In seeking to upgrade his own outmoded perspective on several filmmakers, Tavernier credits critic/programmer Patrick Brion and other writers for early and often championing directors whoâdecades after their heydayâwere finally restored the respect they deserve. Tavernier revisits the oeuvres of Maurice Tourneur, whose crime tales were both bemusedly observational and authentic; Anatole Litvak, who stunned with his dynamic camera choices; Raymond Bernard, who made the groundbreaking 1932 epic Wooden Crosses on real-life WWI battlefields; RenĂ© Clair, warmly chronicling a now-vanished working-class Paris; and â encoring after Episode 3 â comedy and musical specialist Jean Boyer, whose additional career as lyricist in collaboration with popular composer Georges van Parys make for tuneful rediscoveries.
My Journey Through French Cinema (2017), Bertrand Tavernierâs CĂ©sar-nominated three-and-a-half-hour tour through French film history, was too short to introduce audiences to all that he wanted to share. In this new eight-part series (8x55min), the acclaimed director of such films as Coup de Torchon and âRound Midnight guides us through a roster of filmmakers both influential and forgotten, explores how his countryâs cinema was shaped by the German occupation and changed again through the New Wave, spotlights little-known female filmmakers, and more. Subjects include: RenĂ© ClĂ©ment, Henri-Georges Clouzot, Julien Duvivier, Henri Decoin, Claude Autant-Lara, as well as composers who made movie music an art in and of itself, far from the Hollywood spotlight.
