrorist attack on New York on 11 September 2001, that there’s nothing like commemoration to help people forget. The films contest official historical discourses even as they take shape. One of the more scathing scenes of Capitaine Conan takes place in the Balkans on Armistice Day, with a military envoy spouting pompous speeches of victorious national celebration. The ceremony takes place in a downpour, and the officer’s recital of his hyperbolic peroration stumbles badly, as the rain erases the words on his prepared script. Meanwhile, the soldiers, whose war is decidedly not over and most of whom are suffering from dysentery, break ranks and disappear one by one toward the latrines. Few remain to hear the band’s embarrassingly discordant rendition of ‘La Marseillaise.’ Similarly, Irène de Courtil must come to terms with the unwelcome news that her in-law’s factory was spared bombing thanks to her husband’s and his father’s secret collusion – what would in a later war be called ‘collaboration’ – with the Germans. Tavernier explains that the sets of La Vie et rien d’autre were improvised (‘détournés’) in order to represent the makeshift conditions: Dellaplane’s office is located in a converted theater, a church does triple duty as hospital and cabaret, and a disaffected factory serves as a hotel (La Vie et rien d’autre, DVD interview). Détournement is the film’s rhetorical strategy, too, as it reframes official discourses and shows how ‘history’ came to distort and mask the incommensurable realities of experience. Among the earliest forms of commemoration Sherman discusses, the ‘battlefield pilgrimage’ is also illustrated in both films. Dellaplane looks on as the families of the fallen arrive to sift through piles of salvaged helmets and drinking cups, rings, photographs, diaries that might help recover the trace of a loved one lost at the site of a railroad tunnel explosion. Conan visits the battlefield, too, to reconstruct the engagement that resulted in Ehrlane’s court martial. Accompanied by Norbert and the chaplain, Conan leaps from one rocky outcropping to another, animatedly re-enacting the scene. The three visitors represent as many approaches to processing the past: the prosecution (Norbert), the defense (Conan), and the spiritual guide or jury (the chaplain). The scene shows how a diversity of perspectives produces different understandings of the war. By taking us back to the period before the war is even over, the films walk us through the process of inscribing history. Sherman and others have noted the extent to which the ‘home

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 178

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

tavernier’s historiography  179 front’ was figured as feminine. In both films, this key trope exposes historiography’s intersection with melodrama. When Mme Ehrlane or Irène de Courtil arrives in the war zone, the gap between military and civilian seems wider than that between enemy armies. With the former’s impassioned description of her child’s fragility and the latter’s diatribe against the military men’s ‘club,’ each woman defines war as a crucible for patriarchal masculinity. In the process, each delivers a heartrending denunciation of war from a home-front perspective soldiers cannot afford to share. Historian Mary Louise Roberts (1994) outlines how men and women experienced different forms of post-war anomie. She emphasizes how after the Armistice, women resisted pressures to return to their prewar roles. As if to illustrate this point, Tavernier’s Alice loses her teaching job to a returning soldier and seeks work in a bakery. Irène abandons her romanticized notions of her soldier husband and eventually leaves for Wisconsin. Both sexes were changed by the war and had to seek new models of masculinity and femininity. Significantly, Madame Ehrlane does not speak at all in Vercel’s novel, making her presence in the movie an important shift in the direction of a feminine and anti-heroic ­perspective. Just as five years after the events of L’Horloger de Saint-Paul, Michel Descombes reappears in Une semaine de vacances transformed by his experience (and Anne Torrini might be an older Liliane), we might imagine Irène de Courtil as an older, disillusioned Irène Ladmiral. Age, along with the catastrophic events that were only a premonition in Un dimanche à la campagne, have made her brittle, but she remains romantic, impetuous, and vulnerable. She retains her iconic telephone and automobile (a Hispano-Suiza this time, and with a chauffeur). Her missing husband is perhaps that mysterious lover, whose affections once again prove fickle. In keeping with the times, her independence has acquired a more outspoken, feminist tone, and she continues to revolt against what she is expected to be and believe. The years since 1912 have taken their toll, but she still strives to live her life as she had dreamed it. Her evolution in the film suggests she will reconnect with her lost optimism. And of course Sabine Azéma plays both roles.29 Together, Irene and Alice demonstrate the challenges inherent in the post-war construction of femininity and of memory. 29 Full disclosure requires revelation that Irène’s maiden name is apparently Santelloz. A pity. Nevertheless, her husband’s middle name is Gonzague (Tavernier 1990).

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 179

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

180  bertrand tavernier Their divergent perspectives are incompatible, since they remember different men, who turn out to be one and the same. The most important contribution Capitaine Conan and La Vie et rien d’autre make to the study of the post-war reconstruction of gender, however, lies in the films’ portrayal of how the war changed men. Dellaplane admits to Irène that he is ‘un homme de 1913,’ which explains his old-fashioned courtoisie and his ignorance of the new fashions in behavior and dress. To ward off the horrors of war and the massive frustrations and contradictions of his job, he has walled off his heart. But during the course of the film, he rejects the process of what Susan Jeffords (1989) calls post-war ‘remasculinization’ in favor of love and life (and nothing but), and he is able to transform how he conceives of his duty and even his identity. The film’s title has several meanings: a rejection of death, certainly, but also – mediated by a poetic line by Paul Eluard: ‘le bonheur et rien d’autre’ – a modest acceptance that the war has left him his life and little else. Supported by Noiret’s immense talent, the film shows Dellaplane’s itinerary from traumatic numbing through mourning to a new vision of his possibilities as a man (plate 12). That this intimate transformation contributes to the film’s social critique alerts us to the presence of the melodramatic imagination. The characters Tavernier likes best are those who are heroic in their stubborn revolt against heroism, which they see as an invention designed to serve the powerful. He takes the side of those who resist received ‘truths,’ especially when these are manifestly destructive or nonsensical. Dellaplane and Norbert take their jobs as a mission and eventually become an annoyance to those in power. They share with their director an anarchist streak that the humble Descombes comes to value, and that is even disturbingly present in Bouvier. In all these cases, the character rails against official institutional discourses and hypocrisies that mask social and historical realities. Outside familiar visual clichés, traditional heroic myths become unfamiliar and strange. Tavernier relished the Balkan terrain that distanced Capitaine Conan from classic war movies and linked it instead to another favorite genre: ‘I was dealing with landscape which was totally different from all the World War stories. It was closer to a […] landscape belonging to the Western’ (West and West 1988: 21). Audoin-Rouzeau verifies the historical accuracy of the decors, calling the Balkans a ‘demodernized’ front without tanks or sophisticated

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 180

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

tavernier’s historiography  181 communications systems. Instead of muddy trenches, there were trails cut into rocky mountains. For scriptwriter Cosmos, too, it was important to work outside geographical and narrative conventions. Wary of the heroic posturing typical of war movies, he wanted to emphasize ‘non pas la guerre, mais les consequences’ (La Vie et rien d’autre, DVD interview).30 After the collapse of heroic master-narratives, both films’ protagonists grapple with a ‘loss of the sacred.’ Dellaplane’s 350,000 missing or unidentified men represent a trauma so apocalyptic that it obliterates any possibility of moral intelligibility. God falls silent, leaving no signposts. Tavernier’s preference for filming in medias res, without establishing shots or voiceover, serves him well here to show the men’s immersion in their task to the exclusion of its meaning. The search for a missing husband or fiancé or son becomes allegorical, as the enormity of the loss – of life, of meaning – becomes apparent. Irene eventually realizes she has been seeking a phantom, and that her memories are less idyllic than she had claimed. She admits that it is the quest itself that gives her life meaning. Tavernier’s favorite characters are those who resist mythmaking. Descombes rejects explanations that would transform his son into a hero or a monster. The Regent witnesses the unraveling of the beliefs (the narratives) that justify monarchy. Dellaplane is outraged by official attempts to institutionalize a tale of heroic martyrdom. As defender and then as prosecutor, Norbert tries to extract a true story from tangles of misinformation and prejudice. These characters are sympathetic precisely because they are lucid about the world’s resistance to meaning. They invent no divine figure that would lend reassuring but contrived coherence to their fragmentary experiences. Glory itself provokes suspicion, because it masks stupidity and the risk of another war. In Tavernier’s demystifying tales, the real villains are institutions, including the institution of military masculinity and its supporting narratives. In both films, the loss of moral intelligibility is once again expres­ s­ ed through the melodramatic figure of the mute. We first encounter Dellaplane as he is snapping photos of his patients. The mute photos will illustrate charts that set out the body type, eye and hair color, and other features that will ‘speak’ to family members hoping to ­iden­­tify them. Dellaplane repeatedly falls speechless when called 30 ‘not war, but its consequences.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 181

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

182  bertrand tavernier upon to articulate his grief. But the mutes of La Vie et rien d’autre are above all the soldiers themselves – the dead, along with the mutilated, wounded, deaf, dumb, and amnesiac. These mute soldiers demonstrate the incommunicability of the war experience, the disappearance of moral intelligibility, and the dilemma of historiography: their personal memory is gone, and official memory has yet to be constructed. These literal mutes are themselves the prototypes for the statues on the monuments aux morts, and Dellaplane is the grim Pygmalion who would bring them (back) to life. The film’s proliferation of mutes testifies to the film’s central subject: the extreme loss of meaning in a post-sacred universe. Conan ends his war in a heavily symbolic shot that is almost a freeze frame. Conan leads a last skirmish against several boatloads of attacking Bolsheviks. Taken by surprise, the men hastily assume positions facing the river, returning fire and lobbing grenades. As he runs toward the enemy, elatedly shouting orders right and left, Conan is in his element. He retrieves a rifle from a dead comrade, removes its bayonet, and plunges into the river to engage hand-tohand combat. Norbert shouts that the enemy is in retreat, but Conan is unable to stop. At the height of his murderous frenzy, he turns toward the camera, and his eyes meet Norbert’s (and ours). His face is smeared with dirt and blood, a snapshot of insanity. Then still shouting hoarsely, he turns and plunges forward into the river and his own heart of darkness. That is the last we see of Conan the warrior. The close-up on his face functions like a tableau, beyond words, where violence and narrative run aground. Conan is intoxicated by the archaic and alluring Medusa of bloodlust that takes away humanity and turns men to stone. This final and terrible vision of military manhood is indistinguishable from suicide. The film then ends with two post-war epilogues that highlight the impossibility of ever communicating the truth about war. As Norbert bends to touch the fallen Ehrlane, shot from behind (possibly by Conan), the scene fades to the boy’s mother holding a formulaic letter of condolence, read aloud by Norbert’s voiceover. This fade takes us from the reality of battle directly to a manifestly false, if consoling, heroic discourse of honor and sacrifice. Tavernier’s characters are all multi-faceted. There are few purely heroic or villainous individuals. This helps explain why so many of his films feature complementary pairs of men: Descombes and

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 182

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

tavernier’s historiography  183 the police detective; the Regent, Pontcallec, and Dubois. Dellaplane evolves over time from one model of manhood to another, while Capitaine Conan presents contrasting types embodied by two separate characters. Norbert conforms less well to the heroic model of military masculinity in the first place, and like novelist Vercel, he weathers the identity crises of war and resumes his teaching career. Even in the thick of things, his class and education lead him to doubt his choices, whereas Conan benefits, until the war is over, from the assurance of unquestioning fervor. This is what makes him a brilliant soldier. De Sève, the consummate aristocratic officer, offers a third and more abstract version of righteous military and moral masculinity, rooted in class privilege. As a small-town shop owner, though, Conan is less equipped to find a suitable peacetime identity. Instead, he remains locked in re-enactment and memory. He has outlived himself, and like Lucien Cordier, he considers himself already dead. Focusing on the French film industry during the German O ­ ccupation, Laissez-passer also juxtaposes two complementary protagonists: a scriptwriter, Jean Aurenche (Denis Podalydès), and a fledgling director, Jean Devaivre (Jacques Gamblin). Devaivre supports his family working in the German controlled Continental studios, the job providing a façade for his activities in the Resistance. He has made his choice, which he carries out with intuitive and visceral commitment and without moral doubt. Aurenche, on the other hand, refuses on principle to work for Continental, even though it might be a useful strategy. He is more sociable, seductive, impulsive, and a worrier. The film focuses not on the classic opposition between Resisters and Collaborators, then, but instead shows two men, each heroic (or anti-heroic) in his own way, as they engage in different modes of Resistance. Instead of realism, narrative coherence, and generic consistency, Laissez-passer again mobilizes the resources of melodrama. The film opens with two parallel scenes that take place during a bombing raid: Aurenche exploits the confusion to advance his seduction of a lovely but flighty actress (Charlotte Kady), while Devaivre and his wife fight their way through chaos to rescue their baby. Comedy and pathos combine to create a sense of peril and suspense within a recognizable historical situation. What is less plausible is the ‘non-classical’ narrative itself. A strange concoction of burlesque scenes juxtaposed with high moral drama and moralizing parable-like exposition with

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 183

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

184  bertrand tavernier lyrical contemplative passages leaves the spectator dizzy and breathless, caught between fear, outrage, and laughter. It’s quite a ride! As usual, Tavernier’s melodramatic imagination circles around an anguished question that lies at the heart of all his historical fictions: how to cope with the demands and uncertainties of modernity. All his historical figures – whether real or invented – attempt to navigate a reality that is post-sacred. The characters react in a variety of ways to the disappearance of divine guidance. They are torn between despair and optimism, ambivalent about whether the future is an opportunity or a threat. This fundamental ambivalence is another reason characters appear in pairs. While the romantic visionary spirit is carried forward by enthusiasm, the more ‘reasonable,’ practical impulse refuses to be duped. These are two sides of the same questioning sensibility. As Douin notes, ‘Tavernier est moderne, puisqu’il doute.’ (1997: 11).31 Uncertainty characterizes both melodrama and modernity. This is how Tavernier chooses to use melodrama as historiography. Cosmos described Laissez-passer as a fiction in which almost all the characters really existed (Laissez-passer press pamphlet). Many of the characters and events in the historical fictions are documented, and the portrait of the film industry, although partial (in both senses of the word, as the film’s detractors were quick to point out), is accurate. Even the film’s hybrid plot suggests authenticity by giving us the story of Continental and its denizens in all its unprocessed absurdity. The well-wrought plot is, after all, a representation of experience after it has taken on coherent rhetorical shape. Tavernier describes how he went about developing the story of Laissez-passer: je suis parti sans idée préconçue et j’ai commencé à explorer une période et un milieu. Ce qui compte quand on tourne un film d’époque, c’est moins d’accumuler les sources et les renseignements que de se poser les bonnes questions. Celles dont on ne connaît pas, a priori, les réponses.32

While once again bringing to mind Zola’s roman experimental, this statement certainly sounds like the modus operandi of a documenta 31 ‘Tavernier is modern, because he doubts.’ 32 ‘Without preconceived ideas, I set out to explore a period and a milieu. When making a period film, it’s less important to accumulate sources and information than to ask the right questions: those whose answers one doesn’t know in advance.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 184

12/10/2011 16:25

tavernier’s historiography  185

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

rist. Tavernier continues to explain what kinds of questions he found most compelling: Je ne voulais pas parler du voyage à Berlin des acteurs et actrices, ni pointer du doigt l’attitude de certaines vedettes: je ne voulais surtout pas distribuer des bons ou des mauvais points. J’avais plutôt envie de comprendre, de découvrir quels étaient les choix auxquels des gens moins connus […] étaient confrontés. Quelle était la frontière entre faire son métier et se déshonorer, travailler et collaborer, survivre et se compromettre? Ces questions, je me les posais aussi: comment me serais-je comporté dans de telles circonstances?33 (Laissez-passer press pamphlet)

Tavernier’s documentaries are continuous with his historical fictions in that they ask these same questions. They develop the approach he has used all along in his fictions: set up a situation, approach characters in their native habitat, and follow what happens. Documentaries have neither predetermined endings nor necessary generic or rhetorical forms. Quite possibly, documentary is the mode he has been looking for since the beginning of his career. It is thus to this final dimension of Tavernier’s work that we now turn.

References Baudrillard, Jean (1986), Amérique, Paris, Gallimard. Bazin, André (1951), ‘Le Fils de d’Artagnan,’ Radio-Cinéma, 7 January. Bazin, André (1971), What Is Cinema? Vol. 2, trans. Hugh Gray, Berkeley, University of California Press. Brooks, Peter (1976), The Melodramatic Imagination, New Haven, Yale University Press. Condamine, Pierre de (1973), Pontcallec: une étrange conspiration au coeur de la Bretagne, Cahélais Saint-Molf, Guérande, Bretagne, Le Bâteau qui vire. Elsaesser, Thomas (1991), ‘Tales of Sound and Fury: Observations on the Family Melodrama,’ in Marcia Landy (ed.), Imitations of Life: A Reader on Film and Television Melodrama, Detroit, Wayne State University Press. Engelbert, Manfred (1989), ‘Le Discours historique de Bertrand Tavernier dans Que la fête commence,’ Les Cahiers de la cinémathèque, 51–52. 33 ‘I didn’t want to talk about certain actors’ and actresses’ trip to Berlin, nor accuse certain stars; I especially wanted to avoid distributing good or bad points. Instead, I wanted to understand, to discover the choices that lesser known figures confronted. Where was the boundary between doing one’s job and dishonoring oneself, working and collaborating, survival and compromise? I asked myself those questions too: what would I have done in those same circumstances?’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 185

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

186  bertrand tavernier Foucault, Michel (1973), Moi, Pierre Rivière, ayant égorgé ma mère, ma soeur et mon frère …, Paris, Gallimard. Greene, Naomi (1999), Landscapes of Loss: The National Past in Postwar French Cinema, Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press. Jeffords, Susan (1989), The Remasculinization of America: Gender and the Vietnam War, Bloomington, Indiana University Press. Le Goff, Jacques (1987), ‘Un Document d’âme,’ Le Monde, 12 December. Lewis, W. H. (1961), The Scandalous Regent: A Life of Philippe, Duc d’Orléans 1674–1723 and of His Family, New York, Harcourt Brace and World. Mercer, John and Martin Shingler (2004), Melodrama: Genre, Style, Sensibility, London and New York, Wallflower Press. Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey (1991), ‘Minelli and Melodrama,’ in Marcia Landy (ed.), Imitations of Life: A Reader on Film and Television Melodrama, Detroit, Wayne State University Press. Piazzo, Philippe (1994), ‘Bertrand Tavernier tourne La Fille de d’Artagnan,’ Télérama. Poindron, Eric (1994), Riccardo Freda: un Pirate à la camera, Lyon, Institut Lumière/Actes Sud. Polito, Robert (1995), Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson, New York: Knopf. Roberts, Mary Louise (1994), Civilization without Sexes: Reconstructing Gender in Postwar France, 1917–1927, Chicago, University of Chicago Press. Rousso, Henry (1987), Le Syndrome de Vichy de 1944 à nos jours, Paris, Seuil. Saint-Simon, Louis de Rouvray, duc de (1925–26), Anecdotes, scènes et portraits extraits des Mémoires du Duc de Saint-Simon, Vol. 2 (1709–1715) and Vol. 3 (1715–1723), Paris, J. Tallandier. Sherman, Daniel J. (1999), The Construction of Memory in Interwar France, Chicago, University of Chicago Press. Singer, Ben (2001), Melodrama and Modernity: Early Sensational Cinema and Its Contexts, New York, Columbia University Press. Spiegelman, Art (2004), In the Shadow of No Towers, New York, Pantheon Books. Tavernier, Bertrand (1990), ‘La Vie et rien d’autre’ (script), Avant-Scène Cinéma, 388. Tavernier, René and Henri Garet (1976), Le Juge et l’assassin, Paris, Presses de la Cité de Paris. Tavernier, Tiffany (2000), Dans la nuit aussi le ciel, Paris, Seuil. Vercel, Roger (1934), Capitaine Conan, Paris, Albin Michel. Vincendeau, Ginette (1991). ‘Family Plots: The Fathers and Daughters of French Cinema,’ Sight and Sound, 1: 11. West, Dennis and Joan M. West (1988), ‘Filming a Forgotten War: An Interview with Bertrand Tavernier,’ Cinéaste, 203. See also Select Bibliography.

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 186

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

5 The documentary gaze

This chapter will examine the predilection for documentary modes of representation that runs through Tavernier’s career from its beginnings. We have seen that even within the artifices of fiction, documentary effects can be produced by means of extensive background research, or by inviting actors to contribute their own decor and speak in their own idiom, or by intervening directly or obliquely in public debates. His avowed aspiration, inherited from the Lumière brothers, to ‘montrer le monde au monde’ means that Tavernier’s cinema does not fall easily into a clear fiction/documentary dichotomy. Rather, he navigates generic parameters so as to privilege what we might call his documentary gaze on the world. All films are documentary in some way, if only by ‘documenting’ what is in front of the camera (barring special effects, which Tavernier abhors). At the same time, no film is purely documentary: scenes are inevitably framed and narrative, conceptual, and visual continuity constructed. Although the genre is notoriously difficult to define, documentaries have traditionally been distinguished from fiction by a number of traits such as lower budgets and production values. They often use hand-held cameras and light-weight, portable equipment to record, traditionally in grainy black-and-white, raw fragments of undigested reality, structured only afterwards by editing and narration rather than beforehand by scripting. Their mise en scène, too, is presumed to be ‘found,’ not staged, and features real people playing themselves. When one or more of these features is modified, a film’s documentary thrust can easily be missed. Despite efforts by scholars and theorists to define and circumscribe the genre, a fictional image has the same reality status (or lack of it) as a documentary one, and

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 187

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

188  bertrand tavernier borders between documentary and fiction have been permeable since the origins of cinema. We should therefore bear in mind Bill Nichols’s description of documentary ‘not as a special use of the film medium that affords a “privileged” view of reality, but as a genre’ among others (Nichols 1985: 259). For Tavernier, ‘document’ is a verb. The films considered here aim to shine a spotlight on social ills, sometimes with the explicit hope of provoking change. Sometimes, his films offer silenced constituencies a chance to speak, in either fictional or documentary voices. Elsewhere, he mobilizes his talents and resources (and his outrage) toward raising public consciousness. In several instances, the films have indeed contributed to bringing about changes in public policy. But as always, his activist and sometimes didactic bent is informed by deeply felt commitments and by his love of characters. I­nseparable from his civic motivations is a desire for understanding that is both intellectual and emotional. It would seem that he is interested in everything, and the research behind his films is massive, probing, and personal. Asked in an interview why he makes movies, he explained that he sought to reveal emotions and find answers, even extremely provisional ones (Nils Tavernier, ‘making of’ Capitain Conan DVD, 1996). The nature and style of his curiosity draw the films close to journalism. Tavernier’s early experience as a film critic and press attaché understandably inflects his work as a director. Nevertheless, he made seven feature films before venturing into documentaries. When he did, commissions and support from television were an important motivator. His documentary filmography began with Mississippi Blues, co-produced by Antenne 2 and released in 1984. Then in December of that year, Channel 3 ran Tavernier’s documentary on surrealist luminary Philippe Soupault. This interview was commissioned for a series entitled ‘Témoins’ conceived to celebrate major intellectual figures of the twentieth century. Inviting Jean Aurenche to conduct the conversations with Soupault was an inspired choice: the two men express divergent perspectives on shared memories such as the First World War, the birth of Surrealism, the Communist Party, and on common acquaintances such as Guillaume Apollinaire and Aurenche’s one-time brother-in-law, Max Ernst. All this and more made for a lively and informative show that was three times the length of the others in the series.

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 188

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

the documentary gaze  189 In 1988 came Lyon, le regard intérieur, also a television commission. Then La Guerre sans nom, distributed to movie-houses in 1992, was composed of four hours of interviews with Algerian war veterans. Another work for television, De l’autre côté du Périph’ was shot hastily in 1997 in a housing project outside Paris, in immediate response to current debates surrounding immigration and integration. Similarly indignant and timely, Histoires de vies brisées: Les “Double-Peine” de Lyon (2001) documented a hunger strike in Lyon protesting the de facto double jeopardy inflicted on legal immigrants threatened with deportation following minor prison sentences. Tavernier has also participated in collective compilations to benefit specific organizations. He directed a three-minute short on Myanmar for Contre L’Oubli on behalf of Amnesty International (1991), and a contribution to Lumières sur un massacre (1997) for Handicap International, an organization dedicated to abolishing landmines. This second short was produced by Little Bear, as was Nils Tavernier’s documentary La Drogue, dis-leur (1993), a project supported by the Ministries of Education and Culture, along with several anti-drug organizations. Taken together, these directorial and production efforts constitute a s­ ignificant corpus. In addition to straightforward documentaries, a reportorial preoccupation is also on display in the fiction films. Journalists appear in various guises in L’Horloger de Saint-Paul: a pruriently intrusive newspaperman appears uninvited in Descombes’s apartment, and a local radio reporter urges the anxious father to broadcast an appeal to his fugitive son. Both these figures afford moments of reflection on the powers and pitfalls of journalism. In Des enfants gâtés, filmmaker Bernard Rougerie stumblingly fails to respond to a journalist who confronts him about the social usefulness of his art. Like Rougerie’s wife, the protagonist of Une semaine de vacances, Laurence, probes the challenges facing teachers of young children, a concern that will take center stage almost twenty years later, in Ça commence aujourd’hui. There and elsewhere, the films’ perspective is that of an investigative reporter. One reviewer called Des enfants gâtés a ‘film-témoignage’ (Rouge, 7 September 1977).1 That similar comments abound in the reviews of these films testifies to their public reception as a form of advocacy or reportage. And yet these and other films also evince a wariness of journalism that Tavernier will explore more thoroughly in La Mort en direct, whose protagonist is a journalist. 1 a ‘witness-film.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 189

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

190  bertrand tavernier Since the early 1990s, Tavernier’s perspective is increasingly reportorial. A number of works can hardly be classified as documentaries, but they are not entirely fictional either. L.627, L’Appât, Ça commence aujourd’hui, and Holy Lola scrutinize crises in the respective realms of narcotics police, juvenile delinquency, a school in a poor community, and international adoption. These films harness the investigative fervor of the journalist responsible for observing details and respecting facts. They rely on the scholar’s meticulously researched understanding of context. And they mobilize the storyteller’s creative imagination to frame the material compellingly enough to engage spectators’ emotions. These films combine the experimental, ‘scientific’ procedures of Zola’s novel cycle, Les Rougon-Macquart, with the social engagement of ‘J’accuse,’ Zola’s intervention as a journalist on behalf of Dreyfus. Similarly, the filmmaker’s blend of curiosity, invention, and outrage fuel his drive toward documentary. The resulting hybrid genre, which we might call ‘investigative drama,’ constitutes one of Tavernier’s lasting contributions to French cinema. Documentary modes of representation offer solutions to certain formal problems, too. Tavernier’s passion for documentary helps explain – and resolve – his perennial disregard for generic coherence and narrative continuity. In a recent interview, he decries the ‘tyrannies’ of plot and identification, explaining that he likes his heroes to be wrong sometimes, and to behave badly. For example, in L.627, his policeman protagonist, Lulu (actor Didier Besace), physically assaults a suspect he is interrogating. A lazy and more conventional alternative would have been to attribute this behavior to a sidekick cop. Tavernier’s choice prevents facile spectator identification and forces us instead to dismantle stereotypes and doubt received ideas about heroism. He also criticizes the ‘dictatorship’ of the happy ending. Where spectators might expect to go home with answers, he wants them to leave the theater with questions instead (Tavernier interview 2006). It is instructive, too, to keep in mind the appeal of jazz as a model for Tavernier’s documentary sensibility. Motivated by the passion of the moment and welcoming the hybrid and the unpredictable, documentaries must be captured in one take, without rehearsal, so that they are the event they record. As Jarrett points out, real jazz is never a copy, because the present moment of the performance is always a new discovery. The same is true of documentaries. All of these preferences mesh more smoothly with documentary open-endedness than with

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 190

12/10/2011 16:25

the documentary gaze  191

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

the dictates of the well-wrought story. Both a rabble-rouser and a storyteller, Tavernier seeks to guide his spectators’ gaze on the world. Among his mentors is Marcel Ophüls, who often declares, despite his own films’ polemical content and documentary form, that he is first and foremost an entertainer. Volker Schlöndorff, Tavernier’s old school chum and fellow film director, puts it this way: [Bertrand] ne cherchera ni l’originalité, ni la perfection (inhumaine), ni la mode, ni l’idéologie. […] Avant tout c’est un conteur […] Chez lui, tout est concret: il est républicain. Impossible de séparer l’homme de la société, pas besoin d’être idéologue pour autant. Passionné par la politique, il se méfie du militant. Il ne se fie qu’au vécu. (Schlöndorff 1984: 7)2

This approach has met with considerable success among critics and the public at large and has garnered many awards. Concentrated in the 1990s and since, these films apparently satisfy an appetite for documentary modes that is very much in the spirit of the times. We have also seen that Tavernier’s work is self-conscious and self-reflexive in its alertness to the implications of formal choices. Long takes, point of view, editing rhythms, composition, genre all produce effects that are narrative, emotional, ethical, and ideological. He is thoroughly in sympathy with the famous dictum, attributed to Godard, that a tracking shot is a matter of morality. He is especially emphatic about the ethics of point of view. In one interview, he used Capitaine Conan and L.627 as examples: I have always stuck to the same principle, which is, never cross the line, never show the point of view of the people you are fighting. L.627 is told almost entirely from the POV of the cops, never the dealers. And in Conan, you’re always in the point of view of the French soldiers, never the Bulgarians or the Germans. I think if you cross this line you must have a really good reason. [… ] I prefer my principle, which is to stay with one camp and never to show the other camp. […] I think it’s more interesting, I think it’s more honest. (Treneer 2009)

2 [Bertrand] ‘seeks neither originality nor (superhuman) perfection, nor fashion nor ideology. Above all, he’s a storyteller. With him, everything is concrete. It’s impossible to separate man from society, but there’s no need to be an ideologue about it. Passionate about politics, he’s wary of militancy. He trusts only lived experience.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 191

12/10/2011 16:25

192  bertrand tavernier This attentiveness to the ethics of form has meant that many of his works – including especially the two films we are about to examine – can be read as moral tales or parables about filmmaking.

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Documentary ethics: La Mort en direct/Deathwatch In his 1974 science fiction novel, The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe, David G. Compton imagined an overzealous instance of investigative journalism. Tavernier adapted the novel with writer David Rayfiel (who would also co-script Autour de minuit), giving it the title La Mort en direct. (Tavernier’s first venture in English, the film bears the alternate title Death Watch.) Katherine (Romy Schneider) produces computer-generated novels for a living in a futuristic society that has bureaucratized most problems and tidily hidden the rest from view. Personality is adjustable by medication. Marriage licenses are sensibly issued for renewable five-year terms. There are no crimes of passion. In fact, there are no passions (‘those things we used to write novels about,’ says Katherine). Roddie (Harvey Keitel), a reporter for NTV, agrees to have cameras surgically implanted in his eyes, so that whatever he sees can be broadcast live (‘en direct’). He knows he risks blindness if he closes his eyes for even a minute, but he nevertheless eagerly takes on his most challenging assignment yet: witnessing and recording the death of one carefully chosen person for network transmission to a ‘pain-starved public.’ Although Katherine is healthy, her suggestibility makes her the perfect candidate for this macabre experiment. As Roddie watches/records from behind a one-way mirror, Katherine’s doctor informs her that she is dying from a rare, incurable disease. Although the diagnosis is fabricated, illness will be medically induced, and Katherine immediately begins to suffer the symptoms she has been told to expect. In rage and desperation, she agrees to sell her death for public consumption, but she soon repudiates her contract and flees. She fails to realize that Roddie, who befriends her as if by coincidence, is actually her betrayer. Although it is a fiction, its photojournalist protagonist shapes the film into a parable or meta-documentary. It shows the social implications of purveying images, and it offers opportunities for reflection about journalistic ethics. What is at stake in recording the lives of others and offering them for public display? What are the ­filmmaker’s

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 192

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

the documentary gaze  193 responsibilities to his subjects? What are the social, political, and psychological consequences of his gaze? How can the public’s right to know be measured against the right to privacy? At what point does legitimate ‘news’ become a voyeuristic commodification of other people’s suffering? What are the moral repercussions of aesthetic choices such as point of view, framing, narration, editing, and genre? La Mort en direct ups the ante on all these questions, making the creation and marketing of images into a matter of life and death. Tavernier highlights differences between Roddie’s mission and his own, and the film offers varying opinions about the production and reception of images. Justifications outlined by Roddie’s boss, Vincent Ferriman (Harry Dean Stanton), seem seductively persuasive: he aims to provide a public service by breaking taboos that normally mask illness and death behind preventive technology or antiseptic hospital doors. Katherine herself condemns the network’s greed and Roddie’s unthinking complicity. Roddie’s ex-wife, Tracey, finds the whole undertaking ‘obscene’: where sex has been rendered banal and death is hidden, death becomes ‘the new pornography.’ Roddie’s own position is complicated by his growing respect and affection for Katherine. Finally, he flings his flashlight away and deliberately closes his eyes, knowingly blinding himself and ending an assignment he now recognizes as morally repugnant. With her network predators closing in to capture her death scene, Katherine chooses to die privately by her own hand, thus depriving the public of its spectacle. As a parable about the stakes and consequences of voyeurism for profit, La Mort en direct reveals the director’s own values through the way the film differs from the television series it portrays. In contrast to Ferriman’s sensationalizing approach – which makes a frankly prurient spectacle of ‘the ultimate adventure’ death is advertised to be on its billboards (plate 13) – Tavernier’s La Mort en direct keeps its distance from Katherine’s illness and death. In fact, it takes her side. While Roddie’s cinematography follows the conventions of documenting the real (synchronous sound, long takes, the mobile cameras in his eyes), Tavernier’s film is conspicuously script-dependent. Instead of offering unmediated access to images of Katherine’s symptoms, Roddie’s observation of her physical decline is repeatedly displaced onto the dialogue. Meanwhile, Romy Schneider remains as lovely as ever to the end. These choices could be considered flaws: Tavernier’s characteristic discretion undercuts the drama and renders

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 193

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

194  bertrand tavernier the film less gripping (while more lyrical) than the novel. From the opening sequences, the film is already drawing back from what Roddie doesn’t yet know: that he is robbing Katherine of her dignity and humanity by spying on her. Reducing the impact of Roddie’s brutal self-discovery makes his conversion less dramatic, but it underscores the differences between what the film depicts and what it does (its performative dimension). Treated thematically in the novel, this question of voyeurism is all the more compelling in a film, which is already inevitably about watching. In La Mort en direct, narrative and visual ‘point of view’ are literal. Roddie the camera/man, with his prurient gaze, generates the story while standing in for both the filmmaker and his audience. ‘I watched her in long shot,’ Roddie remarks in the novel. ‘I needed some establishing shots.’ ‘I panned around the dormitory’ (Compton 1980: 132). Katherine flees the city in lyrical tracking shots across the Scottish landscape and finally to the sea, accompanied by Antoine Duhamel’s discordant and suspenseful music. The film’s strangeness comes from the eerie decor of its urban Glasgow setting, where architectural elegance is juxtaposed to urban decay. One can easily be lulled into allowing Roddie’s haunting images to justify his dubious quest. Like Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954), Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom (1960), and more recently, Michael Haneke’s Benny’s Video (1993), La Mort en direct makes us share the protagonist’s viewpoint. All four films correlate looking with murder. Tavernier is a great admirer and personal friend of British director Michael Powell, whom he considers a mentor and to whom he dedicated Daddy nostalgie. Powell’s Peeping Tom (French title: Le Voyeur) caused a huge scandal and effectively ended the filmmaker’s career. That film’s protagonist, Mark Lewis, lures women to his photographic studio and kills them in order to film their deaths. We would be mistaken, though, to conclude that Powell has simply made a movie about a sadist. Here is what Tavernier says about Peeping Tom: Mark Lewis, le ‘voyeur’ du film, représente le metteur en scène absolu, qui, comme tout vrai cinéaste, veut obtenir le plan définitif, celui qui calmera ses angoisses. Renonçant aux artifices de la direction d’acteurs, il sera amené pour mieux capter les affres de la peur à filmer la ‘mort en direct,’ à inventer le travelling ultime: celui où l’un des pieds de la caméra transformé en poignard rentre dans la gorge des ‘actrices’ qu’il filme et qui se voient mourir […] Variations

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 194

12/10/2011 16:25

the documentary gaze  195

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

v­ ertigineuses sur le cinéma, où l’on change continuellement de point de vue, où un cinéaste filme un autre cinéaste qui filme quelqu’un qui meurt en se voyant filmé. Le Voyeur, comme Fenêtre sur cour dont il partage la morale, implique dans ce jeu de miroirs le spectateur qui devient le véritable voyeur. (Douin 1997: 303)3

Similarly, when Roddie observes/films Katherine, he occupies a nexus where the three classic cinematic gazes converge: the character’s, the camera’s (the filmmaker’s), and the spectator’s. While Powell makes explicit his character’s perverse conflation of seduction with murder, that Ferriman chooses a woman for his experiment could easily pass unnoticed, because women have always been the mythical objects of choice for the artistic gaze. We only have to imagine Roddie assigned to film a man’s death instead in order to realize to what extent looking, heterosexual desire, and the potential for violence are bound together. The film’s treatment of voyeurism gains mythic resonance from the presence of several conspicuous allusions, among them Cupid and Psyche, Susanna and the Elders from the Biblical Book of Daniel, and the Freudian primal scene. And when Roddie deliberately blinds himself, his gesture repeats the paradigmatic drama of Oedipus. As in the Oedipus myth, only when Roddie finally takes responsibility for his crime can the community (including spectators) escape the nightmare. Like Oedipus, Roddie finally achieves insight, and his self-punishment is all the more apt because his has been a crime of looking. Roddie and his boss claim to bring death – the topic of their documentary – out of the closet and into public view, but in order to achieve this, they in fact commit murder. The stakes of filmmaking could hardly be higher. When the unemployed are put to work staffing state-sponsored protest marches, La Mort en direct, like David Compton’s novel, reflects the post-1968 disillusioned suspicion that even outrage has been co-opted and exploited for profit. The film also evokes debates 3 ‘Mark Lewis stands in for the absolute director who, like any true filmmaker, wants to get the perfect shot, the one that will calm his anguish. In order to capture raw terror, he will abandon the artifice of directing actors and invent the ultimate tracking shot that will show death, ‘live’: transformed into a dagger, his tripod will pierce the throat of the actresses he films, and who watch themselves dying. Dizzying variations on cinema, in which viewpoint constantly changes, and a filmmaker films another filmmaker who films a dying person watching herself being filmed. Peeping Tom shares the ethics of Rear Window by luring the spectator into this mirror game until he becomes the veritable voyeur.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 195

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

196  bertrand tavernier of the period surrounding the ascendancy of technology to the point where images assume more reality – and more value – than human beings. By provoking Katherine’s illness and then recording it, Roddie and his boss create and market what American sociologist Daniel Boorstin calls a ‘pseudo-event.’ Boorstin investigates the consequences of the wholesale (so to speak) commodification of our lives. He laments the replacement of authentic heroes by celebrities and ‘spontaneous’ events with events manufactured in order to be reported (Boorstin 1987, orig. 1962). The film’s visual look is reminiscent of the 1970s, as is its peripatetic quest-for-identity narrative and its overt critique of society’s routine and careless violence, bringing to mind, for varying reasons, Easy Rider (1969), A Clockwork Orange (1971), and Les Valseuses (1974). Like these films, La Mort en direct is driven less by plot than by individuals in existential entanglement in the social and psychic consequences of capitalism. In Europe, the Situationist International was coming to similar conclusions at about the same time as Boorstin. In The Society of the Spectacle (1967), Guy Debord offered a neo-Marxist analysis of consumer capitalism, redefining class struggle in terms of ‘spectacle,’ his term for a mode of social relations mediated by representations. In Debord’s analysis, capitalism harnesses our imagination and desires for exploitation by the consumer market. Our lived experience is transformed into media images and then sold back to us as consumer goods, making us into passive spectators rather than creators of our lives. La Mort en direct can in many respects be viewed as a Situationist tract, as it serves to illustrate the dystopia set forth by Boorstin and Debord. Katherine becomes a media celebrity, and Roddie understands the depth of his own inhumanity only when he sees his recorded images of Katherine’s humiliation televised as a spectacle for mass consumption. Katherine bargains with Roddie’s boss saying, ‘I have only one death to sell,’ but she ultimately revolts against the society of the spectacle. La Mort en direct explores the ease with which it is possible to produce – and sell – whatever reality one intended (or pretended) to ‘document.’ But since by definition, film cannot render an unmediated view of reality, how can one make a documentary without sensationalizing or exploiting? Ferriman initially proposed a contract whereby Katherine would be aware of the camera’s presence and accept its intervention in her story. A program resulting from that

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 196

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

the documentary gaze  197 arrangement would have fallen into what Bill Nichols calls ‘interactive documentary,’ where the filmmaker makes his presence and perspective evident, while engaging directly with the people being filmed. In interactive documentary, in which interviewees speak and present information themselves, thereby occupying a position of ‘textual authority,’ Katherine would retain some control over how she is ­represented. Of course this is not what ultimately happens. When Katherine flees, Ferriman’s NTV show becomes what Nichols calls an ‘observational’ documentary. Roddie’s mobile camera and synchronous sound system permit him to remain hidden, while giving television viewers the impression of seeing Katherine’s activities exactly as they would occur unobserved. Observational representational strategies produce an illusion of unmediated access to the people and events depicted and thus inspire the spectator’s belief in their reality. According to Nichols, though, this form of representation, often called ‘direct cinema,’ is perhaps the most likely to arouse the viewer’s voyeurism: Since the mode hinges on the ability of the filmmaker to be unobtrusive, the issue of intrusion surfaces over and over […]. Has the filmmaker intruded upon people’s lives in ways that will irrevocably alter them, perhaps for the worse, in order to make a film? Has his or her need to make a film and build a career out of the observation of others led to representations about the nature of the project and its probable effects on participants in disingenuous forms? Has he or she not only sought the informed consent of the participants but made it possible for informed consent to be understood and given? Does the evidence of the film convey a sense of respect for the lives of others or have they simply been used as signifiers in someone else’s discourse? (Nichols 1993: 39)

There is no doubt as to how Roddie would have to answer these questions. They are also exactly the questions that preoccupy Tavernier in all his documentaries. A third category, Nichols’s ‘expository documentary,’ is also relevant to Tavernier’s practice. In this mode, the film addresses the viewer directly, often aiming to persuade. It might use voiceover commentary and ‘evidentiary editing,’ in order to construct the film following the logic of an argument rather than a story. With his didactic impulse, Tavernier’s documentaries often contain such expository threads, while maintaining an overall interactive strategy. Because

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 197

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

198  bertrand tavernier ‘[t]he voice of authority resides with the text itself rather than with those recruited to it,’ it is problematic if interviewees’ statements are used to support an argument without their knowledge. His concern to avoid this risk might help explain why Tavernier takes his completed ­documentaries back into the community and screens them for participants. It is possible that Ferriman’s ‘Death Watch’ exploits Katherine’s ­predicament in this way. We see too little of the show to know whether it has voiceover or how it is organized. On the other hand, the movie La Mort en direct can be placed in the self-examining genre of the ‘making of’: it takes us behind the scenes to show us how and why a film was made.

Documentary sociology: L’Appât Where La Mort en direct emphasized the ethics of producing and disseminating images, L’Appât targets their consumption. In both cases, the judgment is severe, as the spectator is invited to reflect upon how the cinema encourages the gratification of voyeuristic and violent impulses and how it might awaken moral conscience instead. About L’Appât – winner of the 1995 Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival – Tavernier explains that the challenge was to ‘faire un film responsable sur l’irresponsabilité’ (Tavernier interview 2006).4 Set in the Sentier garment district of Paris, the film portrays three vapid youths who resort to murder in pursuit of their dream of moving to ‘les States’ to build a ready-to-wear empire. Nathalie (Marie Gillain) works in a shop and spends her evenings attracting men who might provide important contacts in the entertainment world. Her boyfriend Eric (Olivier Sitruk) and his unemployed buddy, Bruno (Bruno Putzulu), use Nathalie as ‘Fresh Bait’ (the film’s English-language title): she will gain entry to her dates’ apartments, where her friends will then rob cash and valuables. Through incompetence and panic, burglary leads to murder. Inspired by a 1984 incident and a true-crime account of it (Sportès 1990) and updated to the mid-1990s, the film shows the lethal consequences of superficial values and get-rich-quick schemes. Despite the moral exemplum, however, the three characters are engaging and believable, and viewers are swept along by the film’s fast pacing and the intensity of the trio’s drive toward self-destruction. 4 ‘Make a responsible film about irresponsibility.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 198

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

the documentary gaze  199 L’Appât continues Tavernier’s wide-reaching conversation with American culture. But whereas his earlier work foregrounds his admiration for American filmmakers, writers, and musicians, this film exposes the dark side of the French fascination with the United States. In L’Appât, the young murderers’ primary mode of interaction with America is a mimetic one: they identify with characters in fanzines, advertisements, and movies, modeling their expectations and behavior accordingly. As the most insistent purveyors of such models, the visual media are targeted relentlessly. At every turn, the ambient culture proclaims what Tavernier calls the ‘dictature de l’argent’ (L’Appât press pamphlet).5 Young people pursue fantasy ambitions by means of cartoon strategies adopted wholesale from simplistic entertainments. As a result, their actions are a patchwork of clichés, in a world full of rich lawyers with vaults hidden behind paintings. The trio seeks victims who are older, more successful versions of themselves: materialist, glib, and without moral compass. There are no sympathetic figures with whom to identify, so that the spectator is trapped within the teenagers’ horizon and point of view. In interviews, Tavernier expresses his contempt for entertainments such as video games that emphasize violent acts without consequences. He explains that the central moral challenge he faced in L’Appât was that of positioning his spectators. Since the criminals’ worldview is shaped by media, it was important to ensure that the film itself does not reproduce the faulty vision of its protagonists. The viewer must not be induced to desire violence as a voyeuristic commodity. To accomplish this, the film establishes a clear distance between two modes of spectatorship: that demonstrated by the teenagers as consumers of images within the film on the one hand, and the responses available to us as viewers of L’Appât on the other. Unlike the book, Tavernier’s film gives no biographies of victims or criminals, no visits to families or schools, no explanatory narratives of any kind. We see that Nathalie, Bruno, and Eric are avid consumers of media violence, and we see the consequences. We are thus denied the possibility of identification and vicarious gratification that would have us hoping the young criminals will get away with their misdeeds. And although we do not watch the murders, in the absence of external point of view or even reassuring generic markers to mediate our 5 ‘dictatorship of money.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 199

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

200  bertrand tavernier understanding, we must contend with the terrifying brutality of the crimes. Within the film’s conspicuous condemnation of materialism, Tavernier notes in particular ‘l’importance qu’a prise l’Amérique dans l’imaginaire visuel des jeunes’ (L’Appât press pamphlet).6 American visual culture is conveyed by incorporating, en abyme, an American movie ‘hero’ who inspires the young men’s ambitions. In the opening sequence, Nathalie arrives home to find her two friends watching – for the twentieth time, she estimates – their favorite video: Scarface. Significantly, the reference here is not Howard Hawks’s classic 1932 Scarface, starring Paul Muni, which Tavernier considers a ‘chef-d’oeuvre’ (Tavernier 1995: 52), but rather the more horrific 1983 version directed by Brian De Palma, starring Al Pacino. After reviewing De Palma’s career in 50 Ans de cinéma américain, Tavernier and Coursodon align themselves with the film’s detractors, because ‘la réussite de la forme ne rachète pas nécessairement un propos souvent douteux.’7 They include Scarface among bon nombre de films de de Palma [qui] s’enlisent [...] après un départ prometteur. Dans tous les cas, c’est la même tendance au rabâchage, la même accumulation d’effets chocs qui affaiblissent notre intérêt. Le carnage interminable qui occupe la fin de Scarface en est peut-être l’exemple le plus flagrant. (Tavernier 1993: 418)8

At the same time (and here, of course, lies the danger), ‘on ne peut pas nier son sens très aigu de l’expression visuelle, le plaisir communicatif de filmer [...] le pouvoir euphorisant de certaines séquences’ (Tavernier 1993: 422).9 Since the extended reference to Scarface in L’Appât does not figure in Sportès’s account of the crimes, its presence loads the dice meaningfully against a certain kind of American culture. Like the three young criminals of L’Appât, Tony Montana, the protagonist of De Palma’s Scarface, engages in a monstrously perverted version of the American dream. The mimetic madness is 6 ‘the importance of America in the visual imagination of young people.’ 7 ‘formal success does not compensate for a questionable thesis.’ 8 ‘numerous de Palma films that go astray after beginning on a promising note. In all such cases, there’s the same tendency to repeat and the same accumulation of shock effects that weaken our interest. The endless carnage that concludes Scarface is perhaps the most flagrant example.’ 9 ‘one cannot deny his acute sense of visual expression, the infectious pleasure of filming […] the euphoric power of certain sequences.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 200

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

the documentary gaze  201 complicated further, because Montana in his turn (like Belmondo in A bout de souffle) deliberately models his nonchalant gangster style after Humphrey Bogart. In addition, Montana’s spectacular demise, face down and leaking blood into the lavish swimming pool inside his mansion, evokes the greatest literary incarnation of the American dream gone wrong: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel, The Great Gatsby. Bruno’s bloody jeans soaking in a bidet are thus a farcical re-enactment of this fatal drama. What is more, the similarly apocalyptic ending of Matthieu Kossovitz’s La Haine (1994) alludes to De Palma’s Scarface through the ironic presence in both films of an airline advertisement. A globe bearing a banner with the inscription ‘Pan American: The World Is Yours’ can be seen as Montana falls to his death and again at the bloody ending of La Haine. The inclusion of Scarface and La Haine within L’Appât thus opens out a story within a story within a story that runs from Fitzgerald’s self-made pseudo-aristocrat, Cuban immigrants in Miami, and African immigrants in a Paris suburb to three money-hungry Parisian middle-class schemers, in an endless loop of deluded and dangerous dreamers. In all these fictions, the fantasy of America is a nihilistic vision of quick and easy success. It is ironic – but not coincidental – that the trio in L’Appât opt for off-therack ‘ready mades’ in both clothing and dreams. Unlike De Palma’s or even Hawks’s Tony Montana, however, and unlike Jay Gatsby and the youths of La Haine, the protagonists of L’Appât demonstrate flaws of vision that are literal. The consumerism these teenagers adopt is a society of the spectacle in the most factual way. They don’t dream the wrong dream; they watch the wrong movie. In the historical context in which Tavernier’s film was made – the ‘GATT spat’ and Motion Picture Association of America president Jack Valenti’s fierce lobbying against l’exception culturelle française – Tavernier’s choice of De Palma allows him to vent his rancor at the second rate Hollywood productions flooding French television and movie houses, without compromising his passion for the classic masterpieces of American cinema. While Tavernier faults the widespread obsession with money and the violence of popular culture, however, the film itself suggests that the larger societal problem may be less the images themselves than a failure of visual literacy. This possibility becomes clearer once one recognizes that spectatorship within the film revolves around two types of screens. Video technology permits the young men to replay

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 201

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

202  bertrand tavernier Scarface endlessly on their television screen. They choose to repeat one scene over and over and perhaps never watch the ending at all. The screen thus serves to display and model a violent lifestyle. However, it also serves to ‘screen’ or mask: it feeds their denial and protects them from self-knowledge. Were they able to decipher the screened scene and really (fore)see its bloody finale, they might have a chance to understand their own role in the larger social drama. Instead they isolate and fetishize their favorite scene by playing it over and over. In that the screens we see pictured onscreen both display and mask crucial knowledge, they resemble the film’s many doors, which both enclose and exclude. During the first burglary, the spectator waits with Nathalie outside the victim’s door while her friends torture and kill him. Unlike the spectator, though, Nathalie simply refuses to think about it: instead, she increases the volume on her Walkman to drown out the victim’s screams. During the second murder, she cowers on the couch outside, watching music television. The content of the ‘clip’ she watches is significant: an underwater scene in which a froglike monster pursues and eventually captures and swallows a swimming woman. Because she watches it to screen out the murder unfolding behind the closed door, the televised image simultaneously displaces the crime and reveals it metaphorically. Had she been able (or willing) to decipher the scene she was viewing – to identify with the swimming woman on the screen – she might have understood her own role as bait. Nicole Rafter argues that ‘crime films offer us contradictory sorts of satisfaction: the reality of what we fear to be true and the fantasy of overcoming that reality; the pleasure of entering the realm of the forbidden and illicit and the security of rejecting or escaping that realm in the end’ (2000: 3). In conventional crime stories, these two ‘satisfactions’ are often reflected in two concurrent plots: the criminal activities and the detective’s pursuit. When the two plots unfold in parallel montage, the spectator can enjoy the violent scenes, knowing that they will end when the criminals are caught. We can root both for the criminal and the police. Diverging from this more conventional model of the crime thriller genre, L’Appât contains no detection plot. Nor does the film adopt the book’s retrospective viewpoint. We cannot guess how – or indeed whether – the violence will end. Although relief does finally materialize, the spectator is kept in the dark until the last possible moment. We are maneuvered into claustrophobic

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 202

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

the documentary gaze  203 entrapment in the scene and kept powerless either to escape or to intervene vicariously. The film thus withholds the pleasure of control. It removes the safety net, making us contemplate the consequences of brutality without protection or recourse. It’s a rather frightening experience. As a result of these different approaches, while Sportès’s book is a work of forensics, Tavernier’s film is a moral and social parable. At the end, a policeman shouts at Nathalie to ‘Arrête ton cinéma,’10 but it is too late. Between La Mort en direct and L’Appât, Tavernier will mobilize insights gleaned from his ongoing research into the powers of cinema in order to confront the most sensitive issues of his generation: the Algerian War and immigration. And he will tackle them in documentaries, without the protective covering of fiction.

Letters from the colonial scene: La Guerre sans nom and De l’autre côté du Périph’ If Tavernier is a widely respected documentarist, this is largely thanks to La Guerre sans nom, shot in 1990 with historian Patrick Rotman and released in 1992, when it marked the thirtieth anniversary of the Evian Accords that ended the French conflict in Algeria. More than two million French soldiers fought in Algeria between 1954 and 1962. The first documentary to invite that war’s ordinary French soldiers to share their memories, La Guerre sans nom is credited with breaking the silence of repression and taboo. It was another ‘long travelling arrière,’ consisting entirely of interviews with conscripts and reservists, many speaking for the first time about their experiences. The men served in different units, time periods, and regions of Algeria. Some supported the war, others resisted, some remember their military service as an adventure, and still others simply did what was required and then tried to put the experience behind them. Some had strong political opinions, while others did not. There are communist militants, proponents of Algerian independence, and one who in 1990 still believes wholeheartedly in the mission civilisatrice. Camille Pivano opposed the war, believed Algeria should belong to the Algerians, and compares the French in North Africa to the German Occupation of France. Jacques Bec commanded a harka – a unit of Algerians fighting 10 ‘cut it out.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 203

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

204  bertrand tavernier on the French side. He doesn’t condone torture but believes that even there, there are gradations. Robert André was about to volunteer as a paratrooper when he was drafted. Serge Puygrenier hadn’t given the war much thought beforehand but became militantly anti-war when he returned, minus a leg. The film’s unity derives from its locale – Grenoble, not far from Lyon – site of an anti-war protest on 18 May 1956: men and their wives and friends and families sabotaged railway machinery or sat on the tracks in an attempt to prevent the departure of a train transporting draftees to mobilization in Algeria. All the film’s interviewees hail from the Grenoble area, and many were involved in the protest, on one side or another. (As it turned out, they targeted the wrong train, but this did not change the symbolic impact of the protest, which was the largest of its kind (Tavernier 1992: 40).) Even thirty years after its conclusion, the undeclared war remained in the shadow of public history. It was a ‘war without a name’ because Algeria was neither a territory nor a colony, but part of France, giving the conflict the status of a police operation. Despite the efforts of organizations such as the Fédération Nationale des Anciens Combattants en Algérie, Maroc et Tunisie (FNACA, founded in 1958), the soldiers who had seen the action and borne its physical and psychic consequences remained invisible, even to themselves. ‘[U]ne guerre qui ne dit pas son nom n’a pas d’anciens combattants,’11 as the Cahiers du cinéma reviewer succinctly put it (March 1992: 69). Their failure to obtain official veteran status meant exclusion from government benefits and lack of official recognition. Legal amnesties had buttressed an institutionalized state of collective amnesia.12 Writing in 1990, historian Robert-Charles Ageron observed that memory of the Algerian war remained, for the veterans and the general public, ‘volontairement refoulé.’13 He described four needs that would have to be met before individual and collective healing could begin: mourning, discourse, memory, and commemoration (Thobie et al. 1990: 552). Also in 1990, Claude Liauzu summarized the problem as that of a ‘discours impossible.’ Memory and commemoration (in the form of ceremonies or monuments, for example) were 11 ‘A war without a name has no veterans.’ 12 French amnesty law affords immunity from prosecution. In addition – unlike laws elsewhere – it removes the events from the public record and makes writing about them illegal. Legally, it is as if the event had never taken place. 13 ‘voluntarily repressed.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 204

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

the documentary gaze  205 rendered moot by a conflict that remained ambiguous, as if it had not taken place. The whole of French society seems to have opted for selfcensorship, Liauzu points out, adding that this silence makes it impossible to communicate the suffering of the men who did the fighting or to exorcise it through sharing or public recognition (Liauzu 1990: 509–15). In other words, thirty years on, these former soldiers still suffered the same lack of closure as Conan and Dellaplane; they were still denied what Audoin-Rouzeau, speaking about Capitaine Conan, called ‘l’économie morale de la reconnaissance,’ as they were forced to continue a struggle after the war’s end. Their experience remained dormant or ‘incommensurable’ (Sherman 1999). Pascal Ory notices that this blockage was reflected in the cinema. Although French movies had mentioned the departure for Algeria (Varda’s Cléo de 5 à 7, 1962; Demy’s Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, 1964) and the return (Resnais’s Muriel, 1963; Schoendoerffer’s Le Crabetambour, 1977), soldiers’ actual combat experience was curiously missing from screen representations. Instead, the war itself progressed directly from taboo to backdrop. Ory sums up the situation suggestively: ‘la guerre sera gommée non plus parce qu’elle n’a pas lieu, […] mais parce qu’elle n’a plus (de) lieu.’14 There are no cultural rituals or monuments, no informal or official ‘memory sites’ (Pierre Nora’s ‘lieux de mémoire’) around which collective memory could crystallize (Ory 1990: 577). Such memory sites exist for the Occupation – Henry Rousso puts films such as Lacombe Lucien and Le Chagrin et la pitié in that category – but there had been nothing comparable for Algeria. Benjamin Stora, the leading French historian of the Algerian War, published his groundbreaking study of the conflict in 1992, the same year as La Guerre sans nom. Like Tavernier and Rotman, Stora focuses not on the war itself, but on the history of its memory. In La Gangrène et l’oubli, he notes the dearth of images from the war, compared to a virtual ‘avalanche’ of writings. Yet between 1962 and 1982, at least forty-five feature films had treated the topic, either directly or indirectly. Among these, Stora lists Le Petit Soldat (Godard, 1960), Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, Avoir 20 ans dans les Aurès (Vautier, 1971), and RAS (Yves Boisset, 1974). On the Algerian side, he mentions Le Vent des Aurès (1965) and Décembre (1973), both by Mohammed Lakhda-Hamina and the same filmmaker’s Chroniques des années de braise, winner of the 14 ‘The war will be erased not because it didn’t take place, but because there remains no place for it.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 205

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

206  bertrand tavernier 1975 Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Outside France, there were also Mark Robson’s Lost Command (USA, 1966) and Gilles Pontecorvo’s La Battaglia di Algerie (Italy, 1966), films eventually screened in France despite delays and strenuous, sometimes violent opposition. What, then, Stora asks, accounts for the widespread impression that the Algerian conflict is absent from cinema? He finds it significant that all the films are fictions. Moreover, the films target different spectator populations, making collective synthesis or catharsis impossible. Writing before the release of La Guerre sans nom, Stora predicted that ‘c’est par le documentaire […] que cette guerre pourra être exorcisée, traitée’ (Stora 1992: 249–55).15 And indeed, La Guerre sans nom addresses all four of the needs Liauzu identified: it offered the soldiers a needed memory site and a venue for mourning, and through private and public discussion, it represented a form of commemoration. Our filmmakers had chosen a propitious moment to contribute to this return of memory. As a result, the effects of La Guerre sans nom were not only narrative, but also performative: what the film does – especially for the participants – is at least as important as what it tells. The cultural work performed by La Guerre sans nom is deliberately modeled on previous instances of memory construction, particularly those following the Second World War. Tavernier’s film, and sometimes the soldiers’ memories too, tend to refer back to familiar narratives and iconography of the Occupation. An important model is Le Chagrin et la pitié directed by Marcel Ophüls, whom Tavernier thanks in his credits. The two documentaries have in common their length (four hours), a focus on one town (Clermont-Ferrand, Grenoble), and reliance on testimony of participants many of whom had never before told their stories. Ophüls and Tavernier conducted their interviews twenty-four and twenty-eight years after the end of their respective conflicts. Both filmmakers seized an opportune moment when repression and taboos were weakened (the wake of May ’68 for Ophüls; the Evian anniversary). But where Ophüls aims to instruct (and entertain) a broad public, Tavernier’s main focus is on how the film serves the interviewees themselves. The two films also use different materials. Where Ophüls consults experts and well-known public figures and inserts newsreel footage, Tavernier and Rotman confer complete narrative authority on the veterans’ 15 ‘It will be through documentary that this war will be treated and exorcised.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 206

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

the documentary gaze  207 memories and souvenirs (letters, photos, songs), only adding a few images and sounds from present-day Algeria. Also significant are differences in the place the two wars occupy in the national imagination. The day after the film’s release, Le Monde made this comparison: ‘Ophüls s’en prenait à un mur de mensonges, pieusement entretenus, sur le comportement des Français durant l’Occupation. Tavernier et Rotman ouvrent, eux, une brêche dans un mur de silence’ (Frodon 1992).16 In other words, Ophüls’s task was to challenge received mythologies, particularly what Henry Rousso calls Gaullist ‘Resistancialism,’ while Tavernier’s and Rotman’s film contributed to the veterans’ work of constructing individual and collective memory more or less from scratch. The country, along with the veterans themselves, was caught in a transitional period, waiting for institutional memory to crystallize. La Guerre sans nom begins with a montage of veterans – some matter-of-fact, others surprised, bemused, or regretful – attempting to explain their thirty-year silence. By contributing to the emergence of commemoration, the film thus pursues, in a documentary mode, the work of Capitaine Conan and La Vie et rien d’autre. Conversely, the depth of those fictional portrayals taps into Tavernier’s sympathy for the struggles taking place in the minds and hearts of those who fought his own generation’s wars. In any case, it was inevitable that Tavernier would eventually make a film about the Algerian War: ‘Je me suis toujours intéressé à L’Algérie,’ he declares. ‘La guerre d’Algérie a été mon apprentissage politique,’17 he explains, mentioning La Question, Henri Alleg’s 1958 book that opened his eyes to torture, and the 1960 ‘Manifeste des 121,’ a famous open letter in which public figures declared their solidarity with conscientious draft resisters (La Guerre sans nom press pamphlet; Tavernier 1992: 99). Many artists wait to establish their careers before treating the subject that haunts them the most. Like Louis Malle, for example, who explains that he needed to mature as a filmmaker and as a person before facing his Occupation memories in Au revoir des enfants (1987), Tavernier had a dozen feature films under his belt before undertaking the monumental document that is La Guerre sans 16 ‘Ophüls was up against a wall of self-righteous lies about the way the French behaved during the Occupation. Tavernier and Rotman, on the other hand, open up a breach in a wall of silence.’ 17 ‘I’ve always been interested in Algeria. The Algerian War was my political apprenticeship.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 207

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

208  bertrand tavernier nom. The film is simple and straightforward. There is none of the melodramatic narrative construction of La Vie et rien d’autre. Extended exchanges between the filmmakers and their subjects such as one finds in Mississippi Blues are absent. The interviewers’ interventions, when perceptible at all, are understated. Their questions are concise and unobtrusive, never contradict and rarely challenge. In short, the cinematic and narrative apparatus is minimized. And yet in many ways, this is the pivotal work in Tavernier’s oeuvre. It is the film that reveals the coherence of his career as an auteur. In fact, Algeria can be understood as Tavernier’s primal scene. Alongside collaboration with Nazism, the heaviest burden in contemporary French memory is undoubtedly the question of individual and collective responsibility for torture in Algeria. One of the conscripts interviewed In La Guerre sans nom, Alain Boeuf, recounts his most haunting moment of truth about the war: one ordinary day during his tour of duty in Algeria, he walked by a door and glimpsed fellow recruits torturing an Algerian. Boeuf admits he was curious, but he turned away to avoid voyeurism, and he regretted having looked at all. His story is not unique: other interviewees describe the same feeling of powerlessness, the impulse to avoid knowing, and then to forget. His voice breaking, Etienne Boulanger, who spent two years in prison for draft resistance, believes that his government made him complicit in war crimes. Like the Freudian primal scene, this moment condenses questions of taboo, guilt, memory, and identity into one inadvertent gaze. As such, the scene implicates everyone interviewed in the film, and indeed its spectators too. Throughout Tavernier’s career, ‘Algeria’ – and the larger stain of French colonialism it encapsulates – stands as the formative trauma of his generation. If he waited until La Guerre sans nom to open the Pandora’s box (or door) of Algerian War memories – and although one prominent Tavernier critic and biographer claims La Guerre sans nom is the director’s first mention of the war (Raspiengeas 2001: 398) – virtually every one of Tavernier’s previous films, regardless of genre or period, includes some explicit or covert echo of France’s colonial past. Often popping up in non-plot elements or peripheral details, such veiled allusions are hardly noticeable unless one looks for them. Hints are hidden in plain view, however, in the same way that analogous allusions were woven into many New Wave films: a radio report about Algeria can be heard in a taxi in Varda’s Cléo de 5 à 7; the Evian negotiations cause

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 208

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

the documentary gaze  209 a traffic jam in Godard’s A bout de Souffle (1960); the protagonist’s colonial military background comes into play in Malle’s Ascenseur pour l’échafaud (1958); Antoine Doinel’s military misadventures after Les 400 Coups are alluded to in its sequel, Baisers volés (1968). But more than simply contributing to a cinéma vérité current-events backdrop, Tavernier’s apparently inconsequential details bring contemporary relevance to his films, historical depth and nuance to his plots, and motivation to his character portraits. A quick overview will demonstrate the accumulated weight of this obsession: • 1974. Police in L’Horloger de Saint-Paul search a murdered man’s apartment and find military souvenirs from Indochina and Algeria. The only unmitigatedly evil character in Tavernier’s entire oeuvre, this rather stereotyped figure never appears onscreen and remains a shadowy but malevolent abstraction. • 1976. Tavernier’s new production company, Little Bear, co-produced Laurent Heynemann’s La Question, a filmed dramatization of that 1958 book of the same title published clandestinely by the Editions de Minuit, in which journalist Henri Alleg recounts his experience being tortured by French military in Algeria. As noted above, the book had been an eye-opener for the young Tavernier.18 • Also 1976. Prosecutor de Villedieu in Le Juge et l’assassin brought an Indochinese house servant home with him from his job as a colonial magistrate. De Villedieu eventually loses faith in the French justice system and commits suicide. In the same film, insane serial killer Bouvier, in a fit of fury, threatens the Judge in Maghrebian Arabic. This hint of Bouvier’s hidden colonial trauma adds a contemporary edge to the film’s demonstration of the consequences that follow when institutions abandon or betray a colonial war veteran. • 1981. Coup de torchon transposes Jim Thompson’s novel from the American West to French West Africa, transforming Thompson’s tale of racism and moral cowardice into an apocalyptic allegory of colonial atrocities. • 1984. Discouraged by fear of rivaling his father, Gonzague/Edouard Ladmiral abandons his artistic vocation to become a bureaucrat ‘dans une compagnie coloniale.’ 18 Heynemann had been Tavernier’s Assistant Director on L’Horloger de Saint-Paul and Que la fête commence.

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 209

12/10/2011 16:25

210  bertrand tavernier

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

• 1986. Autour de Minuit adds a significant twist to Francis Paudras’s account of his friendship with Bud Powell. Paudras recalls in his memoir that he was fifteen years old when he first heard Powell play. In contrast, the film’s Francis Borier relates that he first heard the American saxophonist as a young conscript on his way to Algeria. The music gave Francis the courage to jump ship, and he served jail time for desertion. • 1989. An episode in La Vie et rien d’autre involves a team of explosives technicians responsible for the dangerous job of removing leftover landmines from farmlands. Just before we hear in the distance the explosion that will signal their death, we see that these démineurs are West Africans, no doubt veterans of the colonial brigades that had served as shock troops on all fronts and died in disproportionate numbers. (The moment prefigures Tavernier’s 1997 initiative in co-producing and contributing to a compilation on behalf of the international campaign against landmines.) When Irène de Courtil’s chauffeur asks about the explosion, a local explains it philosophically as another layer of buried and explosive memories (‘un gisement de souvenirs’), a formulation that echoes metaphorically across ­Tavernier’s other historical films, including La Guerre sans nom. In the same film, Irène laments that had she truly loved her husband, she should have done more to prevent his departure, even lie down in front of the train taking him off to war. The following year, Tavernier started the interviews for La Guerre sans nom, which begins with a 1956 Grenoble demonstration during which protesters blocked the departure of trains bearing conscripts toward Algeria. The reviewer in L’Express declared that La Guerre sans nom ended ‘trente ans de silence et rien d’autre.’ In the accompanying interview, Tavernier confides that it was only after the success of La Vie et rien d’autre that he felt capable of addressing the Algerian war on film. He believes the two films complement each other, and that La Guerre sans nom made him feel closer to Dellaplane (Tavernier 1995: 77). • 1990. In some of Tavernier’s rare flashbacks, Caroline of Daddy Nostalgie relives childhood scenes that trace her father’s distant and neglectful demeanor to the demands and attractions of his job as a colonial administrator. We should not be surprised that many of these allusions are associated with a character’s formative unhappy memories, or the ripple

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 210

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

the documentary gaze  211 effects of a violent event, or the origins of a society’s unraveling. When painful topics arise, French colonialism, and Algeria in parti­ cular, are recurring points of reference and subterranean metaphors in Tavernier’s imagination, like a toothache, or a stone in his shoe. Their persistence suggests a primal scene uniting those of his generation who fought the war and those who did not, or a debt to be paid to those who bear the heaviest burden of memories. The theme continues unabated after La Guerre sans nom: •  Tavernier’s Algerian primal scene is recreated forcefully in L’Appât. He was haunted by the savagery of the murders, as revealed at the young criminals’ 1987 trial. Colo’s script condenses the book’s extensively reported gory details into the sequences where Nathalie waits outside a closed door while her friends torture and murder their victim. Tavernier makes the connection explicit: ‘Moi, je vois un rapport très net entre ce film et toute la partie de ‘La Guerre sans nom’ qui évoque la torture, et la façon dont les gens apparemment normaux peuvent tout à coup déraper.’ As in the documentary, he wanted to capture the disturbing mystery of human brutality while resisting voyeurism: ‘certaines choses sont du domaine de l’insondable et il faut savoir s’arrêter, fermer une porte, supposer.’ And again: ‘Tous les moments de violence ont été très difficiles à filmer. Car je voulais preserver une certaine opacité dans les comportements, m’arrêter devant des portes closes [ …]. Je voulais que Nathalie ait toujours l’air d’être dans une salle d’attente. Et il ne fallait jamais tricher avec les portes qu’on ouvre et qu’on ferme’ (L’Appât press pamphlet).19 Like the soldiers in La Guerre sans nom who happened upon or participated in torture – and like the country at large – Nathalie simply blocks out the scene both visually and psychologically. •  For Holy Lola, Tavernier took an entire production team to Cambodia to capture the beauty and the terrible problems of a country ravaged by colonial wars and their genocidal aftermath.

19 ‘I see a clear connection between this film and the part of La Guerre sans nom where torture is evoked, and the way apparently normal people can suddenly lose control. […] Certain things are unfathomable, and you have to know when to stop, to close a door, to imagine. […] All the violent moments were very difficult to film, because I wanted to preserve the opacity of certain acts, to stop in front of the closed door. […] I wanted Nathalie to seem always to be in a waiting room. One must never cheat with the doors one opens and closes.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 211

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

212  bertrand tavernier •  Dans la brume électrique was shot in the United States, and its story is by all appearances far removed from French history. Nevertheless, the protagonist is a detective whose actions and worldview continue many years afterwards to be shaped by the American war in Vietnam, in the same way that France’s colonial past haunts many of the filmmaker’s other characters, whether in fictions or documentaries. Any doubts about the centrality of collective guilt to Tavernier’s work can be dispelled by the long-hidden racial murder that lies at the heart of Dans la brume électrique. The protagonist-detective had witnessed this murder as a young man, many years before the narrative begins. In the novel from which the film is adapted, that suppressed and troubling memory is described explicitly as a classic Freudian primal scene. From a distance, the murderers glance in the narrator’s direction. ‘I looked back at them, numbly, almost embarrassed, like a person who had opened a bedroom door at the wrong moment’ (Burke 1993: 11). •  Finally, La Princesse de Montpensier adds depth and back-story to a secondary character in its source novel by Madame de Lafayette. After witnessing atrocities committed during the sixteenth-century wars of religion, the Comte de Chabannes becomes a pacifist. With La Guerre sans nom, Tavernier knew he was taking on a sprawling and controversial topic, and one that was close to his heart. Never reticent about explaining himself, this time he took special care to articulate the principles that would make the project manageable while embodying his ethical approach to his craft. Although his adherence to them is not perfect, these self-imposed guidelines inform the interviews themselves as well as the film’s overall concept, its cinematography, its mise en scène, and editing. Four general ‘rules’ can be distilled from his various statements (Raspiengeas 2001: 400–3; Tavernier 1993b): 1. The film is about speaking. Its overriding goal was to give ordinary veterans a venue to tell their stories. By replacing silence with words, it would address the incommensurability of each soldier’s experience and provide a space for the emergence of commemoration. Tavernier and Rotman therefore excluded military leaders, politicians, and academic experts whose perspectives had already contributed to official historiography. They also excluded newsreel footage in favor of the interviewees’ own voices, mementos, and photographs. Tavernier described the results as a kind of ‘psychanalyse sauvage.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 212

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

the documentary gaze  213 This process continued beyond the film, when Tavernier and Rotman toured the country to lead ‘débats’ after the screenings. Algerian war veterans came in droves, with their wives, many of whom heard their husband’s traumatic memories for the first time. At these occasions (I attended one in Lyon), the rawness of the revelations and the emotions was devastating. At least one post-screening discussion led to reconciliation between two veterans with opposing views on Algerian independence. Many of the participants wrote heartfelt letters of thanks afterwards. In short, it was clear that the soldiers who fought the Algerian war – those in the film followed by those in the audiences – were the film’s target audience: that the film was made for them. The screenings and debates thus continued the film’s cultural and political work, helping the war and those who fought it to take their place in public history. 2. The film is about listening. The soldiers admit that their thirtyyear silence resulted from memories repressed, but also from the failure of others to ask the right questions and to hear the answers. The overwhelmingly positive reception among veterans can be attributed to the filmmakers’ deliberate posture, which was simply to listen. Although the filmmakers’ viewpoint is perceptible in many ironies, transitions, and other choices, no overall expository argument is elaborated, and Tavernier asserts instead that he wanted to concentrate on representing ‘les vies dans la guerre, pas des discours sur.’20 In other words, he applies the documentary ethics he developed in La Mort en direct and Mississippi Blues. La Guerre sans nom is respectful and polite. It privileges long takes, fixed camera, close-ups, and complete statements (not sound bytes), and it avoids intrusive camera work that would distract from the words and faces of the speakers. Above all, there is no manipulation of the witnesses. Nathalie Rachlin rightly points out that Tavernier and Rotman missed opportunities to challenge their interlocutors, to expose the bad faith of certain speakers and contradictory statements made by others. Such moments might indeed have made the film more suspenseful and innovative and a more reliable scholarly source (Rachlin 2002). Nevertheless, these were not its goals, and to appreciate the film’s achievements, it is valuable to take it on its own terms. The filmmakers interact minimally with their interviewees, and the film strives to avoid analysis, an attitude appre 20 ‘lives in the war, not discourses about.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 213

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

214  bertrand tavernier ciated by the witnesses and that in some instances facilitated their participation. 3. The film attributes interpretive authority to the ordinary soldier. An important tactical choice was that neither the filmmaker nor the audience would be in a position of presuming more knowledge than the speakers. This was another reason for limiting the interviews to the veterans themselves, unframed by official expertise. Instead, spectators are encouraged to share the interviewees’ point of view. This is the same strategy one finds in fictions such as Capitaine Conan, where the spectator stays with the character’s spatial and emotional perspective and is thus invited to empathize, if not identify. This can be uncomfortable, of course, when for example we are confined within the worldview of a psychopath in Coup de torchon or L’Appât. 4. Finally, the focus is local, not national or universal. The film aims to portray individuals, not a collectivity or abstraction (such as war, or the military, or even a cohort or generation). Accordingly, there are no broad establishing shots, no summarizing voiceover, no overall frame. In fact, Tavernier specifies that the interviewees are ‘characters,’ not ‘witnesses.’ The film is neither a ritual nor a trial. Instead, it emphasizes individuals’ experiences, memories, and emotions. This, Tavernier insisted repeatedly, is why the film is so long. It is also why no Algerians were interviewed, a lack for which the film was criticized. Tavernier relates that Algerian filmmaker Ahmed Rachedi approached him and Rotman about collaborating on a similar film depicting the Algerian side. The offer was tempting but too daunting. The Algerians would have to make their own film. Whether or not the filmmakers succeeded in all instances in following the rules they set down for themselves, these guidelines add up to a coherent philosophy that is, once again, both an esthetics and an ethics. The overriding emphasis on ‘characters’ over plot, already familiar to viewers of Tavernier’s historical films and indeed his entire oeuvre, thus carries over into his approach to documentary, where he favors personal stories over argument or thesis. His approach owes much to anthropology and to historiograpies, such as that of the Annales school, that foreground the history of everyday life and the mentalités of ordinary people. This strategy acquires added value in a film where the ‘characters’ are real people, not actors. Tavernier shares this commitment to tackling big subjects by focusing on the local and the particular with Cambodian filmmaker

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 214

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

the documentary gaze  215 Rithy Panh. In a conversation between the two men, Tavernier quoted Brazilian director Alberto Cavalcanti, who said that if you want to document the history of the postal system, you should avoid recounting the history of the postal system. Instead, according to Cavalcanti (via Tavernier), ‘Si tu racontes bien l’histoire d’une lettre, tu auras raconté l’histoire de la poste’ (Panh 2003).21 The letter is a frequent motif in Tavernier’s films, especially in his documentaries, many of which in addition use film as an open letter or manifesto to speak truth to power. Use of the letter both as motif and strategy can be found in two very short films. Contre l’oubli was made in collaboration with Amnesty International and with several major television channels. To honor Amnesty’s thirtieth anniversary, thirty French filmmakers were each invited to make a three-minute film in which a personality of their choice would read a letter demanding the release of a political prisoner somewhere in the world. This curious format reflected the founding of Amnesty, launched in 1961 by a letter published in a London Newspaper denouncing the holding of political prisoners. As it had been for Zola’s ‘J’Accuse,’ the open letter proved effective and remained the organization’s signature tactic. In Tavernier’s filmletter, actress Anouk Grinberg addresses the Burmese dictator for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi. Broadcast nightly from 10 November to 10 December 1991, the campaign produced immediate results: on 9 December Le Monde reported that six of the 30 prisoners had already been liberated. (Aung San Suu Kyi remained under house arrest but was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize the following year.) The compilation was subsequently televised by Canal+, then shown in movie theaters, and finally distributed as a book and videocassette. The film’s effectiveness derived from its double address to world leaders and to members of the public, urging them to write letters, to ‘écrire contre l’oubli.’22 One reader, one letter, one prisoner, one addressee in each of thirty films added up to more than a history of the postal system. Lumières sur un massacre deployed a similar strategy, this time under the aegis of Handicap International and Little Bear. Ten short films from ten countries (including contributions by Rithy Panh and Tavernier) demand removal of the millions of landmines that still 21 ‘If you do a good job telling the story of one letter, you will have told the history of the postal system.’ 22 ‘write against forgetting.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 215

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

216  bertrand tavernier litter much of the earth and injure unsuspecting non-combatants every day. (One is reminded of the exploding landmine in La Vie et rien d’autre.) While Tavernier’s contribution to the compilation film is the only literal letter – Sandrine Bonnaire reading from the correspondence of a Handicap volunteer in Cambodia – here again, the addressee is the spectator, who is enjoined first to sympathize with victims of landmines through fictional narratives, then to participate in the organization’s work through donations and public activism. In La Guerre sans nom, letters serve as an image for the messages transmitted from past to present, from individuals to the community, and from repression to history. Tavernier was struck by the force and freshness of the memories he heard. Setting out to assemble the story of the war as a mosaic of individual memories, the film is the history of the postal system – told au pied de la lettre, one might say – from ‘[des] millions de petites histoires vécues qui font la grande.’23 Tavernier’s introductory voiceover compares the project to the opening of a time capsule or reliquary, as if the stories had been resurrected from a deep freeze ‘avec la certitude que le temps était venu de chasser l’amnésie collective’ (film dialogue, from La Guerre sans nom press pamphlet).24 He announces the existence of a ‘mémoire intacte, étonnamment vivante,’25 supported by material objects: the soldiers often kept letters and photos as if they were so many ‘pieuses reliques.’ Loose thematic organization is punctuated by radio messages broadcast to worried families: ‘Les soldats d’Algérie vous parlent. Messages familiaux des militaires du secteur postal 88,106.’ The recordings are interspersed verbatim throughout the soundtrack: ‘Les Capos Innocenti Marcel, Duhamel Maurice, Les chasseurs Lesueur Bernard, Minielius Bernard, nouvellement arrivés du métropole ont la joie de faire savoir à leurs parents que l’accueil chaleureux que leur ont réservé des camarades a su atténuer les regrets du départ.’ And again: ‘Liboue Maurice, Ma petite femme chérie je te fais de gros baisers ainsi qu’à ma petite fille. J’espère que je serai bientôt avec vous. Bonjour à toute la famille. Maurice.’26 These oral ‘letters,’ 23 ‘the millions of little stories that make up History.’ 24 ‘certain that the time had come to sweep away collective amnesia.’ 25 ‘memory, intact and alive.’ 26 ‘Family messages from soldiers in Algerian postal sector 88,106. […] Officers [names] just arrived from the metropole are pleased to inform their families that

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 216

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

the documentary gaze  217 clearly formulaic, hide more than they reveal and become increasingly ironic as the film progresses. There is nary a trace of fear, for example, or news of combat. Many of the interviewees – including Serge Puygrenier, who avoided telling his wife about his amputation – admit that their letters were cheerful works of fiction, carefully crafted to reassure. These missives established a template for the voluntary ‘forgetting’ that would characterize the following thirty years. Another exchange of letters further confirms the always already censored nature of the soldiers’ epistolary self-revelation. Gaetan Esposito recalls that soldiers were required to write home, and receiving mail was more important than food. He reminisces at length about his correspondence with his illiterate mother during his service in Algeria, letters read to her by a neighbor. He crafted his communications so as to avoid revealing anything that would cause her pain. To corroborate the false impression, he enclosed photos of himself in a flowering garden. Knowing that he himself was lying, however, he suspected his mother of gilding the truth as well. Esposito realized that she probably knew what horrors he was experiencing. ‘On jouait le même jeu,’27 he says. The most famous letter of the Algerian conflict is missing from the film, however: the one described in the antiwar anthem ‘Le Déserteur,’ composed in 1954 by Boris Vian to protest the war. Vian’s lyrics are well known: Monsieur le Président, je vous fais une lettre, Que vous lirez peut-être, si vous avez le temps. Je viens de recevoir mes papiers militaires, Pour partir à la guerre…’28

Rather than join the combat, the narrator continues, he is willing to desert and go to prison, or worse. For obvious reasons – especially the verse enjoining others to ‘refuser de partir’ – the song was banned. Other songs incorporated into the film – ‘The Girl from Ipanema,’ ‘Stranger in Paradise’ – comment ironically on the events represented. Also included is a 1987 song written and sung by Tavernier’s the warm welcome they received from their comrades diminishes the pain of separation. […] Liboue Maurice sends big kisses to my sweet little wife and my little girl. I hope to be with you soon. Greetings to the family.’ 27 ‘We were playing the same game.’ 28 ‘Mr President, I write you this letter that perhaps you will read, if you have the time. I’ve just received my draft notice, to leave for the war …’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 217

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

218  bertrand tavernier friend Claude Moine, better known as Eddy Mitchell (and as Nono, in Coup de torchon). A 1962 military draftee, Mitchell served briefly in Algeria before deserting and spending time in prison. In the refrain of his ‘Soixante, soixante-deux,’ heard in La Guerre sans nom, Mitchell remarks sarcastically that ‘L’Algérie c’est beau, Oui mais vue du Sacré Cœur.’29 A more sobering line declares that the truth of those years remains taboo. ‘Le Déserteur’ is neither heard nor referred to in the film, although it was sung in 1956 by the Grenoble protesters. The situation described in the song, however, was lived by one of the interviewees. Etienne Boulanger sits at a small table in an empty room and reads his own letter, dated 22 April 1958 and addressed to President René Coty. Boulanger declares his refusal to fight against a people he believed possessed the rights to justice and liberty guaranteed in the Constitution. For his resistance, Boulanger spent two years in prison before being re-conscripted and sent by force to Algeria. He remains understandably bitter. He faults the Communist Party for failing to support the anti-war movement, and he blames himself for lacking the courage to support Algerian independence. Despite its grim subject, the film is lyrical and lovingly made, a tribute to men and families who suffered in silence, whether they did the right thing or not. The soldiers’ own photos are especially effective: juxtaposed with their faces of today, the difference is a poignant memorial to lost innocence and, in some cases, to the high price paid for wisdom. Response to the film was enthusiastic. The filmmakers met huge crowds at screenings throughout France and beyond. Newspapers and journals usually hostile to Tavernier’s work lavished high praise. Veterans of Algeria, including those interviewed, reacted with gratitude that their story was finally being heard. Their families, too, from all points on the political spectrum, reported their relief that the floodgates of memory had finally opened. Albert Matthieu, a Canal+ programmer who had been drafted to fight in Algeria, helped convince the station to co-produce the film. An Algerian who had fought the war on the other side came forward following a Paris screening to thank Tavernier for breaking a silence that had been worse than the torture he had suffered. Fellow filmmakers, too, responded with enthusiasm. René Vautier, who had worked with the Front de Libération Nationale 29 ‘Yes, Algeria is beautiful, but viewed from Sacré Coeur.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 218

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

the documentary gaze  219 (FLN) and directed the first fictional film about the war, Avoir vingt ans dans les Aurès (1972), wrote Tavernier a long letter describing how his own filmed images of the Algerian combat had been sabotaged, censored, vandalized, and officially suppressed. Tavernier must have been pleased, too, to hear high praise from Alain Resnais, John Boorman, and Ken Loach. Academic response was positive too: historian Michel Winock described the film as a moving ‘resurrection de la mémoire, comme si elle surgissait des entrailles de la terre’ (Tavernier 1993a: 76).30 By and large, however, politicians and political journalists ignored Tavernier’s invitations to screenings. A few public figures, including Minister of Defense Pierre Joxe and Secretary of State for Veterans Affairs Louis Mexandeau, did eventually view the film. Perhaps as a result, La Guerre sans nom ultimately functioned like Contre l’oubli: as an open letter addressed to the government. Shortly after the film’s release, and in light of its unexpected popular success, President Mitterrand received a delegation of Algerian war veterans to hear their petition for full veterans’ status and benefits, and three ­government ministers – two of whom had seen Tavernier’s film – officially commemorated the Franco-Algerian ceasefire of 1962 for the first time. Since La Guerre sans nom, Tavernier’s documentary impulse has come to the fore, and his attention has also been drawn increasingly to contemporary France, including post-colonial immigration to the Hexagon. What links his obsession with the Algerian war to a more recent focus on immigration issues? First, we could note that many of the veterans in La Guerre sans nom were themselves immigrants. Grenoble has a large Italian community, and the names of fully a third of Tavernier’s and Rotman’s interviewees reveal their Italian origins: Alonso, Delbello, Donazzolo, Enrietti, Esposito, Pessenti, Petrone, and Zanoni. Gaetan Esposito resented being mistreated in the army because of his Italian background. He was tauntingly called a ‘Macar’ (short for Macaroni), and he suspects that he was assigned more frequently than others to dangerous missions. Several of the men explain their military service in terms of their desire to demonstrate pride in recently acquired French citizenship, a sentiment that one finds in war memoirs going back to the two World Wars. 30 ‘a resurrection of memory, as if it were springing from the bowels of the earth.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 219

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

220  bertrand tavernier As for immigration from North Africa, Stora believes that ongoing public debates hark back to fantasies arising from colonial history, and he argues that today’s immigrants – especially those of Maghrebian origin – often trace their quest for French civil status to a desire to redress the wrongs of colonialism (Stora 1992: 140–1). Ageron notes that decolonization accelerated the immigration rate, and he believes that the independent Maghrebian states, especially Algeria, saw immigration to the Hexagon as a right, or a sort of compensation for the prejudices suffered under colonialism (Thobie et al. 1990: 549). Also a context for Tavernier’s shift to questions of immigration is contemporary French xenophobia, a sentiment encouraged by the political platform of the Right wing. Members of the Front National outspokenly justify their anti-immigration attitudes by playing to lingering resentments over the French defeat in Algeria. Examining the corpus of French films about the Algerian war, Stora believes that the real subject of most French films about the Algerian conflict is not the war itself, but ‘le poids de la culpabilité, ou de la revanche d’une guerre perdue.’31 These resentments can easily lead to scapegoating of immigrants from former colonies (Stora 1997: 249). And in another book tellingly entitled Le Transfert d’une mémoire: de l’Algérie française au racisme anti-arabe, Stora investigates the persistent appeal of Right-wing ideologies in France, relating them to ‘La hantise du passé de l’Algérie française [qui] surgit comme la part d’ombre cruciale du mouvement d’extrême droite’ (Stora 1999: 10).32 Stora cites a 1999 survey in which 76 per cent of those responding agreed that Maghrébins were the first targets of racism in France. Liauzu even goes so far as to say that current anti-Arab and anti-Muslim xenophobia might be understood as the displaced e­xpression of repressed memory, mourning, and commemoration (Liauzu 1990:  515). Conflicts over immigration reached a crisis point with the passage of the controversial Loi Debré in 1997, a law requiring citizens to inform authorities about illegal immigrants. This is where Tavernier came back into the picture, and characteristically, his film took the form of a letter responding to another letter. The title of his 1999 television documentary, De l’autre côté du Périph’, refers to the housing projects beyond the Boulevard Périphérique beltway that are 31 ‘the weight of guilt or revenge for defeat.’ 32 ‘the obsessive memory of French Algeria [which] reveals itself as the dark core of the Extreme Right.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 220

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

the documentary gaze  221 ­isproportionately inhabited by families originally from France’s d North and West African colonies. As Tavernier explains in voiceover, he was one of sixty-six filmmakers who signed a manifesto protesting the Debré law and calling for civil disobedience. The Ministre Délégué à la ville et à l’intégration, Eric Raoult, penned a condescending reply to the signatories challenging the filmmakers to spend a month in one of the housing projects – for example the Cité des Grands Pêchers at Montreuil – in order to see that ‘l’intégration, ce n’est pas du cinéma.’ Clearly enchanted with his own metaphor, the minister continues: ‘Dans ce manifeste vous avez malheureusement commis une erreur de cinéma et de casting.’33 Outraged, Tavernier grabbed his camera and headed for Montreuil, where he and Nils spent several months interviewing residents and local officials, social workers, shopkeepers, and teachers. Their film is a litany of official discrimination – by omission and commission – in education, housing, employment, health care, police protection, and financial support for community-based initiatives, a gamut of problems that add up to a failure of ‘integration.’ The viewer is struck by the dignity and humor of the interviewees and by their articulate insights into their situation, their pride in their work, their sense of community, and their spirit of resistance. Although Tavernier adheres to his documentary ethics of listening and conferring authority on his interviewees, he is more opinionated here than in La Guerre sans nom. Toward the film’s end, he maliciously remarks in voiceover that Eric Raoult is no longer Minister, but ‘Moi, je suis toujours cinéaste. Les soixante-cinq autres signataires aussi.’34 Then he thanks his interviewees, including the young Mélanie, who asked ‘et quand le film sera terminé, alors nous, qu’est-ce qu’on fera?’ Tavernier concludes by deftly shifting responsibility for her question to the public: ‘Once the film is finished, what will we do?’ Letters inevitably invite, even demand a response. What is especially remarkable here is the film’s performative effect. It does not simply represent the problem. The timing, genre, narrative strategies, audience, and epistolary form of address aim to transform the lives of participants themselves by raising public consciousness and shining an accusing spotlight on certain recalcitrant ministers. Even 33 ‘This is about integration; you’re not at the movies. In this manifesto, you have made unfortunate errors in filming and casting.’ 34 ‘I’m still a filmmaker. The sixty-five others too.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 221

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

222  bertrand tavernier more importantly, the very act of inviting people to speak – to ‘prendre la parole’ – empowered them directly, thus actively and literally producing democracy. Given a voice, the young people in the Cité des Grands Pêchers gained dignity and power, as several of them recognized onscreen. Apprentice glassblower Cedric Ngo-Van becomes the film’s de facto narrator, as he recounts some regrettable incidents of vandalism and in the process underlines the film’s importance: ‘Qui est-ce qui nous permet de nous exprimer? Quand est-ce qu’on nous écoute? C’est quand tu casses. C’est triste à dire.’35 In other words, Tavernier’s goal of listening and making heard is accomplished through the film’s modes of address as much as through its content. Thinkers such as Jacques Derrida and Tahar Ben Jelloun have formulated questions of immigration in terms of hospitality (Ben Jelloun 1984; Derrida 1997). Hosts and guests are not innate identities but social positions that devolve from historical situations. Arriving at the Cité des Grands Pêchers, Tavernier and his crew were at first the objects of understandable suspicion. This smiling and bear-like middle-aged honky must surely have looked out of place surrounded by crowds of excited, sometimes angry youths. Before long, however, he and his crew were invited in. Alexandre Lenadovich welcomed the filmmaker into his apartment to show off his exercise and audiovisual equipment. Henri Olivier gets along well with his African and Maghrebian neighbors; he remembers when he and his family came to Paris from Brittany in 1940. We were the immigrants in those days, he explains, adding that he knows discrimination and fascism when he sees them. Eventually, the crew shares a couscous with an Algerian family and visits the apartment of Toudo Traoré, who is respected in the local café, and who is known for his ‘grande hospitalité.’ During the year leading up to the passage of the Debré law, Jacques Derrida taught a seminar at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, part of which appeared the following year under the title De l’hospitalité (1997). In texts ranging from antiquity to the present, Derrida explores the history and implications of hospitality and hostility, host and guest. He zooms in on the conflict at the heart of the Debré law between ethical and political imperatives: between hospitality and truth telling. The law forces hosts to choose between lying to the state and betraying their guest. Derrida also delves into 35 ‘Who lets us express ourselves? When does anybody listen to us? It’s when you cause trouble. It’s sad but true.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 222

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

the documentary gaze  223 what it means to be at home, chez soi. As he describes it, being chez soi and being foreign are not essential qualities conferred by birth on French soil or of French blood, but instead are produced by historical situations. Mireille Rosello, in her own book, Postcolonial Hospitality: The Immigrant as Guest (2001), extends Derrida’s inquiry by observing that it is the power to receive guests that constitutes the host as host. ‘The opposition between the guest and the host is worth revisiting as a continuous and problematic line between power and powerlessness, ownership and dispossession, stability and nomadism,’ she summarizes. And ‘If one cannot offer hospitality, one has an address, not a home’ (2001: 18). If this is so – and I believe it is – it means that ‘guest’ and ‘host,’ ‘immigrant’ and ‘native’ are not essential identities, but positions in a system of power relations. This in turn makes it possible for gestures of invitation and acceptance to reconfigure the host–guest relation. Acknowledgement that one is an intruder or outsider can therefore counterbalance a colonizing attitude. This is how cinematic choices are also ethical and political ones. Tavernier’s documentary ethics are fully on display within the film. As a visitor to the Cité des Grands Pêchers, he stands by. He asks permission. He waits outside until invited in. He knocks. The camera has its own deontology as well: the interviewer steps to the margins and places the community members at center stage. The film documents its own efforts to banish voyeurism, stereotype, and condescension: interviewees are not treated as victims; they are not powerless objects of ethnographic curiosity. Camera movement and editing are minimal and follow the speakers’ lead. When the filmmaker accepts the residents’ invitations, he consents to make himself into a guest. He is the visitor, the tourist, the Other, someone who asks because he wants to know. Being heard transforms witnesses into experts and into subjects of language and knowledge. In this way, the film actively structures the host–guest dynamic. It offers hospitality by listening, and it accepts hospitality too, thereby positioning the host as host and the spectator (and Minister Raoult) as guests. The film thus reverses the center and periphery (périphérique) in a rhetorical maneuver that holds a mirror up to the country by deconstructing oppositions between insider and outsider, speaker and listener, host and guest, minister and immigrant. Moreover, Tavernier refutes Raoult’s taunt that ‘l’intégration, ce n’est pas du cinema’ by demonstrating how cinema can indeed produce instances of integration.

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 223

12/10/2011 16:25

224  bertrand tavernier

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Fictions with a ‘documentary spirit’ La Guerre sans nom and De l’autre côté du Périph’ have the capacity to produce change by exposing the human dimension of a controversial issue. They can provoke spectators and public officials to take action, and they can empower the participants, thereby restructuring social relations. Although we may expect this sort of impact from documentaries, however, what if a fiction film were designed to produce similar effects? What sort of film might it be? We consider now ­Tavernier’s response to these questions in three films that introduce actors into real situations. Each of these experiments offers a compelling story with fully developed, believable, and engaging characters, while mixing documentary elements with fiction. L.627 was named for a law prohibiting possession, use, and sale of illegal substances. The film accompanies a brigade of plainclothes street cops in their daily war on drug dealers (and bureaucracy). Ça commence aujourd’hui, filmed in a former mining town near Lille, follows a teacher’s struggle to rescue his small charges from poverty (and bureaucracy). In Holy Lola, a couple travels to Cambodia to adopt a child, a process that takes several months of resisting corruption, discouragement, doubt (and bureaucracy). Although their anecdotes are mostly invented and their protagonists played by actors, all three films spotlight a reality whose content and often whose form of presentation is, in fact, ­documentary. These films combine the meticulously researched period recreations of Tavernier’s historical melodramas with the immediate ethical and political considerations at work in his documentaries. Each somehow blends the power of documentary to seem urgently real with fiction’s capacity to engage the spectator’s imaginative and emotional investment. Each was praised for its success in capturing a contemporary daily, living reality (‘le vécu’). In addition, each functioned like a journalist’s exposé or an open letter. Alain Choquart, cinematographer for all three films, is a long-time Tavernier collaborator, having also photographed La Guerre sans nom and Histoires de vies brisées on the documentary side, in addition to L’Appât, Capitaine Conan, and Laissez-passer. Before those, he served as camera operator for La Vie et rien d’autre (with cinematographer Bruno de Keyzer) and assistant director for Mississippi Blues. Somewhat of a crossover figure himself, then, Choquart’s versatility contributes to Tavernier’s project of challenging the fiction/documentary divide.

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 224

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

the documentary gaze  225 Critics proved unable to assign these films to a clear generic category. The case of L.627 alone elicited a variety of labels, including for example: ‘reportage romancé’ and ‘fiction documenté’ (Le Point), ‘manifeste’ (Libération), ‘film-constat aux allures documentaires’ (‘film statement with documentary overtones,’ Révolution), ‘filmprocès’ (‘film-trial,’ Témoignage Chrétien), ‘faux documentaire,’ ‘patchwork tragic-comique,’ and ‘document brulot’ (pamphlet, Télérama, which also called the film a masterpiece), and ‘fiction vérité’ (Nouvel Observateur). The most commonly mentioned genre, however, was ‘chronique’ (‘chronicle’), a term that pays tribute to the films’ preference for describing routine, daily life rather than spectacular, catastrophic events. I refer to them as ‘investigative dramas’ to highlight Tavernier’s capacity for outrage and his affinities with journalism and theater. He readily chooses the word ‘dramaturgie’ to explain his goal of capturing the rhythms and texture of lived experience. Tavernier did not invent this blending of genres from whole cloth. The films exhibit a rich network of kinships, beginning with the new social cinema in theaters during the same period. Films such as Claude Berri’s Germinal, Robert Guédiguian’s Marius et Jeannette (1997), Laurent Cantet’s Ressources humaines (1999), Emilie DeLeuze’s Peau neuve (1999), Dominique Cabrera’s Nadia et les hippopotames (1999), and La Promesse (1996) and Rosetta (1999) by the Dardenne brothers use fiction to address contemporary social issues. Secondly, reviewers related Tavernier’s three films to cinéma-vérité. ­(Particularly relevant would be the work of filmmaker-anthropologist Jean Rouch, who called his films ‘ethno-fictions.’) Thirdly, for their focus on the world of work, Tavernier’s films hark back, too, albeit in a less romanticized visual style, to poetic realism’s portrayals of the poor and the urban underworld. Finally, a genealogical debt can also be traced to the Italian neo-realists, who sought to avoid reductive plot formulas that would distort what Cesare Zavattini, the movement’s scriptwriter-theorist, called ‘living social facts.’ Zavattini argued that cinema should be a means for researching reality and training the public in ‘the keenest necessity of our time,’ which is ‘social attention.’ Believing that fiction can illuminate reality, he emphasized that the essential thing is to preserve the ‘documentary spirit’ of the enterprise, to ‘tell reality as if it were a story.’ In addition, Zavattini saw the neorealist approach as a way to counteract the artificial plots and characters of American cinema, another goal Tavernier shares (Zavattini 1953: 64–9).

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 225

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

226  bertrand tavernier The three films examined below can be compared to La Guerre sans nom, too, in the way that close-up focus on private individuals unveils an entire dimension of contemporary French public life. The point, though, is not that Tavernier combines elements of fiction and documentary, but that he blurs boundaries between the two, so that ultimately in these three stories, what the actors portray is really happening. Time and time again, the actors themselves describe the project as transformative and unlike any previous experience in their careers. L.627 In the fall of 1991, British filmmaker and editor John Boorman invited Tavernier to serve as the new ‘diarist’ for the journal Projections. At about the same time, French editor Gilles Jacob contacted him with an invitation to contribute to a collection of essays by directors whose films had been selected at Cannes. Reticent at first, Tavernier was won over by the suggestion that he document the shooting of his new project in progress, L.627. The result, a sort of written ‘making of,’ was published in 1993 in English as ‘I Wake Up, Dreaming: A Journal for 1992’ and in French as Qu’est-ce qu’on attend? The volumes constitute an invaluable window into the day-by-day development of L.627. Since the filming of L.627 coincided with the release and distribution of his previous film, the diary also documents Tavernier’s activities presenting La Guerre sans nom around the country. Given this chronological overlap, how could the intense experience of La Guerre sans nom not have had a profound influence on the conception of L.627? Tavernier’s diary shows the thought devoted to enhancing the film’s reality effect while breaking away from genre conventions. L.627 aims to avoid exposition and plot, remaining instead inside the central character’s developing story. Lucien Marguet (Lulu) is not a hero. His daily grind is repetitive and unglamorous. Sometimes he rises to the challenges; other days are punctuated by frustration and failure. Although the film follows his activities and point of view, we are invited neither to condone nor to condemn, but instead to comprehend the larger work environment and social context. In this way, the film solicits both emotional and intellectual engagement. The camera is invested in a project of mapping a terrain rather than crossing territory. The film goes to great lengths to avoid cliché: when someone suggested that police dramatically break a door during a raid, Taver-

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 226

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

the documentary gaze  227 nier explained that real policemen use a passkey. As in the ‘histoire chorale’ of Des enfants gâtés, the various threads are interwoven in a balanced composition such that in post-production, when one story line threatened to overshadow the others, Tavernier re-edited the film (Tavernier 1993a: 306–7). L.627 was filmed in the streets, sometimes with hidden cameras, so as not to interfere with the found ambiance, but the representations are nevertheless carefully orchestrated. With fiction, the film shares Tavernier’s polished cinematography, scripting, carefully considered shot design, and actors in the principal roles. From documentary, they derive the participation of non-actors encountered in real institutions, situations, and locations. Naturalistic dialogues, however, and lesserknown actors (Didier Bezace as Lulu, Philippe Torreton, Nils Tavernier, Charlotte Kady) left room for improvisation on the street. The events were authentic enough to fool police, who at one point demanded the actors produce their identity papers! The film transmits no exposition or thesis (which doesn’t mean, as Tavernier remarked about La Guerre sans nom, that there is no point of view). In other words, as for the interviews with Algeria veterans, L.627 proposes ‘les vies dans [ … ], pas des discours sur.’ Tavernier co-scripted L.627 with an insider. Michel Alexandre had applied unsuccessfully to film school before ending up as a narcotics cop in the Parisian Police Judiciaire. His interest in cinema led to work as a consultant for Catherine Breillat’s Sale comme un ange (1991), in which Nils Tavernier played a young street policeman. Nils introduced Alexandre to his father. The encounter was an opportunity to make a realistic polar far removed from Hollywood clichés. (That Alexandre was from Lyon was undoubtedly also a plus.) Tavernier asked Alexandre to write up a few anecdotes, which soon became a 350-page collection of vignettes, and then the two worked together to transform the pages into a script. Nils, too, had an insider’s knowledge, although unfortunately from another perspective, having recently emerged from a period of drug abuse. In L.627, he plays Vincent, the youngest cop on the team. Tavernier dedicated the film to his son, suggesting another behind-the-scenes story of generational rapprochement. Under Alexandre’s supervision, a real street ‘soum’ – for ‘sousmarin’ or unmarked surveillance truck – was installed in a druginfested area of the 18th arrondissement. Tavernier was horrified by what he found in the street and even more by the terrible working

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 227

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

228  bertrand tavernier conditions, lack of equipment, and bureaucratic obstacles with which the police routinely contend. Lulu has in common with Dellaplane and other Tavernier characters an aptitude for annoying just about everyone, simply through his single-minded devotion to his job. L.627 was a solid commercial success, but because the real drug scene includes a lot of immigrants from Zaire and North Africa and elsewhere, there was a risk that the film would be co-opted for a xenophobic Right-wing politics. Instead, the film was widely praised for tackling a taboo topic. Reviewing the film for Télérama, ClaudeMarie Trémois asserted that Lulu’s anger is also the filmmaker’s, but that ‘Tavernier, on le sait, a le coeur à gauche, et aucun de ceux qui le connaissent ne peut l’accuser de racisme’ (9 September 1992).36 Follé Sylla, the President of SOS-Racisme, defended the portrayals and praised the director, saying his organization had long awaited such a film. Alain Finkielkraut also applauded L.627, and Pierre Truche, an eminent public prosecutor, told Tavernier that his film had exposed a major threat to democracy (Tavernier 1993b: 256, 246). Rank and file police received the film enthusiastically too. Michel Alexandre’s colleagues judged the tone to be right on target. A Paris police commissioner was ecstatic to recognize the details and emotions of his own former job on the anti-drug beat, and the leader of the largest police union pronounced the film 100 per cent accurate, calling it ‘cinéma-vérité.’ One policeman who found in Tavernier’s film an exceptionally accurate representation of his profession wrote: ‘When young people come to me asking to join the police, I tell them to go see L.627 first. Then we can talk’ (Tavernier 1993a: 371; Tavernier 1993b: 157, 243; Le Point, 12 September 1992; Libération 9 September, 1992). While policemen and women in large numbers declared that the film had captured the reality of their lives, reaction from above was less dithyrambic. L.627 turned out to be another manifesto or open letter, in the sense that it created a confrontation – an ‘affaire’ that was widely reported and heatedly editorialized – between Tavernier and Minister of the Interior Paul Quilès. Quilès took Tavernier to task for relying on his co-writer from the brigade des stupéfiants, instead of consulting with him, the Minister, to verify his facts. The Ministry even went so far as to cancel post-screening discussions peremptorily and threaten police personnel who attended. A police union represen 36 ‘Everyone knows that Tavernier’s heart is on the Left, and nobody who knows him could accuse him of racism.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 228

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

the documentary gaze  229 tative riposted by asserting in a radio interview that the film illustrated a decade of union complaints that the politicians had refused to hear. He proposed that when his annual report came due, he would submit L.627 instead (Tavernier 1993b: 253). Meanwhile, as the controversy raged and further letters were exchanged in the press, the film’s popularity skyrocketed. Much of the polemic can be attributed to the film’s success in straddling the fiction/documentary divide. Tavernier had once again exploited fiction’s capacity to elicit passionate spectator involvement, while mobilizing documentary strategies that stir the political pot. Robert Doisneau, the photographer most famous for his evocations of Paris, was fascinated by the documentary quality of the street shots (Tavernier 1993b: 19). Alain Resnais claimed to have discovered in L.627 a new way of conceiving a film, where every scene and image seems to happen spontaneously (Tavernier 1993b, 156). Philippe Noiret said the same about Didier Bezace: he found the actor’s performance completely natural, conveying emotion without seeming to act at all (Tavernier 1993b, 243). And when Quilès tried to defuse the polemic by saying the film was ‘only’ a fiction, its principal actor retorted by describing the inherently provocative capacity of a film that destabilizes genre. ‘Il est étonnant de constater,’ Bezace reflected, ‘qu’un simple déplacement de lieux, comme transposer un discours politique au théâtre, facilite l’écoute. La fiction rend les gens plus crédibles que dans la réalité’ (Le Figaro, 8 September 1992).37 A year later, co-writer Michel Alexandre had abandoned police work to devote his time to writing (although whether this change was voluntary is unclear, since he had been placed under official investigation). In the meantime, while continuing to deplore the film’s alleged misrepresentations of reality, the government allotted 4 million francs to upgrade police stations, and at least one of the neighborhoods depicted in the film was miraculously cleared of drug dealers. Ça commence aujourd’hui If the impetus for L.627 came from Nils, it was Tiffany who was behind Ça commence aujourd’hui. Several years previously, she had met JeanClaude Lefebvre, author of a dozen books of poetry under the pen 37 ‘It is remarkable how a simple change of location, such as transposing a political speech to the theater, makes it easier to listen. Fiction is more believable than reality.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 229

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

230  bertrand tavernier name Dominique Sampiero. Tiffany soon joined Sampiero in the tiny village in the far north of France near Belgium where he worked as director of a nursery school. With the closing of the coalmines, this once-prosperous region had sunk into economic catastrophe, with an unemployment rate of 30 per cent. ‘Le Nord’ had already served as location for numerous films that spotlighted the crisis, among them Claude Berri’s adaptation of Zola’s Germinal and Erick Zonka’s La Vie rêvée des anges (1998). When Tiffany brought Sampiero home for dinner, her father was deeply touched by the poet’s dedication to his community and appalled by his tales of everyday poverty. Tavernier had already expressed dismay over the failure of Mitterrand’s socialist government (for which he had voted) to address urgent social needs. He was especially outraged by politicians’ hypocritical claims to support key institutions (like police and schools) while willfully neglecting le petit people they were elected to serve. He sent the couple home with an invitation to draft a screenplay. Another loosely constructed chronicle of an institution under pressure and the valiant everyday heroes who keep it afloat, Ça commence aujourd’hui continues in the direction of L.627. Filming took place at a nursery school in Anzin, outside Valenciennes. Modeled on Sampiero, teacher Daniel Lefebvre (Philippe Torreton) exemplifies the daily ‘dramaturgie du travail’ that is at the heart of the film. Like Lulu and Dellaplane, Daniel is another ‘homme révolté’ (Tavernier calls them ‘emmerdeurs’) who only barely keeps his frustration under control, while annoying authorities simply by striving to do his job well. Had Tavernier followed the example of De l’autre côté du Périph’, he would have grabbed his camera and headed north to produce a documentary exposé. Asked why he chose fiction instead, he replied that it was necessary to adjust one’s methods to the nature of the situation. The teachers were bound by confidentiality, and the families – perhaps too discreet, too respectful of authority, and too discouraged – refused to be interviewed. The director also ruled out asking the teachers to speak for the community, because that would silence the families, whereas a fiction film could give them opportunities to be heard. By the same token, he wanted to avoid imposing a plot and instead let characters carry the story. The result is a hybrid, neither entirely fiction nor documentary, using a mixture of actors and non-professionals. The local folks were encouraged to participate

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 230

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

the documentary gaze  231 in creating characters and stories that were part real, part invented (Vezin 1999: 97). The film’s generic hybridity dictated its esthetic, ethical, and practical choices. The filmmaking team immersed themselves in the community. Torreton stepped in as substitute teacher and won everyone’s confidence. He explained to the children that they would continue their school routines, with a little pretending. Although the actors rehearsed a loose script, the children did not. Following the children’s natural activities required the use of natural lighting, handheld cameras, and reduced technical crew. Since the film attempts to document the children’s real behavior as naturally as possible, there was no possibility of rehearsal or retakes. It was necessary to allow for long takes and rapid reframing when necessary, which in turn shaped the film’s editing rhythm. All this made it possible, too, to explain the story to the children. Tavernier strictly banished reaction shots from moments of dramatic tension, explaining that it would be too easy to interpret or ‘steal’ a child’s reaction by inserting a counter-shot from an observing adult’s viewpoint (L’Humanité, 17 February 1999). These choices meant that while some of the characters (notably Daniel) are fictional and played by actors, the overall film was governed by considerations more typical of documentary modes. Some experimental filmmakers (or painters, or novelists) reject representation in favor of abstraction. They disengage their art as much as possible from any reference to the real, the better to explore the capacity of their medium and materials to produce meaning. Ça commence aujourd’hui moves away from referentiality in a different direction: the film does not represent experience: it is an experience. Put otherwise, certain scenes were not ‘realistic’ or an imitation of life; they attempted instead to create the conditions in which to produce and record a slice of reality, as it happened. In order to understand the significance of this, it is helpful to remember Tavernier’s passion for jazz. A jazz performance is not a representation, but rather, a creation, a piece of lived reality. The same approach infuses Ça commence aujourd’hui, bringing Tavernier closer to the spirit of jazz in cinema. What most distinguishes Ça commence aujourd’hui from Tavernier’s previous films is its special use of actors. While blends of fiction and reality can be found elsewhere, what is daring about Ça commence aujourd’hui is the nature of the interactions between actors playing fictional personae and real people in real situations. They are

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 231

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

232  bertrand tavernier not ‘playing themselves,’ as the standard formula would have it, as much as they are living their lives alongside actors playing roles. And even that is not quite true, since the actors were eventually forced to respond – as themselves – to real situations. In a sense, the fiction film converged with its own ‘making of’ and, in the process, became a documentary. In other words, Ça commence aujourd’hui confronts actors (and spectators) with people who are in reality experiencing the crisis the film depicts. As it turned out, Torreton, the son of a miner and a teacher, had once considered a career in teaching. Now he found himself facing real children in an actual school (plate 14). This required considerable improvisation, as it demanded that professional actors adapt their fictional roles to found reality. ‘Je n’ai pas travaillé un personnage,’ explains Torreton in an interview, ‘mais des situations.’38 Creating a fiction within what the actor called ‘la réalité ambiante’ blurred boundaries between filming and life, between documentary and fiction, and between rehearsed lines and real conversation. Torreton recounts that: Une scène en particulier m’a marqué. Daniel reçoit les parents d’un enfant qui est souvent absent parce qu’ils n’ont même plus le courage de se lever. Il les pousse à réagir; ‘Faut faire au moins cet effort-là…’ etc. Le ‘couple’ était interprété par des gens du coin, des chômeurs eux-mêmes, vivant dans des conditions réellement difficiles. Dans un moment pareil, il se produit un déclic: on ne peut pas jouer, on dit vraiment les choses. Pas question de tricher. (Télérama, 10 March 1999)39

Daniel nevertheless remains a fictional construct. His voiceover, drawn from Sampiero’s writing, enlarges the frame to show us the character’s imagined interiority. The poetry he writes in his spare time, his wife (actress Maria Pitarresi), his anxieties, his other activities remain securely within the world of scripted drama. Yet the character travels home across a real landscape whose beauty is 38 ‘I was developing situations, not a character.’ 39 ‘I was touched by one particular scene: Daniel meets with the parents of a child who is often absent because they are too disheartened to get up in the morning. He pushes them: “You have to make the effort,” etc. The “couple” was played by local people, unemployed and living in truly difficult circumstances. In a moment like that, something clicks. You’re not acting; what you say is real. Cheating is out of the question.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 232

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

the documentary gaze  233 lovingly captured on CinemaScope. This is the filmmaker’s favored format for conveying the relation between decor and character, story and context, fictional story and real situation. Tavernier often remarks on his debt to John Ford and Delmer Daves. As the Western hero defines himself through his struggle with unfriendly terrain, Tavernier’s characters evolve in tandem with their visual and geographical surroundings, and they are defined by their struggles against their social landscape. We could thus understand Tavernier’s predilection for CinemaScope as a functional equivalent of Renoir’s deep focus composition that always shows foregrounds in terms of backgrounds, implanting characters in their space and time. This interweaving of character with context is palpable everywhere. For example, Joseph Bouvier is unthinkable without the vast Ardèche countryside he crosses and leaves strewn with corpses and mayhem. Michel Descombes is as much shaped by Lyon as Rougerie and Lulu are by Paris and Lucien Cordier by colonial Africa. Another excellent example can be found in Laissez-passer. Jean Devaivre (Jacques Gamblin), trapped in the ominous claustrophobia of Occupation Paris, works for a German film studio, the better to provide for his family while covering his Resistance activities. At one point in the film, though, Devaivre takes off on his bicycle to visit his wife and children who are hiding in the countryside. The camera closely follows Davaivre on his bicycle: you can see his pumping muscles, his sweat, and his growing exhaustion. You can sense his fear and desperation, and his love for his family. Although not quite three minutes long, the sequence feels interminable, like the Occupation. It is the film’s most memorable moment because this interlude of freedom to move and breathe expresses the Occupation – and the heartbreaking beauty of a country and people worth saving – as no other scene can. While the experiment of Ça commence aujourd’hui takes a new direction, its dialectical interpenetration of fictional story with its real historical and geographical context develops a perspective present in Tavernier’s work from the beginning. With Ça commence aujourd’hui, Tavernier once again attempted to steer clear of voyeurism and what he calls (after Victor Hugo, apparently), ‘du tourisme dans la misère’ (Tavernier 1993b: 137).40 And once again, he focuses on the particular: one letter, not the whole 40 ‘tourist visits to the poor.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 233

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

234  bertrand tavernier postal system. The questions raised are social, Tavernier agrees, but the approach did not have to be sociological. The narrative is more explanatory than usual, however, and Daniel is more heroic and idealistic than previous protagonists, making the overall film correspondingly less ‘choral.’ O’Shaughnessy faults the film for casting its subjects as passive victims and recipients of help (2009: 116–18), and several reviewers found it preachy and leaning toward ‘misérabilisme.’ The truth in these charges underlines the obvious: that Tavernier is a middle-class crusader working from a vantage point outside the problems he tackles. He can never be more than a visitor, a guest, a well-meaning do-gooder. But that does not condemn him to passivity. He can do his best to avoid colonizing postures. He can lend his sympathy and solidarity, throw the considerable weight of his reputation into a cause, and give people a megaphone. As before, he also succeeded in making the problems visible. Over 850,000 spectators had seen Ça commence aujourd’hui by the end of its first run, and the Berlin Film Festival awarded it a jury prize for ‘best subject.’ Like L.627, it was especially well received among members of the profession depicted. Teachers and school administrators testified that if anything, the reality was worse. Members of the Anzin community were gratified that the reality of their daily ­struggles had been publicly recognized and their solidarity affirmed and the school’s director praised the film for managing to be both realistic and hopeful. They noted their satisfaction at the experience itself and at the participation of the filmmakers in their lives: ‘Bertrand Tavernier n’est pas venu comme un voleur d’images,’ said one person.41 The film received unusually broad commentary and it did produce some long-term effects. Reviews were often accompanied by investigative reporting about the school system, launching further public debate. The film also served as catalyst for new initiatives and a sense of pride in Anzin. After the finished film was screened in the town, parents and teachers renamed the school … after Tavernier! More significantly, several families launched a fundraising project to create a theater troupe, and other projects were under consideration. It turned out that asking people to perform their own lives before the camera incited them to become more militant on their own behalf.

41 ‘Tavernier didn’t come to steal images.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 234

12/10/2011 16:25

the documentary gaze  235

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Holy Lola A middle-class French couple travels to Cambodia to adopt a child. Pierre, a doctor (Jacques Gamblin), and his wife Géraldine (Isabelle Carré) arrive in Phnom Penh during the monsoon season. They join a community of other French visitors seeking adoptable children, and we follow their quest from orphanage to orphanage. They encounter a multitude of obstacles: weather and transportation, linguistic and cultural misunderstanding, delays, corruption. In the countryside, they discover widespread trafficking in stolen babies. American adoption agencies offer astronomical sums and close out competitors. Finally, at the ‘Holy Baby’ orphanage, they fall in love with the adorable Lola, and after further delays, take her home to Auvergne. They rush to their departing plane, the necessary papers having come through just minutes before. Tavernier has never been one to shy away from fraught topics. How can a filmmaker steer clear of appropriating the distress of another country – especially a former colony, and in the aftermath of genocide – as the object of his gaze and the topic of his film? How would he handle this renewed risk of indulging in ‘du tourisme dans la misère’? Would he be able to take a stand without imposing an agenda? How could the film sidestep the risks of colonial fantasy while making it possible for individual and collective stories to be heard? Propelled by questions such as these, the project would develop a double quest and a double vision: the characters’ search for a child, and the filmmaker’s ongoing mission to construct an ethical gaze. As has frequently been the case, locale again takes precedence over story, making Cambodia into the film’s protagonist. Jacques and Géraldine arrive in Phnom Penh as middle-class foreign enfants gâtés. Their goals are modest and personal, even selfish, and they undergo no dramatic epiphanies. However, they do manage to achieve the ‘petit pas dans la tête’ of Tavernier’s earliest investigative drama. And once again, Tavernier chose his moment well. In 1998, France ratified the Hague Convention regulating international adoption, and in the same year, UNICEF denounced the prevalence in Southeast Asia of trafficking in babies. Cambodian adoptions were suspended in 2000, restored in 2001, and suspended again in 2003, while the French government debated the creation of a national agency that would provide guidance for French families seeking to adopt. Holy Lola is set in 2001, in the lull between the two suspensions. In

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 235

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

236  bertrand tavernier addition, at the time the film was released, there was much criticism surrounding such media personalities as Madonna and Angelina Jolie, whose wealth and celebrity status put them in the adoption fast lane. Johnny Hallyday and his wife Laetitia, too, had recently adopted a Vietnamese girl with minimal delay, thanks to the timely intervention of President Chirac’s wife, Bernadette. Pierre and Géraldine, on the other hand, are an ordinary couple. Tavernier set out to trace their emotional journey, without creating a ‘dossier’ on the subject. Many reviewers nevertheless received the film as an exposé on the psychological, sociological, and diplomatic aspects of adoption. Tavernier had certainly done his research. The project originated with his daughter. An avid traveler herself, Tiffany had published a novel, Dans la nuit aussi le ciel (2000), about a young French woman who travels to Calcutta and is transformed by the extreme poverty and the kindness she discovers there. Tavernier proposed to adapt the novel, but Tiffany and Dominique Sampiero suggested he focus on adoption instead. Preliminary study suggested Cambodia as a locale, and they found a prototype in Pierre and Géraldine Alix, who had adopted two Cambodian children. The three co-scriptwriters then traveled to Cambodia to educate themselves and to scout locations for the story. They fell in love with the country. Tavernier’s crusading zeal was inflamed by reports of corruption and administrative quagmires, but as so often before, it was less a political program than a strong emotional response to the country and the situation that galvanized his creative energies. Holy Lola is Tavernier’s most ambitious attempt yet to inflect a fictional story with a documentary gaze. The French couple’s quest for a child is intertwined with what a press release called a ‘voyage initiatique’ into a country whose spectacular beauty and heartbreaking problems are lovingly documented by Alain Choquart’s camera. The film’s every dimension, from its story and setting to its acting, camera, and editing techniques, blurs boundaries between reality and fiction. The characters, the actors, and the audience encounter Cambodia as it presented itself. The Rega guesthouse is real, as are its owners. Fictional characters encounter real street children living in unspeakable poverty. The orphanages – caretakers and children alike (except for ‘Lola’) – were filmed as found. Some of the children have AIDS. War crimes trials would not begin for another five years, but the Cambodian past is palpable, including the effects of colonial rule

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 236

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

the documentary gaze  237 and the aftermath of genocide. Reinforcing the film’s documentary dimension was the participation of Cambodian actors and technicians, many of them genocide survivors. Actress Neary Kol, who plays a secretary in an adoption bureau, was studying in China when her entire extended family, including her child, disappeared under Pol Pot’s Khmère Rouge. A refugee in France since then, this was her first return to Cambodia. Cambodian actress Somany Na, had helped produce S21: La Machine de mort Khmère Rouge, Rithy Panh’s 2003 documentary about the Tuol Sleng (S21) death camp. Holy Lola was the first film role for both actresses. Both came to Tavernier recommended by Rithy Panh. Throughout, the film weaves together real situations and invented anecdotes. Like the other adoptive parents in the guesthouse, Pierre and Géraldine are actors improvising on scripted roles. Most of the Cambodian officials and bureaucrats are actors too, recruited in Paris and Phnom Penh. Lola herself is played by Srey Pich Krang, who auditioned with her parents and took a shine to Gamblin and Carré. The historical genocide is made real by a fictional character. In the countryside, Pierre and Géraldine meet a man who invites them to his home. After dinner, he calmly describes the ordeal of his escape from the Khmère Rouge, when he and his pregnant wife fled on foot into Thailand. Yet while the character is invented, the cinematography is that of Tavernier’s documentaries: an immobile camera frames the man’s face as he details his story, uninterrupted by conspicuous editing or extradiegetic sound. In shots that recall La Guerre sans nom, the man’s wife sits beside him as silent witness to the truth of their story. The French couple remains respectfully still, receiving his words. Spectator figures, the couple stands in for the film’s larger public, while the man serves as a link joining historical record, fictional character, and documentary style in a history of the postal system. In fact, this character’s story resembles Rithy Panh’s. Born in 1964, Panh fled Cambodia in 1979 through Thailand and eventually landed in Paris. He graduated from the Institut des Hautes Etudes Cinématographiques (IDHEC) and went on to teach at its successor, the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Métiers du son et de l’Image (La Fémis). He created several fictional films set in his native country before making the documentary S21. Panh advised and encouraged Tavernier during the making of Holy Lola, and he also appears in a small role. Rather than playing himself, however, or the

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 237

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

238  bertrand tavernier ­abovementioned character whose story echoes his own, Rithy Panh is Monsieur Khieu, the last official the French couples must consult, the one who gives final imprimatur to their adoption proceedings. Panh’s brief appearance in the film encapsulates the imaginative encounter of French and Cambodian perspectives and of documentary and fictional modes. Rithy Panh’s judicious eye usefully tempers Tavernier’s sentimentalism. Panh never forgets he is Cambodian. He did not set out to specialize in the Cambodian genocide, he says, but the story had to be told, and sadly, there were few who could tell it. Although his approach is complex, his goals are simple: to give survivors a chance to be heard and to express their anger and grief. Like Tavernier, he approaches the task through documentary (as in S21) and fiction (Les Gens de la rizière (1994), and his contribution to Lumières sur un massacre). Even in fiction, instead of using a prepared script, he lets the subject guide him. He explains that his leading value is solidarity: he aims not to ‘faire des films sur, mais avec les gens’ (Panh 2009).42 Similarly, Tavernier never forgets he is French. His characters are visitors, outsiders. He restricts himself to the adopting parents’ point of view. Even the oddly intrusive monologues that Géraldine records for her future child highlight her naïveté and youth, her eagerness for experience. This was Tavernier’s position too. Thanking Rithy Panh for his help assembling a crew that was 70 per cent Cambodian, he says: ‘Nous ne sommes pas arrivés en conquérants. On fait le film dans les conditions du pays, avec le pays’ (Télérama 24 November 2004).43 Both filmmakers also emphasize process, engaging in the long term with the people they have filmed (and filmed with). Following his habitual protocol, Tavernier returned to Phnom Penh to screen Holy Lola for the people involved in its creation. In other words, the work of blending documentary and fictional modes is an ongoing project, shared by everyone involved in the filming. Several sequences stand out in which the actors’ own documentary gaze all but eclipses the characters, causing fiction to recede: • Tavernier took his actors and crew to visit the Phnom Penh waste facility, where they saw endless acres of garbage being dumped 42 not to ‘make films about, but with people.’ 43 ‘We did not come as conquerors. We made the film under local conditions, in solidarity with the country.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 238

12/10/2011 16:25

the documentary gaze  239

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

from trucks before dawn, and where they witnessed entire families scavenging for food in the mountains of steaming refuse. The spectator observes the scene through the eyes of the actors, who at that moment are indistinguishable from their fictional characters. • Another sequence takes place in a rehabilitation center where doctors fit an artificial limb on a young amputee and guide his rehabilitation therapy. Pierre, a doctor himself, talks with a foreign specialist who works for an anti-landmine organization. He is shocked to learn how many landmine accidents still devastate the country. To flesh out the segment’s documentary elements, actors Frédéric Pierrot and Somany Na (who play one of the adopting couples) visited the Cambodian headquarters of Handicap International, and their conversations there (included on the DVD) provided primary source material for the dialogues. The scene echoes Tavernier’s contribution to Lumières sur un massacre and also Rithy Panh’s, in which a young Cambodian man who has lost his leg visits a clinic where he learns to walk using a prosthesis. • In a third example, Pierre lends a hand in a public health clinic. Modeled on a real clinic and featuring local doctors and their patients as extras, the scene was filmed in a set constructed for the purpose. However, the doctors found the set far sturdier than their clinic and promptly moved in as soon as shooting was completed, literally turning fiction (retroactively) into documentary. • Finally, a very short sequence shows the French visitors visiting the museum honoring the victims of the Khmère Rouge. The museum occupies the former S21 death camp, the subject of Rithy Panh’s documentary. The museum, of course, exists, and is reflected in the actors’ heavy silence facing the evidence of the genocide. They wander in shock, gazing at room after room of photos of the dead. The scene ends abruptly with a cut to Pierre and Géraldine’s house in Auvergne, where Lola’s adoptive grandmother composes a montage of photos. As it combines the museum shots and classic postcards of Phnom Penh with snapshots of a new granddaughter, the editing effectively sutures documentary into fiction. Upon their arrival in Phnom Penh, Tavernier gave the actors gifts of clothing that would be their ‘costumes’ throughout the film and during shooting and also as they visited the city. The camera accompanied them unobtrusively on their excursions. Early on, Tavernier

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 239

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

240  bertrand tavernier decided to shoot the film chronologically, the better to engage the actors personally, as themselves, and allow them to transmit their genuine response to real situations, as they worked alongside their Cambodian counterparts. Long takes and quick filming further preserved the flow of the actors’ emotional response to the situations. All these techniques helped blur boundaries between filming and not filming. Even the constructed anecdote resembles documentary, insofar as it involves foreign visitors ‘interviewing’ (or being interviewed by) local officials. As a result of strategies such as these, actor and character merge, making Holy Lola into its own ‘making of,’ a documentary about its own creation. Additional techniques incorporated the visual style of documentary into the images of Phnom Penh. Hand-held camera, ­Tavernier’s signature ‘traveling’ shots of or from moving vehicles, long takes with abrupt cuts and changes of venue, all give an impression of reportage. But Tavernier points out once again that fiction can sometimes capture realities to which documentary is denied access. For example, a documentary might not have caught the full story of the traffic in babies or the details of official corruption, or the effects of their Cambodian experience on the couple’s intimate relationship (Tavernier 2004). Tavernier had told his actors beforehand that he wanted to capture their encounter with the country and their feelings about it. What is striking in the genocide museum are the expressions on the visitors’ faces and the disconsolate heaviness of their postures. Reviewers of the film remarked about the naturalness of the acting. But is it acting? ‘Ce n’est pas un film “normal,”’ says Isabelle Carré about that sequence. ‘C’est une expérience. […] Jouer la comédie dans un tel endroit […] me paraissait impossible’ (Holy Lola press pamphlet interview).44 Instead, the actors’ real emotions and their documentary gaze emerged from within the fiction. Asked in another interview whether she had previously visited Cambodia, Carré responded: Non, nous étions aussi ignorants de ce pays que les personnages. Leurs chocs sont nos chocs, leurs émotions nos émotions, et c’est ce que voulait Bertrand. Il attendait de nous qu’on soit de bons vecteurs de toutes les impressions ressenties par de complets étrangers. Et moi, 44 ‘This is not a “normal” film. It’s an experience. It would be impossible for me to play a role in such a place.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 240

12/10/2011 16:25

the documentary gaze  241 ce qui me tentait dans le project, plus que de faire un film, c’était de vivre une aventure humaine. (Carré, 2004)45

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Jacques Gamblin expands on the theme. When the camera films you as you gaze at a child with AIDS in an orphanage, ‘il faut être là c’est tout,’ he says. ‘Nous, acteurs, sommes des passeurs,’ he goes on to explain: Je ne crois pas que Bertrand ait fait un autre film où il ait poussé à ce point cette limite infinitésimale entre réalité et fiction et orienté ainsi ses acteurs vers cet endroit improbable où ils ne savent plus eux-mêmes s’ils jouent ou s’ils ne jouent plus. (Holy Lola press pamphlet)46

Gamblin’s statement echoes Philippe Torreton’s observation about his responsibilities in Ça commence aujourd’hui of working with real families in distress. But at the end of the day, Torreton was not a real teacher. Gamblin and Carré are not the real adoptive parents of Lola, either, but they are real visitors, and their encounter with the Cambodian tragedy, including the fictional Lola, is genuine. Géraldine and Pierre are more believable than Daniel, because they are less heroic. The film thus moves one step closer to a zero degree of acting, where character and actor merge. This notion of the actor as ‘vecteur’ or ‘passeur’ is crucial to Tavernier’s conception of the cinema. The words are suggestive. A passeur is someone who ‘passes’ for someone else, in other words, an actor. Like the jazz figure Jarrett calls ‘rapsody’ (see chapter 3), a passeur has the power to cross borders and reconfigure oppositions, transforming counterfeit into the real thing. A passeur can smuggle people or merchandise illegally across a border between countries (as during the Occupation) or dimensions (from fiction to documentary and back). The mythical Charon was a passeur who ferried the dying across the river Styx into the underworld. A passeur can pass a 45 ‘We were as ignorant about the country as the characters. Their shocks and their emotions are ours. That’s what Bertrand wanted. He expected us to transmit the impressions and feelings of complete foreigners. And what appealed to me was that the project meant more than just making a film: it meant living a real human adventure.’ 46 You have to be truly present. […] As actors, we are passeurs. […] I don’t believe Bertrand has ever pushed a film this close to the infinitesimal line between reality and fiction, or guided his actors to the improbable place where they no longer know whether they are acting or not.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 241

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

242  bertrand tavernier football to another player, a definition that extends metaphorically to sharing emotions or passing responsibility along through forms of address, as in the question – ‘Qu’est-ce qu’on va faire?’ – that closes De l’autre côté du Périph’. Finally, a passeur is a person who builds bridges: ‘qui propage un savoir et sert d’intermédiaire entre les cultures, les générations’ (Larousse Pratique 2005).47 Holy Lola’s critics and its public noticed the film’s (and the actors’) extraordinary level of involvement in the situations, an engagement that was both emotional and civic. The press enthusiastically extended its coverage to scrutinize issues relating to international adoption. Other reporters examined the current state of French-Cambodian ­negotiations. The reviewer at Télérama attributed the film’s power to the actors’ ability to cross boundaries between genres and between fiction and reality (24 November 2004).48 It is possible that by heightening public awareness, the film helped advance reforms. That’s Tavernier for you: a passeur, a smuggler, a ferryman and bridge builder, a boundary-crosser, a magician or shaman, who seeks to pass along his passionate investment in the world. It matters little whether the means is a fiction or a documentary.

References Ben Jelloun, Tahar (1984), Hospitalité française: racisme et immigration magh­­ré­­ bine, Paris, Seuil. Boorstin, Daniel (1987), The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, New York, Vintage. Burke, James Lee (1993), In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead, New York, Avon Books. Carré, Isabelle (2004), ‘Isabelle Carré: “Vivre une aventure humaine”’ (interview), Le Figaro, 24 November. Compton, David G. (1974), The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe, Boston, Gregg Press (G. K. Hall). Debord, Guy (1967), The Society of the Spectacle, Paris, Buchet-Chastel. Derrida, Jacques (1997), De l’hospitalité, Paris, Calman-Lévy. Frodon, Jean-Michel (1992), ‘La Guerre sans nom, un film de Bertrand Tavernier,’ Le Monde, 20 February. 47 ‘who spreads knowledge and serves as intermediary between cultures or generations.’ 48 Some of the reviews saw this as a negative and suggest that Tavernier had in fact made his film into a ‘dossier.’ Les Inrockuptibles, for example, criticized the film for being heavily didactic (24 November 2004).

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 242

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

the documentary gaze  243 Liauzu, Claude (1990), ‘Le Contingent entre silence et discours ancien combatant,’ in Jean-Pierre Rioux, La Guerre d’Algérie et les français, Paris, Fayard. Nichols, Bill (ed.) (1985), ‘The Voice of Documentary,’ Movies and Methods, Vol. 2, Berkeley, University of California Press. Nichols, Bill (1993), Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary, Bloomington, Indiana University Press. Ory, Pascal (1990), ‘ L’Algérie fait écran,’ in Jean-Pierre Rioux, La Guerre d’Algérie et les français, Paris, Fayard. O’Shaughnessy, Martin (2009), The New Face of Social Cinema: Commitment in French Film since 1995, Oxford, Berghahn Books. Panh, Rithy (2003), ‘Conversation entre Bertrand Tavernier (cinéaste) et Rithy Panh,’ S21: La Machine de mort Khmère Rouge, dir. Rithy Panh (DVD bonus disc). Panh, Rithy (2009), ‘La Master Class Rithy Panh,’ www.forumdesimages.fr/ fdi/L-Academie/Les-Master-class-en-video (accessed 3 June 2011). Rachlin, Nathalie (2002), ‘Vichy-Alger: d’une mémoire l’autre: La Guerre sans nom de Bertrand Tavernier,’ presented at the International Colloquium on 20th and 21st-Century French and Francophone Studies, Hartford CT. Rafter, Nicole (2000), Shots in the Mirror: Crime Films and Society, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Rosello, Mireille (2001), Postcolonial Hospitality: The Immigrant as Guest, Palo Alto, CA, Stanford University Press. Schlöndorff, Volker (1984), ‘Préface,’ to Daniele Bion, Bertrand Tavernier: Cinéaste de l’émotion, Paris, Hatier, 6–7. Sportès, Morgan (1990), L’Appât, Paris, Seuil. Stora, Benjamin (1992), La Gangrène et l’oubli: la mémoire de la guerre d’Algérie, Paris, Editions de la Découverte. Stora, Benjamin (1997), Imaginaires de guerre: les images dans les guerres d’Algérie et du Viët-nam, Paris, Editions de la Découverte. Stora, Benjamin (1999), Le Transfert d’une mémoire: de l’Algérie française au racisme anti-arabe, Paris, Editions de la Découverte. Tavernier, Bertrand (1992), ‘Crime de guerre?’ L’Evénement du jeudi, 13–19 February. Tavernier, Bertrand (2004), ‘Jamais sans ma fille’ (interview), Le Journal du Dimanche, 21 November. Thobie, Jacques, Gilbert Meynier, Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch and CharlesRobert Ageron (1990), Histoire de La France Coloniale 1914-1990, Paris, Armand Colin. Treneer, Jule (2009), ‘The Rumpus Interview with Bertrand Tavernier,’ http:// therumpus.net/2009/03/the-rumpus-interview-with-bertrand-tavernier/ (accessed 3 June 2011). Vezin, Annette (1999), ‘Les Voix du Nord’ (interview), Studio Magazine, 143, March. Zavattini, Cesare (1953), ‘Some Ideas on the Cinema,’ trans. Pier Luigi Lanza, Sight and Sound. See also Select Bibliography.

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 243

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

6 Citizen Tavernier

Tavernier’s film of 2009 narrowly escaped not existing at all. Shot in Louisiana entirely in English and co-produced by Little Bear and Ithaca Pictures (Los Angeles) with financing from the French media company TF1 International, the film gave rise almost from the start to disagreements between the director and his American producer, Michael Fitzgerald, which eventually resulted in two separate versions. In the Electric Mist was edited for United States distribution on DVD only. A separate director’s cut, Dans la brume électrique, premiered at the Berlin Film festival in February before its theatrical release to world markets. The dispute and eventual legal settlement that resulted in this strange state of affairs provided yet another example of Tavernier’s ‘love–hate’ relationship with America. The two versions also offer a golden opportunity to review salient aspects of Tavernier’s identity as an auteur. The film is (or, more accurately, the two films are) adapted from In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead (1993) by American novelist James Lee Burke. The novel features Burke’s series character, Dave Robicheaux (actor Tommy Lee Jones in the film), a police lieutenant who also owns a bait shop and boat rental business in New Iberia, a town in the bayou country of southern Louisiana, about 135 miles from New Orleans. Robicheaux’s task of investigating the gruesome murders of several young prostitutes is complicated by the presence of FBI agent Rosie Gomez, sent to nail a local mobster, Julius ‘Baby Feet’ Balboni (John Goodman). His inquiries are further impeded by movie stars Elrod Sykes (Peter Sarsgaard) and his girlfriend, Kelly Drummond (Kelly MacDonald), who arrive in town to star in a Civil War picture. As the murder investigation uncovers threads of corrup-

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 244

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

citizen tavernier  245 tion leading back to a racial murder many years earlier, Confederate General John Bell Hood (Levon Helm) comes along to offer Dave advice and encouragement. His conversations with the ghost of General Hood might be taken as evidence that Dave’s alcoholism has returned, but other interpretations are possible: in the novel, the General is simultaneously a hallucination, a dream, an ancestral memory, a rhetorical figure, and a usefully cinematic projection of Dave’s inner moral debates with himself. Tavernier preserves these ambiguities, while updating the story to the aftermath of the 2005 Hurricane Katrina. Many echoes from Tavernier’s previous work can heard in Dans la brume électrique. The soundtrack reminds us that his enthusiasm for African-American musical traditions was famed enough for Ken Burns to call on it. Tavernier had already evoked French Louisiana in the deportations of La Fille de d’Artagnan and as part of the political intrigues of Que la fête commence. Bones and chains unearthed by Hurricane Katrina and discovered by Elrod Sykes trigger Robicheaux’s memory of witnessing the shooting murder of a black man in chains forty years earlier, when he was a boy. These brief visions and their importance in triggering the protagonist’s quest recall La Fille de d’Artagnan, whose events are precipitated by aristocrats pursuing an escaped slave in chains. A sort of modern-day avenging musketeer himself, Dave Robicheaux heads for the library, where he researches microfilmed newspapers until he can identify DeWitt Prejean, a black man lynched in 1965 for allegedly dallying with his employer’s wife. Since Tavernier’s technical and artistic crews would be almost entirely American – only director of photography Bruno de Keyzer would join him from France – he decided from the start that he needed an American producer. However, the obstacles he encountered transformed the project and compromised his artistic control. As we know, Tavernier prefers to work with a team that interacts like a family, where everyone’s involvement is encouraged. By contrast, he found the American production system frustratingly compartmentalized, bureaucratic, cumbersome, and hierarchical. What was worse, Fitzgerald’s conception of the film, buttressed by his understanding of American audiences, was anathema to the director. Fitzgerald deemed the script too wordy and philosophical and much of the character development superfluous. He wanted fast-paced editing and clear action. He was unhappy with the Confederate General’s ghost

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 245

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

246  bertrand tavernier and wanted to remove allusions he found too political. Accordingly, Fitzgerald’s American editor, Roberto Silvi, inserted many explanatory shots while downplaying characters and their emotions (Tavernier 2009). The resulting producer’s cut is fifteen minutes shorter than the director’s version. Its trailer shows a montage of car chases and shoot-outs. The Directors Guild of America and the Writers Guild of America, apparently unfamiliar with the auteur concept, prevented Tavernier from dedicating the film to his close friend and fellow Burke fan Philippe Noiret, who died in 2006. Legal negotiations eventually allowed Tavernier to retain the footage, along with rights to international theatrical distribution. In return, he accepted restrictions on discussing the dispute.1 He returned to France and re-edited a director’s cut with editor Thierry Derocles, adding supplementary voiceover recorded by Tommy Lee Jones. Tavernier insists that he was dissatisfied only with the American production system and the editing, and that in fact he did manage to impose his artistic style and working methods. ­Fortunately, he was delighted with the casting, particularly the advice he received from Jones, whose own 2005 directorial achievement in The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada Tavernier greatly admires. True to his instincts for bringing out undiscovered dimensions in established actors, he recruited comic actor John Goodman to play bad-guy Balboni. Tavernier himself invited director John Sayles to play Michael Goldman, the sardonically arrogant director of the Civil War movie that brings actors Elrod Sykes and Kelly Drummond to town. The movie’s title, White Doves, is a playful tribute to James Lee Burke’s White Doves at Morning (2002), a Civil War novel that harks back to Burke’s own ancestors. Tavernier was also delighted with production designer Meredith Boswell (recommended by Fitzgerald) and adored the composer, Marco Beltrami, who had worked on Three Burials. Beltrami was stupefied at Tavernier’s working methods and enjoyed his first experience collaborating personally with a director in advance of filming. Foreseeing that the director would be legally barred from communicating with project personnel during adjudication, Beltrami recorded the various sound tracks separately, giving Tavernier flexibility for editing his own version. The director’s cut, at 117 minutes, was a Golden Bear finalist at 1 He nevertheless published Pas à pas dans la brume électrique, his journal about making the film.

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 246

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

citizen tavernier  247 Berlin and opened on 15 April 2009 in French theaters, where it received enthusiastic critical acclaim. It went on to capture the Grand Prize at the Festival International du Film Policier in Beaune. Press conferences in Berlin and Beaune gave Tavernier opportunities to dedicate the film to Noiret. In an interview for Positif, Tavernier asserted that despite the frustrations, in the end, ‘J’ai le film que je voulais’ (Domenach and Rouyer 2009).2 Given this production history, it is not surprising that, while drawn from the same footage, the two movies differ greatly. I had read Burke’s novel and hurried to purchase the American DVD, which I found more than a little puzzling. Important information is missing, rendering parts of the story disjointed or incomprehensible. Details from the novel are introduced and then left hanging. The editing violates conventions of spatial representation, muddling the geography. More disappointing still, the characters lack depth and coherence and their motivations are unclear. I was therefore relieved and elated when I traveled to France and viewed the director’s cut, which remedies these lapses. As a result, even where key scenes and lines occur in both films, their meaning is more richly contextualized in Tavernier’s version. Moreover, the differences are not only narrative, stylistic, and thematic: the producer’s cut violates many of the ethical and esthetic principles that unify Tavernier’s career. Striking differences are apparent from the start. The American version begins with Dave in a bar idly spinning a coin while the bartender serves him a drink. The opening lines are in voiceover: ‘My name’s Dave Robicheaux. I’m an alcoholic. Sometimes, I’m tempted to have a drink. But I never do.’ He stands and leaves the bar. Then the credits begin to appear over images of a truck moving down the road (Dave hurrying to the first murder scene) accompanied by a Cajun musical theme. The formulaic statement ‘I’m an alcoholic’ fixes Dave’s identity and colors our understanding of subsequent events. Spectators who have been handed this preliminary explanation are invited to attribute Dave’s behavior to a cause-and-effect logic of unchanging, essential qualities. For example, after Dave’s soft drink is drugged without his knowledge (an act all but eliminated from the American version), it will be that much easier to classify his conversations with General Hood as drunken hallucinations. These assump 2 ‘I have the film I wanted.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 247

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

248  bertrand tavernier tions ostensibly serve the producer’s emphasis on narrative efficiency, which are in turn informed by his assumptions about what American audiences want and can understand. By contrast, Tavernier’s version reveals Dave’s struggle against alcoholism much later, when Dave takes Elrod Sykes to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. The director’s cut begins instead with the title of the film and goes straight to a tracking shot across the misty twilight bayou to the first murder scene. Robicheaux exchanges a few words with the coroner, turns away to cross himself, and then says in voiceover: In the ancient world, people placed heavy stones on the graves of their dead, so their souls would not wander and afflict the living. I always thought this was simply the practice of superstitious and primitive people. But I was about to learn that the dead can hover on the edge of our vision with the density and luminosity of mist, and their claim on the earth can be as legitimate and tenacious as our own.

These different beginnings announce divergent approaches to Robicheaux as a character, and indeed to the whole concept of character. The American version raises the question of whether Dave will start drinking again. (He doesn’t.) The opening scene of the ­director’s cut, on the other hand, plunges us immediately into a story about past events and their relation to the present. Here the focus is not on Dave’s identity but on his mission. How will he make meaning out of senseless and extreme violence? How will the dead return to haunt him? This more existential (and poetic) approach allows Robicheaux’s personality to emerge from situations. We are drawn into his character and point of view by what he discovers and how he responds. We know only what he knows. The spectator is thus placed in a relation of sympathy and respect toward this character, rather than in a position of superior understanding. Beginning with an introspective and philosophical meditation is consistent with Tavernier’s conception of characters rooted in place and history, stumbling forward in the dark. His version resists expository and interpretive clichés, and we often sense, here as in his previous films, that the characters themselves are struggling to comprehend their own motives. The two versions also approach the long-buried racial murder in contrasting ways. The producer’s cut introduces scenes for purposes of exposition. For example, just a few minutes into the film, as soon

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 248

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

citizen tavernier  249 as Elrod Sykes mentions he has uncovered a pile of bones and chains, we see Dave’s flashback to the murder he witnessed as a teenager. This image intrudes to explain the bones before the spectator even has a chance to wonder about them. In other words, the flashback explains the plot. By contrast, the French version’s rhythm and sequencing follow the logic not of the plot, but of the characters’ ideas and emotions. In the spirit of his opening scene, Tavernier inserts Robicheaux’s flashback at a moment where it expresses the distress and guilt that fuel his crusading zeal in the present. Consistent and coherent point of view is a matter of ethics for Tavernier, as we have seen, and this perspective is enriched by the fact that his characters and their relationships evolve. His approach is thus more pedagogical, seeking not to indulge but to shape spectator expectations. The American version plays on Tommy Lee Jones’s established persona of a tough hero (The Fugitive, 1993; U.S. Marshals, 1998; Double Jeopardy, 1999) who confronts lethal challenges using singleminded, hard-hitting resolve. The producer’s Robicheaux is firm and decisive – even when he runs amok – and many of his ambiguities are edited out, conforming him to conventions of gender and genre. Tavernier instead draws out the darker and more vulnerable side on display in Jones’s more recent roles in No Country for Old Men (2007), In the Valley of Elah (2007), and Three Burials, where his characters stumble into problems that cannot be solved by traditional macho toughness. These traits, evident in Burke’s novels and picked up in Tavernier’s adaptation, establish Robicheaux’s family resemblance to Michel Descombes and Philippe d’Orléans, Dellaplane, and Lieutenant Norbert, and even Conan, who sense the inadequacy of hypermilitary muscularity and suffer from the lack of more capacious and flexible options of masculinity. Thus one exchange that appears in the French version is absent from the American cut: Robicheaux has just arrested Elrod Sykes for driving while intoxicated. Kelly pipes up from the passenger seat: ‘Are you the prototypical macho shithead?’ Dave replies: ‘Especially part two.’ Later, Kelly revises her opinion: ‘You’re a good man,’ she says, in a line that appears in both versions but only signifies in one. Tavernier’s Robicheaux is a man who doubts, who is aware of his weaknesses and actively tries to exorcise his demons by making things right, and who thus fights for justice out of a pervasive sense of guilt. He carries the burdens of a whole civilization. Robicheaux’s military service in Vietnam, all but absent

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 249

12/10/2011 16:25

250  bertrand tavernier

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

from the American version, is integral to this past. Tavernier is not interested in cardboard heroes. In fact, his story is about not being a hero. It’s about striving to be authentic. Tavernier’s version gives its full meaning to Dave’s final musing, in voiceover: As the days passed and I began to let go of all the violent events of that summer, I came to accept that the general […] was only a figment of my imagination, there to remind me out of the distant past that the contest is never quite over, the field never quite ours.

We have seen how Tavernier relies on his actors (many of whom have theater training), giving them long takes in which to develop the meaning of a gesture, an emotion, or a scene. Here, his careful, leisurely pace allows the languorous cadences of Louisiana speech and music to permeate his characters and their story. The American version cuts out parts of sentences, interrupting and editing out these verbal and musical rhythms. Rapid-fire editing thus eliminates important facets of character. As always, Tavernier’s esthetic choices have ethical implications. This is particularly important in the representations of violence. For example, in a scene where Robicheaux beats up a pimp in a bus station, the American version foregrounds action while dispensing with context. The French version shows Robicheaux in conversation afterwards with the young runaways the pimp was attempting to recruit. He gives them money and directions to a shelter. This and other details render the director’s Dave much more ambiguous and dark. He strikes the pimp out of anger and frustration – understandable emotions at this point – rather than righteousness. His Samaritan act is contrasted back-to-back with his brutal attack on the pimp, painting a picture of a complex person full of aggression and guilt trying to do the right thing. Tavernier’s Dave Robicheaux thus takes his place among the director’s numerous other tenacious and conflicted lawmen, including Jean Rochefort’s policeman in L’Horloger de Saint-Paul and the prosecutor in Le Juge et l’assassin. As he investigates his neighbors, Dave experiences anxieties not unlike Norbert’s, in Capitaine Conan, when he is called upon to prosecute his fellow soldiers. As Dave’s anger and frustration escalate, he, like Lulu, the policeman-protagonist of L.627, loses his cool and manhandles a suspect. Like Lulu or Lucien Cordier of Coup de torchon (to whom many critics compared him), Robicheaux

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 250

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

citizen tavernier  251 sees the magnitude of the injustices and feels overwhelmed at the task of rectifying them. Unlike Cordier, however, he does not capitulate to the forces of evil. He continues to resist the discouragement, the alcoholism, and the memories that threaten to engulf him. In his crusade-like pursuit of this larger concept of justice – even when he bends or breaks the law in order to serve it – he can be compared to the d’Artagnans (father and daughter) and to Dellaplane. That Dans la brume électrique (like Tavernier’s overall oeuvre) is moral – even moralist, in the best French tradition – becomes more obvious if we compare the film to Werner Herzog’s The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans. Both were released in 2009, and both are set in the aftermath of Katrina. The same actor (Gary Grubbs) even plays the police chief in both. The protagonist of each is a ‘bad’ police lieutenant operating in a community threatened by panic and anomie. But whereas Dave Robicheaux’s crusading zeal is fueled by those, like Balboni, who turn the misfortunes of others to their own advantage, Herzog’s Terence McDonagh (Nicolas Cage) adheres to no ethical code. Where Robicheaux combats the ravages of drugs and alcohol, McDonagh exploits the confusion of disaster to feed his own drug habit. Herzog’s movie does all the things Tavernier seeks to avoid: it uses humor to draw the spectator into uncritical and ultimately unresolved complicity with its amoral protagonist’s point of view. It erases the consequences of violence using cheap plot devices, fancy editing, and special effects. Its fast-paced plot reaches narrative closure, but its story leaves its director’s social and ethical perspective cloudy. The result is a lively and enjoyable movie, but that, of course, is part of its danger. By contrast, Tavernier’s films, like Burke’s novels, insist that representing human violence requires probing its sources and, especially, showing its consequences. In addition, the two artists share nostalgia for an innocence they know never existed, lyricism combined with fierce engagement in social issues, especially racial ones, and an overriding interest in atmosphere and character in stories that are nonetheless meticulously plotted. Neither is averse to mixing moods, for example by including touches of farce. Like Burke, Tavernier refuses to serve up monochromatic good-guy heroes and bad-guy villains, offering instead a gamut of characters who are conflicted and flawed. The ‘moral polarization’ characteristic of melodrama does not mean that everything is black and white. In Tavernier’s hands, it

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 251

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

252  bertrand tavernier means, more subtly, that there are moral values out there, in relation to which characters position themselves with varying success. Here again we can appreciate the director’s personal blend of post-1968 liberalism, documentary realism combined with a certain anti-realist daring, and existentialism: characters unfold from the choices they make within their historical and institutional, personal and relational situations. Sympathetic characters commit horrible deeds, and villains are sometimes also victims. Lulu and Robicheaux are clearly on the side of good, and yet they both experience brutal impulses. Bouvier, Cordier, de Cortemart, and ‘Baby Feet’ Balboni are villains, but we are required to know the personal experiences and institutional forces that shaped them. (The excision of Balboni’s past from the American version violates all these principles.) All these differences suggest that In the Electric Mist and Dans la brume électrique obey the laws of different genres. While both versions engage social issues like race and class relations, the former is a thriller with a whodunit plot, while Tavernier’s version is a mystery story in the broadest sense, in that it is a spiritual quest to plumb the mysteries of human behavior. (Several articles in the French press called Tavernier’s film ‘metaphysical’ (e.g. Douin 2009), a dimension not mentioned in American reviews.) The classic whodunit is event driven, moved forward by the search to identify the criminal and find out what happened. The mystery story is character driven. Suspense lies in the question of how the detective will achieve knowledge and understanding. In fact, mystery stories are often melodramas, where a detective figure struggles to restore a moral clarity that has been lost. The hard-boiled detective novel, in the hands of a master like Burke, is one of the few American genres where issues of exploitation and privilege can be overtly played out, and this social aspect of Burke’s novel allows Tavernier to probe guilt and responsibility, death and loss, the relation of present to past. The racial conflicts central to Dans la brume électrique can be found elsewhere in his oeuvre, wherever colonial themes occur. All these themes converge in two lines of dialogue. Having dealt with one evil-doer in a shoot-out conclusion to the plot, Robicheaux drops in on a second, more ambiguous criminal: Twinky LeMoyne says to Dave: ‘A lot of bad things happened back in that era between the races, but we’re not the same people we were then. Are we?’ To which Robicheaux replies: ‘I think we are.’ Underscoring this exchange, the Cajun music is replaced by swelling voices

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 252

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

citizen tavernier  253 singing Handel’s ‘Dixit Dominus.’ (Instead of this meditative, spiritual tone, the American version adopts the ‘police procedural’ strategy of inserting summaries of secondary characters’ future fate.) The mysterious appearances of General Hood, and especially Dave’s final visit to the General’s grave, remind us that gravestones and ghosts figure prominently in Tavernier’s work. Monuments and tombs are of course central to La Vie et rien d’autre. La Mort en direct opens in a cemetery, as does Mississippi Blues, whose quest begins at the grave of Faulkner, a Southern writer to whom Burke is often compared. Before General Hood, the most literal of Tavernier’s ghosts was Madame Ladmiral. Tavernier handles the ‘ghosts’ in Dans la brume électrique with a matter-of-fact (and slightly tongue-in-cheek) realism that maintains ambiguity without resorting to special effects. When Dave stumbles into a Confederate camp in the woods, the American version includes shrieks of pain coming from amputations being performed by lamplight in the tents. In the director’s cut, the only diegetic sounds we hear are made by Dave and the trees. However, it’s the metaphorical ghosts of history that weigh most heavily on Dave Robicheaux. The murky depths of the bayou hide layers of buried memory, recalling that belatedly exploding shell in La Vie et rien d’autre. As he pursues justice for DeWitt Prejean, Dave is also slowly coming to terms with atrocities he witnessed in Vietnam, and his sympathy with General Hood is born of two military men’s shared understanding of two American wars separated by a century. The Civil War, the heritage of slavery, and Vietnam are all ghosts haunting the present for the characters and, by implication, the country. Even the Iraq war is evoked in passing. Robicheaux’s sense of guilty responsibility is thus personal, but also collective. He is surprised at first to see a Confederate regiment on active duty around the bayou. ‘I thought the war was over,’ he declares (to which Hood replies: ‘It’s never over. I would think you’d know that’). By fleshing out the broader contexts linking his characters to history, Tavernier’s film demonstrates its relation to his historical dramas and documentaries. In his hands, Dans la brume électrique is yet another story about generations: about Dave, General Hood, and a Robicheaux ancestor who served in Hood’s regiment; about Dave and his adopted daughter, Alafair, whom he rescued as a baby from a crashed plane carrying illegal immigrants from Latin America; about two murders and two hurricanes separated by forty years; about Balboni and his father; about Dave’s own father,

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 253

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

254  bertrand tavernier who treated black ex-con and bluesman Sam ‘Hogman’ Patin’s family with respect; and about Robicheaux’s daydream involving a wolf that eats her young. All these back-stories are removed entirely from the producer’s cut, when they are not so fragmented as to render them trivial or unintelligible. Its emphasis on its protagonist’s uneasy relation to the past suggests the film’s affinity with the moral universe of film noir. Like melodrama, film noir – which itself derives from the American hardboiled detective novel – is more a worldview than a genre. It probes the murky underside of human behavior, with its crimes, its dark impulses, and its metaphysical anxieties. Dans la brume électrique demonstrates many standard noir elements. The only feature missing is the alluring but deadly femme fatale. Perhaps her functional equivalent can be found in Robicheaux’s attraction and resistance to alcohol, combined with his deeply personal drive to solve the murders of the young prostitutes. Also like film noir, Tavernier’s film creates organic sympathies between character and locale, aided by first-person voiceover narration and almost allegorical effects of light and shadow. Spatial layout is carefully established through the use of long shots that show a character in situ, drawing his identity and suspicions intuitively from his surroundings. To establish place and mood, Tavernier and de Keyzer conspired to complete many outdoor shots before filming began, under the guise of location scouting, thereby sidestepping the large crews and cumbersome regulations of American production. De Keyzer’s cinematography captures the mysterious luminosity of the bayou and generates the atmospheric and color contrasts that structure the story. It was de Keyzer who researched the autochrome-like lighting and color of Un dimanche à la campagne and subsequently showed his mettle in Autour de minuit, La Passion Béatrice, and La Vie et rien d’autre, which are among Tavernier’s most visually haunting creations. While Robicheaux exhibits affinities with many of Tavernier’s previous fictional characters, Dans la brume électrique also has a decidedly documentary tenor. Robicheaux’s memories of his military service in Vietnam resonate with La Guerre sans nom, and Hurricane Katrina weighs heavily on the characters. Robicheaux takes his investigation to several sites where disaster relief efforts are underway, and one sequence consists of traveling shots showing a whole street

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 254

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

citizen tavernier  255 of houses reduced to rubble by the storm. When asked whether updating the novel in this way did not mean politicizing Burke’s novel, Tavernier replied that ‘[y]ou can’t politicize James Lee Burke. All his novels are already sufficiently political and express very strong opinions.’ In addition, Tavernier felt it would be a shame to make a film in Louisiana without embracing this recent history (Lemercier 2009). These thoughts were very much in the spirit of Burke, who has since published several short stories and a Dave Robicheaux novel – Tin Roof Blowdown (2007) – that detail the hurricane’s destruction and the crime, corruption, and governmental mismanagement that exacerbated its effects. Documentary elements also add depth to secondary characters who, in the American version, are trimmed to a few details, reducing them to simple backdrop or plot device. Tavernier researched details of the disaster relief efforts, which he incorporates through Dave’s wife, Bootsie (Mary Steenburgen). We see her working at a rebuilding site, and she pressures Sykes to autograph posters to sell for fundraising. Tavernier’s documentary gaze is also recognizable in the casting of real-life Blues guitarist Buddy Guy in the role of ‘Hogman’ Patin, a black man who knows things it is still unsafe for him to confide about the involvement of powerful white men in an old racial murder (plate 15). We learn his own background story and understand what he fears, why he wastes no regrets on DeWitt Prejean, and how (and why) he distinguishes between a ‘black man’ and a ‘nigger.’ The camera watches respectfully while he completes his musical performance. Balboni, who in the novel was a sleazy financier and distributor of pornography, is promoted to putative movie producer. He claims to have poured money into the devastated region but has in fact been diverting government hurricane relief funds. Tavernier’s journalistic, exposé-style investment in his subject is as evident as always. He was pleased, too, that the post-Katrina setting distances the story from clichéd portrayals of New Orleans. Tavernier prefers shots wide enough to include contexts that often contain both fictional and documentary elements. He almost abandoned the project entirely following the suggestion that a conversation between Dave and Bootsie, while the two are fishing off a dock, be composed of close-ups that would underscore the significance of Dave’s lines. Tavernier insisted instead that the shots include the reaction of each to what the other says. He wanted to capture a

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 255

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

256  bertrand tavernier relationship, not a soliloquy. Portions of the scene were removed from the American version, though, so it makes little sense. (Ironically, the conversation is about the nature of understanding.) In short, the two versions correspond to two different implied spectators. Aimed at maintaining its brisk pace while supplying enough exposition to ensure that the viewer of average (or below average) intelligence can follow effortlessly, the American version sacrifices characters’ stories to fast-moving action. But ironically, because in Tavernier’s idiom plot is inseparable from character, privileging plot renders even the plot itself incoherent. Simplifying the portrayals of characters and their relationships ended up inflicting logical lapses, making In the Electric Mist visually and narratively garbled in places. Even certain moments of intense action are far less effective than in the more leisurely unfolding of the director’s version. I’ve already mentioned a prematurely inserted flashback that short-circuits suspense and character development. Another lapse occurs in the final shoot-out. Tavernier’s version follows Dave and FBI Special Agent Rosie Gomez with guns drawn as they communicate by gestures how they will move through the woods toward the isolated cabin where they hope to corner the killer. We hold our breath as Rosie inadvertently trips a wire that triggers an alarm. The American version cut those details (as well as previous exchanges between Dave and Rosie), so we have little understanding of their relationship or their strategy, and no clue why the killer suddenly bursts forth from the privy. The most egregious incoherence in the American version concerns the final sequence. When Dave returns home after closing his investigations, Alafair sits at a table, leafing through a book about the Civil War, where she finds a group photograph of Confederate soldiers that includes General Hood and … Dave Robicheaux! Although the scene is ambiguous in both versions, only the director’s cut includes several previous sequences that lead up to this startling moment. Absent from the American version are details about Dave’s heirloom pistol and its provenance. (Might not the photo in fact represent Dave’s ancestor?) Also missing is a scene where General Hood invites Dave to join him in a photograph with his men. The gesture is crucial to the two men’s conversation – and to the film’s overall perspective – about war, violence, and memory. Thus the shots of Alafair with the book and Dave’s final line about how war is ‘never quite over’ have little

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 256

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

citizen tavernier  257 meaning in the American version. That this is the film’s closing scene makes its incoherence all the more unsettling. The director’s version, on the other hand, actually gives us three very satisfying conclusions: the shoot-out with the killer represents a solution to the thriller/ whodunit. Dave’s conversation with Twinky LeMoyne about whether or not we are still ‘the same people’ as in the past amplifies and brings closure to the story about the consequences of past injustices. Finally, Dave’s homecoming resolves his character and his relationship with his family and himself. As this book goes to press, Tavernier’s newest venture, La Princesse de Montpensier, has just opened in French theaters, following its unveiling at the 2010 Cannes Festival, where it was in competition for the Palme d’Or. The director assembled an impressive cast of young actors, all new to his repertoire. Continuities with his previous films can be found in the lush and elegant visual style of the cinematography by Bruno de Keyzer, working again with American steadicam operator Chris Squires, after Dans la brume électrique, and in the participation of Jean Cosmos, co-scriptwriter of Capitaine Conan and La Vie et rien d’autre. Unsurprisingly, Tavernier has remained true to his habit of combining meticulous historical research and high production values with broad public appeal. The film is adapted from Madame de Lafayette’s 1662 novella of the same title that relates the tragic story, set a century earlier, of a certain Marie de Mézières (Mélanie Thierry, fresh from her César for her performance in Philippe Godeau’s 2009 Le Dernier pour la route), whose parents force her to marry the serious and reliable Prince de Montpensier, although she has been in love since childhood with ruffian ‘bad boy,’ the Duc de Guise. Two others also vie for the Lady’s attention: the Duc d’Anjou (future Henri III), and the Prince’s older tutor and confidant, the Comte de Chabannes (veteran actor Lambert Wilson). Generally considered the first systematic use of history to anchor the events of a novel, Madame de Lafayette’s little literary masterpiece contains three layers: an intimate ‘domestic’ portrait of a couple (the Prince and Princess); a depiction of the social milieu of the minor nobility during the reign of Charles IX; and the political events and historical context of the sixteenth-century Religious Wars. The novella begins in 1563 and takes us to the August 1572 mass slaughter of Protestants known as the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. The

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 257

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

258  bertrand tavernier Prince of Montpensier is repeatedly dispatched to fight for the king, securing his young bride at their château, far from the fray. During his absence, the Princess engages in various social excursions and amorous adventures. Events of public record are not the tale’s focus, but are evoked briefly or from a distance, with the fabulations of the foreground love story filling in the blanks of history. Representing a return to the heritage genre, the project was filmed in various picturesque Loire Valley locations, including the Château at Blois, where the historical Duc de Guise was eventually assassinated. With the larger series of events surrounding the Saint Bartholomew Massacre, Tavernier has chosen a topic treated by two of his favorite authors: Alexandre Dumas père (La Reine Margot, 1845) and Victor Hugo (in a famous chapter of his 1874 novel, Quatre-vingt treize). The director was undoubtedly drawn to the way Madame de LaFayette filters hard social and political realities through the lens of intimate character portraits. The novella’s opening sentence outlines the subterranean allegorical parallels that link separate realms (‘empires’) of public history and private drama: Pendant que la guerre civile déchirait la France sous le règne de Charles IX, l’amour ne laissait pas de trouver sa place parmi tant de désordres, et d’en causer beaucoup dans son empire.3

Tavernier and Madame de LaFayette form an unlikely pair, and yet they share this melodramatic and historiographic sensibility. It is likely La Princess de Montpensier will be compared with Alain Corneau’s celebrated take on the Saint Bartholomew Massacre in La Reine Margot, adapted from Dumas and starring Isabelle Adjani. That 1994 film is set at the court of King Charles IX. Historical events and personages are at center screen, as we attend the wedding that joins the king’s sister, Marguerite (Margot) de Valois, with the Protestant Henri de Navarre, later to become Henri IV. While political and religious animosities ignite, we accompany Margot as she roams the bloodied and embattled streets of the capital searching for her lover, the (very same) Duc de Guise. The political machinations of the Queen Mother, Catherine de Medecis, are tracked in detail, as she orchestrates the actions of her children and launches the massacre. 3 ‘While civil war was tearing France apart during the reign of Charles IX, love nevertheless continued to hold sway amid all the disorder and to cause even more within its realm.’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 258

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

citizen tavernier  259 No ghastly detail is spared. In contrast, Madame de Lafayette shares her esthetic with the classical theater, where battles occur offstage, and history is reflected obliquely in the eyes, emotions, and narrations of onstage characters. Tavernier’s La Princesse de Montpensier falls somewhere between these two extremes. This is only the second time he has filmed battle scenes, but as in Capitaine Conan, even when the spectator is plunged into the gore, the emphasis remains on the ways violence inflects characters’ emotions, their psychology, and their actions. Once again historical melodrama unfolds in the margins of public history, where the focus is on characters’ emotional engagement with the particulars of their historical situations more than on the events themselves. And once again, clichés about masculine heroism are systematically subverted. The battle scenes are brief but brutal, and violence is once again oriented toward its consequences. Chabannes receives more attention than in the novel, and the precariousness of his position is more fully explained: his traumatic battle experiences have turned him into a pacifist, making him a renegade from the army and an outcast at court. The portrayal of the Princess herself also resonates with our contemporary preoccupations. She is a modern young woman juggling the demands of her responsibilities, her independence, and her desires. Tavernier compares her dilemmas to those of any young woman today seeking to escape the restrictions of a fundamentalist family. In addition, he declares that his latest film is ‘100% natural,’ meaning that everything depends, as usual, on actors, mise en scène, and directing, without special effects or digital enhancement. Equally familiar are the restless camera that chases after characters as they almost escape the frame and the filmmaker’s fondness for Westerns, apparent in the wide shots of characters galloping across sweeping landscapes. Finally, the project afforded new opportunities for sumptuous banquet scenes, about which Tavernier talks with relish and for which he engaged Bocuse-trained chef Aurélien Oury to recreate period dishes. Despite such continuities in more than twentyfive feature-length productions, Tavernier still feels that every film is his first film. ‘Faire un film est une lutte,’4 he declares with enthusiasm. He enjoys working with his team to confront new obstacles every time. To create against the odds, this is his greatest passion (Baurez 2010; Frois 2009). 4 ‘Making a film is a struggle,’

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 259

12/10/2011 16:25

260  bertrand tavernier

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Juxtaposing his two most recent efforts demonstrates once again that Tavernier keeps changing, while his underlying vision remains constant. Asked by an interviewer what he considers his greatest accomplishment, Tavernier replied: To have made very, very different films. To have passed from documentary to World War I to a film about teachers in the north of France to World War II or a film noir in Africa. My greatest sense of pride is that the people concerned by these subjects find them very accurate. […] I’m proud to have an open spirit, a curiosity and an ability to absorb worlds that are very different from each other and also from what I’ve lived myself.

Closing the interview, he asserted that he wanted to remembered ‘[a]s a filmmaker and as an optimist’ (Leffler 2010). This optimism, fueled by curiosity and tempered by self-criticism and doubt, keeps him always seeking new directions to explore. His professionalism, combined with his raw intelligence, his sense of humor, his boundless energy, and his legendary generosity draw the best work of their careers from the best talents in the business. His circle is large: he has discovered and mentored a host of actors, directors, and technicians. His public, too, is invited into the circle of his friendship and eagerly anticipates the appearance of ‘the new Tavernier,’ which always promises a treat for the mind as well as the eye and emotions. In addition, while producing features at a prolific rate, he remains a tireless public figure who conceives of cinema as a broad social practice. We can thus close by returning to Tavernier’s roots in what he calls a ‘cinéphilie joyeuse.’ Thierry Frémaux, Tavernier’s longtime friend and Director of the Institut Lumière, describes the filmmaker’s love of cinema as all-encompassing and not ‘aristocratic’ (Tavernier 2008: 12). When not immersed in the production of his own films, he tirelessly promotes the work of others. He is an active participant and spokesman for the Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques (SACD), under whose auspices he reviews new DVD releases on his blog (www.tavernier.blog.sacd.fr). His skill and dedication as a promoter and publicist date back to 1960, when at the age of nineteen he and a few friends created the Nickel Odéon ciné-club. Among the club’s founding principles was that they would simply see everything, without critical prejudice of any kind, an anti-elitist stance that contrasted with the postures of, for example, the Cahiers du cinéma. His experiences as a press attaché led him to adopt the practice of

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 260

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

citizen tavernier  261 remaining silent about films he dislikes while devoting his energies to promoting those he loves. That attitude informed his ire at the time of the Polémique autour de la critique in 1999–2000, when he joined a group of filmmakers led by Patrice Leconte to demand that critics wait at least until films were released before panning them. Tavernier’s commitment to preserving the French cinematic patrimony was behind his drive to create and sustain the Institut Lumière, with its archives and library, its museum and retrospectives. Like the Cinémathèque Française in Paris (whose founder, Henry Langlois, Tavernier has strangely come to resemble), the Institut Lumière has become a hub of research and creativity. And like Langlois in Paris, Tavernier has become the public face of cinema in Lyon and of French cinema in the world. Mostly, his goal is to share his enthusiasm. Hardly a week goes by without an announcement of some sort: the creation of a Lyon Film Festival, for example, launched in October of 2010 under the umbrella of the Institut Lumière; an event at the Forum des Images in Paris, where Tavernier presented a selection of favorites from his personal DVD collection. The article announcing this event billed Tavernier as ‘partageur’ (‘a sharer’). Frémaux describes him in the same terms (Nouvel Observateur, 28 February 2009). Through the Institut Lumière, Frémaux and Tavernier have also sponsored and hosted three other noteworthy projects. The first of these, a program of ‘The Lumière Brothers’ First Films,’ was released in 1996 and distributed in partnership with Kino Video. Narrated in French by Frémaux and in English by Tavernier, the collection includes the most famous of the earliest films, along with additional selections showing daily life in Lyon and around the world at the turn of the twentieth century. It is impossible to resist sharing Tavernier’s impish glee when he jokingly points out early manifestations of film genres: the first horror movie (Arrivée du train en gare de La Ciotat), the first suspense movie (Premiers Pas de bébé), the first comedy (Arroseur Arrosé), and so on. Also made for the centenary of cinema was a film compilation entitled Lumière and Company. Forty leading directors from around the world were each invited to make a 52-second film, in a single take, using the original Lumière movie camera, the ‘cinématographe.’ Inte­­rspersed with films by David Lynch and Fernando Trueba, Wim Wenders and Zhang Yimou, John Boorman and Liv Ullman, CostaGavros, Merchant Ivory, Youssef Chahine, and many others, are

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 261

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

262  bertrand tavernier snippets of conversations with the filmmakers: ‘Why do you make films?’ ‘Is cinema dead?’ The resulting collage is a celebration in the form of a documentary, a grand ‘making of’ about the whole enterprise of cinema. Under Frémaux’s direction and in conjunction with Actes Sud, the Institut Lumière also publishes books. The series includes a volume of interviews with Jean Aurenche, for example, and a biography of Edmond T. Gréville. This is also where Jean Devaivre published the memoirs Tavernier encouraged him to write and on which the filmmaker based Laissez-passer (and was sued by Devaivre for his trouble). In 2008, the editors issued a revised and considerably augmented edition of Tavernier’s Amis américains. The publication itself was a media event, and the book was crowned with the 2009 Prix du Meilleur Livre de Cinéma by the Syndicat Français de la Critique de Cinéma. Bound in hardcover with a total of 995 pages that include more than 800 photos (most in color) and an index with over 4500 entries, the volume weighs almost 5 kilos. Also added are four new chapters, including new interviews: with Alexander Payne, Joe Dante, and Quentin Tarantino. The choices are eccentric and personal, chosen for their films, of course, but also for those filmmakers’ service promoting and defending the broader world of cinema. At the volume’s end, Tarantino gets the last word: ‘Je suis un cinéastecinéphile.’ The same could also, obviously, be said of ­Tavernier. Tavernier’s myriad activities continually remind us of his simultaneously national and international stature. At home, he is creatively engaged with the French cinematic and literary heritage, defending it against all comers. At the same time, he quite possibly knows more about world cinema than any other living person. He is in equal parts a citizen of France and of the world. Introducing Amis américains, Frémaux defines cinema as a continent unto itself. If that’s true – and why not? – it must be said that Tavernier is ultimately and above all a citizen of cinema.

References Baurez, Thomas (2010), ‘Bertrand Tavernier raconte le tournage de La Princesse de Montpensier,’ L’Express, 16 May. Burke, James Lee (1993), In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead, New York, Avon Books.

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 262

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

citizen tavernier  263 Domenach, Elise and Philippe Rouyer (2009), ‘Entretien avec Bertrand Tavernier: Je croyais aux visions de Robicheaux,’ Positif, 578, April, 9–13. Douin, Jean-Luc (2009), ‘Polar métaphysique dans les bayous d’une Louisiane corrompue,’ Le Monde, 15 April. Frois, Emmanuel (2009), ‘Tavernier au bras de La Princesse de Montpensier,’ Le Figaro, 12 January. Lafayette, Madame de (1979), Histoire de la Princess de Montpensier, Geneva, Droz. Leffler, Rebecca (2010), ‘Q&A: Bertrand Tavernier,’ The Hollywood Reporter, May. Lemercier, Fabien (2009), ‘Interview with Bertrand Tavernier,’ Cineuropa, 30 March. Polémique autour de la critique (2000), Paris, Les Dossiers d’Actualité de la BiFi nº 1. Tavernier, Bertrand and Pierre Lucas (2009a), ‘Interview de Bertrand Tavernier pour le film Dans la brume électrique,’ Le Quotidien du Cinéma, 26 March. See also Select Bibliography.

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 263

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Filmography

DVD Collections (Zone 2) Collection Tavernier/Noiret (StudioCanal Video, 2001) includes L’Horloger de Saint-Paul, Que la fête commence, Le Juge et l’assassin, La Vie et rien d’autre, Coup de torchon, and Les Feux de la rampe (interview with Philippe Noiret). Collection Tavernier (StudioCanal Video, 2003) includes Des enfants gâtés, La Mort en direct, Une semaine de vacances, Un dimanche à la camagne, Daddy nostalgie, L.627, L’Appât, Capitaine Conan, and Ça commence aujourd’hui. Other DVDs are noted under individual titles. ‘Baiser de Judas’ in Les Baisers (1963) 90 mins (entire film), b/w Production companies: Flora Film, Lux Compagnie Cinématograph­ ique de France, Rome-Paris Films Producer: Georges de Beauregard Assistant Director: Volker Schlöndorff Script: Claude Nahon, Roger Tailleur Cinematography: Raoul Coutard Editing: Etiennette Muse Music: Eddie Vartan Principal actors: Leticia Roman, Bernard Rousselet, Judy Del Carril, William Sabatier

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 264

12/10/2011 16:25

filmography  265

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

‘La Chance explosive’ in La Chance et l’amour (1964) 105 mins (entire film), b/w Production companies: Les Productions Georges de Beauregard, Rome-Paris Films, Rotor Films Producer: Georges de Beauregard Script: Bertrand Tavernier, Nicolas Vogel Cinematography: Alain Levent Editing: Armand Psenny Music: Antoine Duhamel Principal actors: Michel Auclair, Bernard Blier, Iran Evry L’Horloger de Saint-Paul (1974) (UK: The Watchmaker of Saint Paul; USA: The Clockmaker of Saint Paul) 105 mins, col. Production company: Lira Films Executive producer: Ralph Baum Producer: Raymond Danon Production design: Jean Mandaroux Production manager: André Hoss Assistant directors: Claude Othnin-Girard, Laurent Heynemann Script: Jean Aurenche, Pierre Bost and Bertrand Tavernier, based on the novel L’Horloger d’Everton by Georges Simenon Cinematography: Pierre-William Glenn Editing: Armand Psenny Music: Philippe Sarde Principal actors: Philippe Noiret (Michel Descombes), Jean Rochefort (Commissaire Guilboud), Jacques Denis (Antoine), Sylvain Rougerie (Bernard Descombes), Christine Pascal (Liliane Torrini), Jacques Hilling (Costes), Andrée Tainsy (Madeleine). Awards: Prix Louis Delluc, 1973 (Bertrand Tavernier); OCIC Award, 1974 (Bertrand Tavernier, Berlin); Silver Berlin Bear, 1974: Special Jury Prize (Bertrand Tavernier) Que la fête commence (1975) (USA: Let Joy Reign Supreme) 114 mins, col. Production companies: Fildebroc, Les Productions de la Guéville, Universal Pictures France (UPF) Producers: Alain Belmondo, Michèle de Broca, Yves Robert Production design: Pierre Guffroy

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 265

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

266  filmography Assistant directors: Laurent Heynemann, Claude Othnin-Girard Script: Jean Aurenche, Bertrand Tavernier Cinematography: Pierre-William Glenn Editing: Armand Psenny Sound: Michel Desrois Music: Antoine Duhamel, based on the manuscripts of Philippe d’Orléans Costumes: Jacqueline Moreau Principal actors: Philippe Noiret (Philippe d’Orléans), Jean Rochefort (L’abbé Dubois), Jean-Pierre Marielle (Le marquis de Pontcallec), Marina Vlady (Madame de Parabère), Christine Pascal (Emilie), Gérard Desarthe (Le duc de Bourbon), Alfred Adam (Villeroi), Jean-Roger Caussimon (Le cardinal) Awards: SFCC Critics Award, 1976: Best Film (Bertrand Tavernier); César, 1976: Best Director (Bertrand Tavernier), Best Production Design (Pierre Guffroy), Best Supporting Actor (Jean Rochefort), Best Writing (Jean Aurenche and Bertrand Tavernier) Le Juge et l’assassin (1976) (UK/USA: The Judge and the Assassin) 110 mins, col. Production companies: France 3 Cinéma, Société Française de Pro­­­ duction, Lira Films Executive producer: Ralph Baum Producer: Raymond Danon Production design: Antoine-Jean Roman Assistant director: Claude Othnin-Girard Script: Jean Aurenche, Pierre Bost, Bertrand Tavernier Cinematography: Pierre-William Glenn Editing: Armand Psenny Sound: Michel Desrois Music: Philippe Sarde Costumes: Jacqueline Moreau Principal actors: Philippe Noiret (Judge Rousseau), Michel Galabru (Joseph Bouvier), Isabelle Huppert (Rose), Jean-Claude Brialy (de Villedieu), Renée Faure (Madame Rousseau), Cécile Vassort (Louise Lesueur), Yves Robert (Professor Degueldre), Jean-Roger Caussimon (Street Singer), Jean Bretonnière (Deputy), Monique Chaumette (Louise’s Mother) Awards: César, 1977: Best Actor (Michel Galabru), Best Writing (Jean Aurenche and Bertrand Tavernier)

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 266

12/10/2011 16:25

filmography  267

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Des enfants gâtés (1977) (UK/USA: Spoiled Children) 113 mins, col. Production companies: Film 66, Little Bear, Sara Films Executive producer: Louis Wipf Producers: Daniel Toscan du Plantier, Alain Sarde Assistant directors: Richard Malbequi, Claude Othnin-Girard Script: Charlotte Dubreuil, Christine Pascal, Bertrand Tavernier Cinematography: Alain Levent Editing: Armand Psenny Sound: Michel Desrois Music: Philippe Sarde Costumes: Jacqueline Moreau Principal actors: Michel Piccoli (Bernard Rougerie), Christine Pascal (Anne Torrini), Michel Aumont (Pierre), Gérard Jugnot (Marcel Bonfils), Arlette Bonnard (Catherine Rougerie), Geneviève Mnich (Guite Bonfils) La Mort en direct (1980) (UK/USA: Death Watch) 128 mins, col. Production companies: Antenne 2, Gaumont International, Little Bear, Sara Films, Selta Films, SFP Cinéma, TV13 Filmproduktion (Münich) Executive producer: Jean-Serge Breton Producers: Elie Kfouri, Bertrand Tavernier, Gabriel Roustani, Janine Rubeiz Production design: Tony Pratt Production manager: Louis Wipf Assistant directors: Jean Achache, Charlotte Trench, Jean-Louis Uzan Script: Bertrand Tavernier and David Rayfiel, based on the novel The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe by David G. Compton Cinematography: Pierre-William Glenn Editing: Michael Ellis, Armand Psenny Sound: Michel Desrois Music: Antoine Duhamel Costumes: Judy Moorcroft Principal actors: Romy Schneider (Katherine Mortenhoe), Harvey Keitel (Roddy), Harry Dean Stanton (Vincent Ferriman), Thérèse Liotard (Tracey), Max von Sydow (Gerald Mortenhoe)

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 267

12/10/2011 16:25

268  filmography

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Une semaine de vacances (1980) (UK: A Week’s Holiday; USA: A Week’s Vacation) 102 mins, col. Production companies: Antenne 2, Little Bear, Sara Films Producers: Christine Gozlan, Bertrand Tavernier Production design: Jean-Baptiste Poirot Assistant directors: Jean Achache, Charlotte Trench Script: Marie-Françoise Hans, Bertrand Tavernier, Colo Tavernier Cinematography: Pierre-William Glenn Editing: Armand Psenny Sound: Michel Desrois Music: Eddy Mitchell, Pierre Papadiamandis Costumes: Yvette Bonnay Principal actors: Nathalie Baye (Laurence), Gérard Lanvin (Pierre), Michel Galabru (Mancheron), Flore Fitzgerald (Anne), Philippe Léotard (Sabouret), Jean Dasté (Laurence’s father), Philippe Delaigue (Jacques), Marie-Louise Ebeli (Laurence’s mother) Coup de torchon (1981) (UK: Clean Up; USA: Clean Slate) 128 mins, col. Production companies: Les Films de la Tour, Films A2, Little Bear Producers: Henri Lassa, Adolphe Viezzi Production design: Alexandre Trauner Production manager: Louis Wipf Assistant director: Jean Achache Script: Jean Aurenche and Bertrand Tavernier, based on the novel Pop. 1280 by Jim Thompson Cinematography: Pierre-William Glenn Editing: Armand Psenny Sound: Michel Desrois, Dominique Levert Music: Bertrand Tavernier, Philippe Sarde Costumes: Jacqueline Moreau Principal actors: Philippe Noiret (Lucien Cordier), Isabelle Huppert (Rose), Jean-Pierre Marielle (Le Peron and his brother), Stéphane Audran (Huguette Cordier), Eddy Mitchell (Nono), Guy Marchand (Marcel Chavasson), Irène Skobline (Anne), Michel Beaune (Vanderbrouck) Awards: SFCC Critics Award, 1982: Best Film (Bertrand Tavernier); Silver Ribbon, Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists, 1986: Best Actor – Foreign Film (Philippe Noiret)

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 268

12/10/2011 16:25

filmography  269

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Philippe Soupault et le Surréalisme (1982) 163 mins, b/w Producers: FR 3 (Series: ‘Témoins’), Ministry of Culture Script: Bertrand Tavernier, Jean Aurenche Cinematography: Jean-Francis Gondre Editing: Luce Grunenwaldt Sound: Harald Maury Mississippi Blues (1984) 96 mins, col. Co-directed with Robert Parrish Production companies: Films A2, Little Bear, Odessa Films Executive producers: Yannick Bernard, Bertrand Tavernier Script: Robert Parrish, Bertrand Tavernier Cinematography: Pierre-William Glenn Editing: Ariane Boeglin, Agnès Vaurigaud Sound: Michel Desrois, Dominique Levert VHS (NTSC): MPI Home Video (1988) Un dimanche à la campagne (1984) (UK/USA: A Sunday in the Country) 90 mins, col. Production companies: Films A2, Little Bear, Sara Films Producers: Alain Sarde, Bertrand Tavernier Production design: Patrice Mercier Production manager: Gérard Gaultier Assistant directors: Jean Achache, Regine Dalnoky Script: Bertrand Tavernier and Colo Tavernier, based on the novel Monsieur Ladmiral va bientôt mourir by Pierre Bost Cinematography: Bruno de Keyzer Editing: Armand Psenny Sound: Guillaume Sciama Music: Philippe Sarde Costumes: Yvonne Sassinot de Nesle Principal actors: Louis Ducreux (Monsieur Ladmiral), Sabine Azéma (Irène), Michel Aumont (Gonzague/Edouard), Geneviève Mnich (Marie-Thérèse), Monique Chaumette (Mercédès), Claude Winter (Madame Ladmiral), Thomas Duval (Emile), Quentin Ogier (Lucien), Katia Wostrikoff (Mireille)

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 269

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

270  filmography Awards: Boston Society of Film Critics (BSFC) Awards, 1985: Best Director (Bertrand Tavernier), Best Foreign Language Film; Cannes Film Festival, 1984: Best Director (Bertrand Tavernier); César, 1985: Best Actress (Sabine Azéma), Best Cinematography (Bruno de Keyzer), Best Writing – Adaptation (Bertrand Tavernier and Colo Tavernier); Kansas City Film Critics Circle (KCFCC) Awards, 1985: Best Foreign Film; London Critics Circle Film (ALFS) Awards, 1985: Foreign Language Film of the Year; Mainichi Film Concours, 1986: Best Foreign Language Film (Bertrand Tavernier); National Board of Review (NBR) Award, USA, 1984: Best Foreign Language Film, Best Supporting Actress (Sabine Azéma); New York Film Critics Circle (NYFCC) Awards, 1984: Best Foreign Language Film; Grand Prix du Cinéma Français: Meilleur Film Autour de minuit (1986) (UK/USA: ’Round Midnight) 133 mins, col. Production companies: Little Bear, Productions et Editions Cinéma­ to­­graphiques Françaises Producer: Irwin Winkler Production design: Alexandre Trauner Production manager: Pierre Saint-Blacat Assistant director: Frédéric Bourboulon Script: Bertrand Tavernier and David Rayfiel, based on Danse des infidèles by Francis Paudras Cinematography: Bruno de Keyzer Editing: Armand Psenny Sound: Michel Desrois, William Flageollet Music: Herbie Hancock Costumes: Jacqueline Moreau Principal actors: Dexter Gordon (Dale Turner), François Cluzet (Francis Borier), Sandra Reeves-Phillips (Buttercup), Gabrielle Haker (Bérangère), Lonette McKee (Darcey Leigh), Christine Pascal (Sylvie), Herbie Hancock (Eddie Wayne) Awards: Academy Award, 1987: Best Music, Original Score (Herbie Hancock); Bodil Awards, 1988: Best European Film (Bertrand Tavernier); César, 1987: Best Music Written for a Film (Herbie Hancock), Best Sound (Bernard Leroux, Claude Villand, Michel Desrois, William Flageollet); David di Donatello Awards, 1987: Best Foreign Actor (Dexter Gordon); Silver Ribbon, Italian National Syndicate of

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 270

12/10/2011 16:25

filmography  271

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Film Journalists, 1987: Best Actor – Foreign Film (Dexter Gordon), Best Director – Foreign Film (Bertrand Tavernier); Los Angeles Film Critics Associate (LAFCA) Awards, 1986: Best Music (Herbie Hancock, Dexter Gordon); Sant Jordi Awards, 1988: Best Foreign Actor (Dexter Gordon) DVD: Warner Home Video (1986) La Passion Béatrice (1987) (UK/USA: Beatrice) 130 mins, col. Production companies: AMLF, Cléa Productions, Les Films de la Tour, Little Bear, Scena film, TF1 Films Productions Producers: Adolphe Viezzi Production design: Guy-Claude François Assistant directors: Philippe Bérenger, Jean Fellous, Olivier Horlait Script: Colo Tavernier Cinematography: Bruno de Keyzer Editing: Armand Psenny Sound: Michel Desrois Music: Ron Carter Costumes: Jacqueline Moreau Principal actors: Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu (François de Cortemart), Julie Delpy (Béatrice), Nils Tavernier (Arnaud), Monique Chaum­ ette (François’ mother) Filmed at the Château de Puivert, France Awards: César, 1988: Best Costume Design (Jacqueline Moreau) VHS (NTSC): Virgin Video (1988) Lyon, le regard interieur (1988) (UK/USA: Lyon, Inside Out) 57 mins, col. Production company: Little Bear Producer: Jean-Claude Bringuier Script: Bertrand Tavernier La Vie et rien d’autre (1989) (UK/USA: Life and Nothing But) 135 mins, col. Production companies: AB Films Productions, Europe 1, Hachette Première, Films A2, Little Bear Executive producers: Frédéric Bourboulon, Albert Prévost Producer: René Cleitman

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 271

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

272  filmography Production design: Guy-Claude François Production manager: Claude Albouze Assistant directors: Tristan Ganne Script: Jean Cosmos, Bertrand Tavernier Cinematography: Bruno de Keyzer Editing: Armand Psenny Sound: Michel Desrois, William Flageollet Music: Oswald D’Andrea Costumes: Jacqueline Moreau Principal actors: Philippe Noiret (Dellaplane), Sabine Azéma (Irène), Pascale Vignal (Alice), Maurice Barrier (Mercadot). Filmed around Verdun Awards: BAFTA Awards, 1990: Best Film not in the English Language (René Cleitman, Bertrand Tavernier); César, 1990: Best Actor (Philippe Noiret), Best Music Written for a Film (Oswald D’Andrea); David di Donatello Awards, 1990: Best Foreign Actor (Philippe Noiret); European Film Awards, 1989: Best Actor (Philippe Noiret); European Film Awards: Special Prize of the Jury (Bertrand Tavernier); Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LAFCA) Awards, 1990: Best Foreign Film; Tokyo International Film Festival, 1989: Best Artistic Contribution Award (Bertrand Tavernier); Prix Georges de Beauregard: Meilleur film français Daddy nostalgie (1990) (UK/USA: Daddy Nostalgia) 105 mins, col. Production companies: Cléa Productions, Little Bear, Solyfic, Eurisma Producer: Adolphe Viezzi Production design: Jean-Louis Povéda Production manager: Yvon Crenn Assistant directors: Tristan Ganne, Albane Guilhe Script: Bertrand Tavernier, Colo Tavernier Cinematography: Denis Lenoir Editing: Ariane Boeglin Sound: Michel Desrois Music: Antoine Duhamel Costumes: Christian Gasc Principal actors: Dirk Bogarde (Daddy), Jane Birkin (Caroline), Odette Laure (Miche), Emmanuelle Bataille (Juliette), Charlotte Kady (Barbara), Michele Minns (Caroline, as a child)

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 272

12/10/2011 16:25

filmography  273 Filmed in Bandol and Sanary-sur-Mer, France Awards: Valladolid International Film Festival, 1990: Best Actor (Dirk Bogarde)

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

La Guerre sans nom (1992) (UK/USA: The Undeclared War) 240 mins, col. Production companies: GMT Productions, Little Bear, Le Studio Canal+ Producer: Jean-Pierre Guérin Production manager: Eliane Cochi Assistant director: Tristan Ganne Script: Patrick Rotman, Bertrand Tavernier Cinematography: Alain Choquart Editing: Luce Grunenwaldt Sound: Michel Desrois Principal actors: Patrick Rotman (interviewer), Bertrand Tavernier (narrator) Awards: Bergamo Film Meeting, 1992: Special Mention (Bertrand Tavernier) VHS SECAM: GMT Productions/Le Studio Canal+/Little Bear (1983) ‘Pour Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’ in Contre l’oubli (1991) (UK/ USA: Against Oblivion or Lest We Forget) 110 mins (entire film), col. Production companies: Amnesty International, Les Films du Paradoxe L.627 (1992) 145 mins, col. Production companies: Canal+, Les Films Alain Sarde, Little Bear Producers: Frédéric Bourboulon, Alain Sarde Production design: Guy-Claude François Production manager: Christine Raspillère Assistant director: Tristan Ganne Script: Michel Alexandre, Bertrand Tavernier Cinematography: Alain Choquart Editing: Ariane Boeglin Sound: Michel Desrois, Gérard Lamps Music: Philippe Sarde Costumes: Jacqueline Moreau Principal actors: Didier Bezace (Lucien ‘Lulu’ Marguet), Jean-Paul Comart (Dominique ‘Dodo’ Henriot), Charlotte Kady (Marie),

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 273

12/10/2011 16:25

274  filmography Jean-Roger Milo (Manuel), Nils Tavernier (Vincent), Philippe Torreton (Antoine Cantoni), Lara Guirao (Cécile Rousselin), Cécile Garcia-Fogel (Kathy)

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

La Fille de d’Artagnan (1994) (UK: D’Artagnan’s Daughter; USA: Revenge of the Musketeers) 125 mins, col. Production companies: Ciby 2000, Little Bear, TF1 Films Productions Executive producer: Frédéric Bourboulon Production design: Geoffrey Larcher Production managers: Véronique Bourboulon, Renato Santos Assistant directors: Michel Ganz, João Pedro Ruivo, Tiffany Tavernier, Jean-Marc Tostivint Script: Jean Cosmos, Michel Léviant, and Bertrand Tavernier based on an original idea by Riccardo Freda and Eric Poindron Cinematography: Patrick Blossier Editing: Ariane Boeglin Sound: Michel Desrois, Gérard Lamps Music: Philippe Sarde Costumes: Agnès Evein, Jacqueline Moreau Principal actors: Philippe Noiret (D’Artagnan), Sophie Marceau (Eloïse), Nils Tavernier (Quentin), Jean-Luc Bideau (Athos), Raoul Billerey (Porthos), Sami Frey (Aramis), Charlotte Kady (Lady in Red), Claude Rich (Duke of Crassac) Filmed in the Châteaux of Biron, Beynac, Maisons-Lafitte, Vaux-leVicomte DVD: TF1 Video (1994) L’Appât (1995) (UK/USA: Fresh Bait) 115 mins, col. Production companies: Canal+, France 2 Cinéma, Hachette Première, M6 Films Producers: Frédéric Bourboulon, René Cleitman Production design: Emile Ghigo Production manager: Yvon Crenn Assistant directors: Julie Bertucelli, Emmanuel Finkiel Script: Bertrand Tavernier, Colo Tavernier Cinematography: Alain Choquart Editing: Luce Grunenwaldt Sound: Michel Desrois, Gérard Lamps

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 274

12/10/2011 16:25

filmography  275

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Music: Philippe Haïm Costumes: Marpessa Djian Principal actors: Marie Gillain (Nathalie), Olivier Sitruk (Eric), Bruno Putzulu (Bruno), Richard Berry (Alain), Philippe Duclos (Antoine) Awards: Berlin International Film Festival, 1995: Golden Berlin Bear (Bertrand Tavernier); Gramado Film Festival Golden Kikito, 1995: Best Actress (Marie Gillain), Best Editing (Luce Grunenwaldt) Capitaine Conan (1996) (UK/USA: Captain Conan) 129 mins, col. Production companies: Les Films Alain Sarde, Little Bear, TF1 Films Productions Producers: Frédéric Bourboulon, Alain Sarde Production design: Guy-Claude François Production manager: Yvon Grenn Assistant directors: Catalin Dordea, Valérie Othnin-Girard Script: Jean Cosmos, Bertrand Tavernier, based on the novel Capitaine Conan by Roger Vercel Cinematography: Alain Choquart Editing: Khadicha Bariha, Laure Blancherie, Luce Grunenwaldt Sound: Michel Desrois, Gérard Lamps Music: Oswald d’Andréa Costumes: Agnès Evein, Jacqueline Moreau Principal actors: Philippe Torreton (Conan), Samuel Le Bihan (Norbert), Bernard Le Coq (de Sève), Catherine Rich (Madeleine Erlane), Claude Rich (General Pitard de Lauzier), François Berléand (Commandant Bouvier), Claude Brosset (Père Dubreuil) Filmed in Saint-Suliac, France Awards: Cabourg Romantic Film Festival, 1997: Best Actor (Philippe Torreton); Cannes Film Festival, 2003: DVD Design Award, tied with The Sixth Sense [1999]; César, 1997: Best Actor (Philippe Torreton), Best Director (Bertrand Tavernier, tied with Patrice Leconte for Ridicule [1997]); Denver International Film Festival, 1997: Krzysztof Kieslowski Award (Bertrand Tavernier), Feature Film, People’s Choice Award (Bertrand Tavernier); French Syndicate of Cinema Critics, 1997: Best Film, Critics Award (Bertrand Tavernier); San Sebastián International Film Festival, 1996: FIPRESCI Prize (Bertrand Tavernier, tied with Qin song’ [1996]), Solidarity Award (Bertrand Tavernier), Special Mention, Best Production Design (Guy-Claude François)

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 275

12/10/2011 16:25

276  filmography De l’autre côté du Périph’ (1997) (USA: The Other Side of the Tracks) 150 mins, col. Production company: Little Bear Co-directed with Nils Tavernier VHS SECAM: France 2/Little Bear

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Short subject (no title) in Lumières sur un massacre (1997) 4 mins, col. Production companies: Little Bear, Handicap International Ça commence aujourd’hui (1999) (UK/USA: It All Starts Today) 117 mins, col. Production companies: Les Films Alain Sarde, Little Bear Producers: Frédéric Bourboulon, Alain Sarde Production design: Thierry François Production manager: François Hamel Assistant directors: Pierre Abéla, Tiffany Tavernier Script: Dominique Sampiero, Bertrand Tavernier, Tiffany Tavernier Cinematography: Alain Choquart Editing: Sophie Brunet, Sophie Mandonnet Sound: Michel Desrois, Gérard Lamps Music: Louis Sclavis Costumes: Marpessa Djian Principal actors: Philippe Torreton (Daniel), Maria Pitarresi (Valeria), Nadia Kaci (Samia), Véronique Ataly (Madame Liénard), Nathalie Bécue (Cathy), Emmanuelle Bercot (Madame Tiévaux), Françoise Bette (Madame Delacourt), Christine Citti (Madame Baudoin) Awards: Berlin International Film Festival, 1999: FIPRESCI Prize (Bertrand Tavernier), Honorable Mention (Bertrand Tavernier), Prize of the Ecumenical Jury (Bertrand Tavernier); Fotogramas de Plata, 2000: Best Foreign Film (Bertrand Tavernier); Lumiere Awards, France, 2000: Best Actor (Philippe Torreton); Norwegian International Film Festival, 1999: Ecumenical Film Award (Bertrand Tavernier); San Sebastián International Film Festival, 1999: Audience Award (Bertrand Tavernier); Sant Jordi Awards, 2000: Best Foreign Actor (Philippe Torreton), Best Foreign Film (Bertrand Tavernier)

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 276

12/10/2011 16:25

filmography  277

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Histoires de vies brisées: Les ‘Double peine’ de Lyon (2001) 110 mins, col. Co-directed with Nils Tavernier Production Company: Little Bear Cinematography: Alain Choquart, Eric Philbert, Nils Tavernier Editing: Sophie Brunet, Sophie Mandonnet, Marie Deroudille Sound: Alain Choquart, Eric Philbert, Nils Tavernier Music: Louis Sclavis, Zebda Laissez-passer (2002) (UK/USA: Safe Conduct) 170 mins, col. Production companies: Les Films Alain Sarde, France 2 Cinéma, France 3 Cinéma, KC Medien, Little Bear, Vertigo Productions Executive producer: Roland Pellegrino Producers: Frédéric Bourboulon, Alain Sarde Production design: Emile Ghigo Production manager: François Hamel Assistant directors: Pascal Guérin, Valérie Othnin-Girard Script: Jean Cosmos and Bertrand Tavernier, based on memoirs by Jean Aurenche and Jean Devaivre Cinematography: Alain Choquart Editing: Sophie Brunet Sound: Michel Desrois, Gérard Lamps, Elisabeth Paquotte Music: Antoine Duhamel Costumes: Valérie Pozzo di Borgo Principal actors: Jacques Gamblin (Jean Devaivre), Denis Podalydès (Jean Aurenche), Marie Desgranges (Simone Devaivre), Charlotte Kady (Suzanne Raymond), Ged Marlon (Jean-Paul Le Chanois), Philippe Morier-Genoud (Maurice Tourneur), Maria Pitarresi (Reine Sorignal), Marie Gillain (Olga), Laurent Schilling (Charles Spaak), Olivier Gourmet (Roger Richebé) Awards: Berlin International Film Festival, 2002: Silver Berlin Bear (Jacques Gamblin), Best Actor (Antoine Duhamel), Best Film Music; Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival, 2002: Jury Award (Bertrand Tavernier), Best Director (Bertrand Tavernier), Best Film, Best Screenplay (Jean Cosmos and Bertrand Tavernier), Best Supporting Actor (Denis Podalydès); Étoiles d’Or, 2003: Best Composer (Antoine Duhamel, tied with Krishna Levy for 8 Femmes [2002]) DVD: StudioCanal Video (2002)

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 277

12/10/2011 16:25

278  filmography

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Holy Lola (2004) 128 mins, col. Production companies: Les Films Alain Sarde, Little Bear, TF1 Films Productions Executive producers: Agnès Le Pont, Christine Gozlan Producers: Frédéric Bourboulon, Alain Sarde Production design: Giuseppe Ponturo Production manager: Marc Olla Assistant director: Pascal Guérin Script: Dominique Sampiero, Bertrand Tavernier, Tiffany Tavernier Cinematography: Alain Choquart Editing: Sophie Brunet Sound: Dominique Levert Music: Henri Texier Costumes: Eve-Marie Arnault Principal actors: Jacques Gamblin (Pierre), Isabelle Carré (Géraldine), Bruno Putzulu (Marco), Lara Guirao (Annie), Frédéric Pierrot (Xavier), Maria Pitarresi (Sandrine), Jean-Yves Roan (Michel), Séverine Caneele (Patricia) Filmed around d’Aurillac, France and in Cambodia Awards: San Sebastián International Film Festival, 2005: Audience Award (Bertrand Tavernier) DVD: StudioCanal Video (2004) Dans la brume électrique (2009) (US: In the Electric Mist) 102 mins (US); 117 mins (Europe and world distribution) Production companies: Ithaca Pictures, Little Bear, TF1 International Executive producers: Penelope Glass, Gulnara Sarsenova Producers: Frédéric Bourboulon, Michael Fitzgerald Production design: Merideth Boswell Assistant director: Phil Hardage Script: Jerzy Kromolowski and Mary Olson-Kromolowski, based on the novel In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead by James Lee Burke Cinematography: Bruno de Keyzer Editing: Larry Madaras, Roberto Silvi (American cut); Thierry Derocles (director’s version) Sound: David Bach Music: Marco Beltrami

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 278

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

filmography  279 Costumes: Kathy Kiatta Principal actors: Tommy Lee Jones (Dave Robicheaux), John Goodman (Julius ‘Baby Feet’ Balboni), Peter Sarsgaard (Elrod Sykes), Kelly MacDonald (Kelly Drummond), Mary Steenburgen (Bootsie Robicheaux), Levon Helm (General Hood), Justina Machado (Rosie Gomez), Julio Cedillo (Cholo Manelli), Ned Beatty (Twinky LeMoyne), John Sayles (Michael Goldman), Gary Grubbs (sheriff) Awards: Grand Prize at the Festival International du Film Policier in Beaune DVD France: TF1 Video (2010); DVD USA: Image Entertainment (2009) La Princesse de Montpensier (2010) 139 mins, col. Production companies: Paradis Films, Pandora Filmproduktion, StudioCanal, France 2 Cinéma, France 3 Cinéma Producers: Eric Heumann Production design: Guy-Claude François Script: Jean Cosmos, Bertrand Tavernier, and François-Olivier Rousseau, based on the novella by Madame de LaFayette Cinematography: Bruno de Keyzer Editing: Sophie Brunet Sound: Olivier Schwob, Elisabeth Paquotte Music: Philippe Sarde Costumes: Caroline de Vivaise Principal actors: Mélanie Thierry (Marie de Montpensier), Lambert Wilson (Comte de Chabannes), Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet (Prince de Montpensier), Gaspard Ulliel (Duc de Guise), Raphaël de Personnaz (Duc d’Anjou) Filmed in the Châteaux of Angers, Blois, and Messilhac

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 279

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Select bibliography

See also the references at the end of each chapter. Books by Tavernier (1992) La Guerre sans nom: Les Appelés d’Algérie 54–62, Paris, Seuil (with Patrick Rotman). A narrative description and presentation of the film, not a transcript. (1993a) ‘I Wake Up, Dreaming: A Journal for 1992,’ volume of John Boorman and Walter Donohue (eds), Projections: A Forum for Filmmakers, London and New York, Faber and Faber. Tavernier’s journal about the making of L.627. Also recounts the release and distribution of La Guerre sans nom. (1993b) Qu’est-ce qu’on attend?, Paris, Seuil. French-language version of 1993a. (1995) 50 Ans de cinéma américain (revised and updated), Paris, Omnibus (with Jean-Pierre Coursodon). This is a revised and updated version of a 1991 edition published by Nathan. Extensive and personally inflected encyclopedia of American cinema that includes history, bibliography, and assessments of hundreds of directors and scenarists. (1999) Ça commence aujourd’hui, Paris: Mango (with Dominique Sampiero and Tiffany Tavernier). A souvenir picture book. (2008) Amis américains: Entretiens avec les grands auteurs d’Hollywood, Lyon, Institut Lumière/Actes Sud (expanded collectors edition, originally published in 1993). Lavishly illustrated interviews with Tavernier’s favorites, from the time he was a press attaché as well as more recent additions.

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 280

12/10/2011 16:25

select bibliography  281 (2009) Pas à pas dans la brume électrique: Récit de tournage, Paris, Flammarion. Journal on the making of the film.

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Key interviews with Tavernier (1997) Jean-Luc Douin, ‘Pour en finir avec la sobriété,’ in Bertrand Tavernier: Biographie, 103–237. (2000) ‘Bertrand Tavernier: The Watchmaker of Saint-Paul,’ in stein, Stephen (ed.), My First Film: 20 Celebrated DirecLowen­ tors Talk about Their First Film, London and New York, Penguin, 156–177. (2006) ‘La Vie et rien d’autre: Un entretien indispensable avec Bertrand Tavernier,’ Oxford University (CD). Wide-ranging overview of Tavernier’s career. (2008) Frémaux, Thierry, ‘Les Films des autres: Entretien avec Bertrand Tavernier,’ in Tavernier, Amis américains, 15–35. Books about Tavernier Bion, Danièle (1984), Bertrand Tavernier: Cinéaste de l’émotion, Paris, Hatier. Close-up view of Tavernier and his career through the lens of Un dimanche à la campagne. Douin, Jean-Luc (1988), Tavernier, Paris, Edilig. A critic and journalist’s film-by-film picture book with extensive interview and alphabetical listing of personalities, places, and terms relating to Tavernier’s career. Loaded with interesting details. Douin, Jean-Luc (1997), Bertrand Tavernier: Biographie, Paris, Ramsay and Ramsay poche. Updated version of Douin’s 1988 book, with additional material on films since the earlier edition, but without illustrations. Hay, Stephen (2000), Bertrand Tavernier: The Filmmaker of Lyon, London and New York, Taurus. Discussion of Tavernier’s political and humanist perspective, followed by chronological treatment of the films, with material culled from Hay’s conversations with the filmmaker. Nuttens, Jean-Dominique (2009), Bertrand Tavernier, Rome, Gremese. Illustrated chronological discussion of the films. Raspiengeas, Jean-Claude (2001), Bertrand Tavernier, Paris, Flam­­ marion. Biography and chronological discussion of the films.

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 281

12/10/2011 16:25

282  select bibliography

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Zants, Emily (1999), Bertrand Tavernier: Fractured Narrative and Bourgeois Values, Lanham, Maryland, Scarecrow Press. Scholarly analysis relating narrative form to Tavernier’s preoccupations as an artist and a citizen.

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 282

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Index

50 Ans de cinéma américain 9, 92–3, 130, 144, 200 adaptation 1, 19–20, 31, 52–3, 57, 83, 88–91, 102, 173, 249 Alleg, Henri 207, 209 Althusser, Louis 30, 38 Amis américains 9, 92–3, 99, 262 Amnesty International 189, 215 L’Appât 48, 70, 190, 198–203, 211, 214, 224 Armstrong, Louis 6, 104 Astruc, Alexandre 17 Aumont, Michel 68, 73, 84 Aurenche, Jean 15, 27, 31, 34–5, 39, 45, 51–7, 65, 88, 136, 149, 154, 163, 165–6, 183, 188, 262 Aurenchébost see Aurenche, Jean; Bost, Pierre autochrome 78–81, 108, 254 Autour de minuit 48, 63–4, 91–105, 115, 142, 192, 210, 254 Azéma, Sabine 84, 109, 179 Baiser de Judas 8 Barthes, Roland 38, 40, 80, 104, 156

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 283

Bazin, André 135, 169 Beauregard, Georges de 8–9, 36, 56, 58 bebop 63, 91–3, 98–9, 105 Beltrami, Marco 246 Ben Jelloun, Tahar 222 Bezace, Didier 229 Birkin, Jane 131–2 Bogarde, Dirk 131–2 Boorman, John 219, 226, 261 Bost, Pierre 15, 27, 31, 34–5, 39, 51–7, 74, 83, 86–9, 136, 154 Bourboulon, Frédéric 9 Burke, James Lee 212, 244, 247, 249, 251–3, 255 Burns, Ken 93, 245 Ça commence aujourd’hui 59, 63, 114, 189–90, 224, 229–34, 241 Camus, Albert 15, 47, 121, 124 Capitaine Conan 2, 12, 112, 117, 120, 170–83, 191, 205, 207, 214, 224, 250, 257, 259 Carré, Isabelle 237, 240–1 Chance et l’amour, La 8, 56 Chaumette, Monique 84 Chirac, Jacques 66–7, 236

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

284  index Choquart, Alain 174, 224, 236 Compton, David 192, 194–5 Contre L’oubli 189, 215, 219 Corneau, Alain 27, 166, 169, 258 Corneille, Pierre 84–5, 89 Cosmos, Jean 172, 176–7, 181, 184, 257 Coup de torchon 53, 58, 76, 116–17, 120–2, 124, 163–9, 209, 214, 218, 250 Daddy nostalgie 48, 63, 131–3, 143, 194, 210 Dans La brume électrique 29, 115, 212, 244–57 Daves, Delmer 82, 233 De L’autre côté du ‘Périph’ 9, 70, 89, 203, 220–4, 242 De Palma, Brian 200–1 Des enfants gâtés 9, 39, 42, 63–72, 100, 187, 227 dimanche à la campagne, Un 2, 3, 18, 48, 63, 72–91, 115–16, 128–9, 132, 179, 254 Duhamel, Antoine 56, 151, 194 Dumas, Alexandre 19, 125, 135, 148, 258 Fauré, Gabriel 81–3, 88, 131 Fille de d’Artagnan, La 48, 104, 120–1, 133–7, 142–4, 245 Film noir 254, 260 Fitzgerald, F. Scott 201 Fleming, Victor 167–8 Ford, John 6, 99, 167, 233 Foucault, Michel 146, 156 Freda, Riccardo 135–6 Frémaux, Thierry 260–2

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 284

Galabru, Jean 17, 154–5, 160 Gamblin, Jacques 237, 241 Giroud, Françoise 32–3, 35, 43 Giscard d’Estaing, Valéry 4, 27, 70, 157, 163 Glenn, Pierre-William 9, 31, 79, 163 Godard, Jean-Luc 27, 33, 37–40, 56, 191, 205, 221 Gordon, Dexter 91, 94–6, 98–9, 102–3 Guerre sans nom, La 36, 44, 189, 203–19, 221, 224, 226–7, 237, 254 Guy, Buddy 114, 255 Hancock, Herbie 96, 103 Haneke, Michael 194 Herzog, Werner 251 Histoires de vies brisées 1, 189, 224 Holy Lola 36, 190, 211, 224, 235–42 L’Horloger de Saint-Paul 3, 11–12, 17–18, 28, 31–60, 71, 89, 115, 119, 127, 136, 146, 209 Hugo, Victor 2, 19–20, 121, 125, 233, 258 Impressionism 78, 80–1, 90 impressionist 1, 2, 13, 72, 81 Institut Lumière 7, 9, 11, 13, 29, 34, 260–2 Jones, Tommy Lee 246, 249 Juge et l’assassin, Le 41, 119, 122, 146–7, 153–63, 209 Keyzer, Bruno de 79, 94, 138, 224, 245, 254, 257

12/10/2011 16:25

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

index  285 L.627 9, 63, 190–1, 224–30, 250 Lafayette, Madame de 212, 257–9 Laissez-passer 1, 4, 12, 30, 35, 39, 53, 55–6, 64–5, 126–7, 171, 183–4, 233, 262 Langlois, Henri 37, 39, 261 Little Bear 9, 12, 29–30, 39, 68, 189, 204, 215, 244 Losey, Joseph 49–50 Lumière and company 261–2 Lumière brothers (Auguste and Louis) 2, 5, 12–13, 16, 79, 187, 261 Lumières sur un massacre 189, 215, 238–9 Lyon, le regard intérieur 10–23, 26, 33–5, 43, 94

98, 108, 113, 120–1, 137, 154–5, 163, 177, 180, 246–7 Nouvelle Vague 32–5, 50–7

Malle, Louis 28, 34, 171, 207, 209 Marey, Etienne-Jules 78, 85 McCarthy/McCarthyism 34, 41, 49, 92 melodrama 4, 118, 125–37, 139–49, 158–63, 166, 168, 181–4, 251–2, 258–9 Melville, Jean-Pierre 8, 39 Mississippi Blues 97–9, 103, 224, 253 Mitchell, Eddy 82, 218 Mitterrand, François 4, 59, 89, 163, 219, 230 ‘mode retro’ 17, 28, 34, 171, 176 Mort en direct, La 48, 56, 114, 131, 192–8 Muybridge, Eadweard 78, 85

Que la fête commence 38, 48, 63, 76, 116, 118, 146–53, 159, 162, 245

Noiret, Philippe 18, 39, 48, 55

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 285

Ophüls, Marcel 17n13, 28, 34, 44, 170, 191, 206–7 Panh, Rithy 215, 237–9 Parrish, Robert 92, 97–8 Pascal, Christine 39, 41, 69–71 Passion Béatrice, La 4, 47, 111, 117, 120, 133, 137–43, 147, 254 Powell, Bud 91, 96, 98–9, 210 Powell, Michael 194–5 Princesse de Montpensier, La 29, 115, 212, 257–9 Proust, Marcel 20–2, 78, 82–3, 85–6

Rayfiel, David 94, 192 Renoir, Jean 2, 20, 39, 70–1, 76, 121, 173, 233 Resnais, Alain 13, 19, 205, 219, 229 Rochefort, Jean 39, 65, 108, 148–50 Saint-Simon, Louis de Rouvray, duc de 148, 150–1 Sarde, Philippe 39, 119, 164 Sartre, Jean-Paul 20, 33, 93, 121, 123–4, 129 Scorsese, Martin 95, 98 semaine de vacances, Une 17, 50, 58–9, 82, 131, 179, 189

12/10/2011 16:25

286  index

Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

Sirk, Douglas 130, 144–5, 158 Soupault, Philippe 188 Tavernier, Nils 9, 134, 138, 189, 221, 227 Tavernier O’Hagan, Colo 9, 67, 69, 132, 211 Tavernier, René 5, 8, 10–23, 26, 33–4, 89, 107, 132n8, 155 Tavernier, Tiffany 9, 48, 66, 132n8, 229–30, 236 Thompson, Jim 19, 166, 209 Torreton, Philippe 114, 231–2 Truffaut, François 37, 50–60, 66, 87, 163

Higgins_Tavernier_Printer.indd 286

Vercel, Roger 120, 173, 175, 179, 183 Vian, Boris 93, 217 Vie et rien d’autre, La 113, 118, 120, 170–83, 210, 253 western (genre) 7, 124, 163, 167–9, 180, 233, 259 Zavattini, Cesare 225 Zola, Emile 2, 20, 121–5, 184, 190, 215

12/10/2011 16:25