In March 2021, the French film director Bertrand Tavernier died at the age of 79. He left behind a legacy of more than 25 films in very different genres: period films, political films, lyrical films, science fiction, social realism, jazz film, usually confronting his public with moral dilemmas and opening up for us the complexity of life.

Always passionate about his film subjects and eager to learn something new himself through his filmmaking, he moves a story forward until he has arrived at the insights in the subjects he is investigating. He takes his time to do that (many of his films take between 2 and 3 hours), not compromising much to commercial interests. His films with their honesty and humanness deserve broader exposure. When you start looking at his films, you never know what you will get into. It always makes you think. It makes you feel that you have learned something. I consider his films to be quite undervalued. He is an important filmmaker, worthy of our attention!

Of those I have seen, I can recommend the following films as a way to find your way into the work and thinking of Bertrand Tavernier:

• L’Horloger de St. Paul – The Clockmaker (1974)

Tavernier’s debut film was based on a Georges Simenon novel and plays in his town of birth, Lyon. The clockmaker is a decent, hardworking widower who gets visited by the police with the news that his car has been found by the side of the road. It had been used by his son, Bernard. Then he gets to hear that his son and his girlfriend are arrested for killing a man, a security guard at the factory where he and his girlfriend worked. The film is about him trying to understand this crime and to come to grips with the relationship with his son. This film is the start of a recurring theme in his work: the treatment of complex individuals dealing with complex social and psychological tensions.

• Coup de Torchon – Clean Slate (1981)

This adaptation of the American novel Pop. 1280 by Jim Thompson, which is located in the 1910s American Deep South, transferring the scene to 1930s French West Africa. The only local, white  policeman in the town is a corrupt and lazy official, who is not taken seriously by anyone, not even by his own wife. After a particular painful humiliation, he reports this to his superior and is ordered to take control in town. He returns and enters into a murder spree, starting to regard himself as a redeemer in this lawless place. This intense, black comedy turns the colonial issue around. What happens with a humiliated soul, once he’s given the power ro revenge? This is a challenging and provoking viewing experience!

• Un Dimanche à la Campagne – A Sunday in the Country (1984)

A Sunday in the Country is a delightful story of a family getting together during one Sunday in a country home in 1912. The thoughts, memories and fears we meet make the film into a story about many, if not most families. The country house is the home of an elderly painter who is visited by his son with his family and by his unmarried daughter. The son is dutiful, always trying to win his father’s approval, while the daughter goes her own way, bubbling with energy. It is the dynamics of family relationships with expectations and disappointments, with concealed favouritism and felt injustice. Roger Ebert has said: To see Tavernier’s work is to feel closer to life.” That is certainly true about this film!

• Ca Commence Aujourd’Hui – It All Starts Today (1999)

It All Starts Today is possibly the most passionate social film of Bertrand Tavernier. Earlier in his 1980 film A Week’s Holiday he had already taken on the field of education as a place for personal doubt, loneliness and pressure. Now almost 20 years later he returns to education in this film about the kindergarten school headmaster Daniel. The school is located  in a northern French coalmining town pressured by high unemployment and serious poverty. The socially very committed Daniel is in daily conflict with local government authorities over the seriously under-resourced facility. He has to be all-in-one: a teacher, a social worker, a child abuse investigator, a resource provider, a fund-raiser, etc. This is a passionate film about how it is to be a teacher in a place where there is no money, no hope and no plans for the future.

• Laissez-Faire – Safe Conduct (2001)

During the Nazi occupation of France in WW II more than 200 films were produced in France through the German-controlled production company Continental. Tavernier tells the story of the moral issues, the tensions, the compromises and other challenges this curious period brought along for the French employees in the world of film. He does so by following two characters, a director and a script writer, who make different choices in their approach. The director hates the Nazis but decides to work for Continental. At the same time he is in the Resistance, making use of his platform to get over important information and documents. The scriptwriter is wilfully unproductive, basically refusing to work for Continental. Tavernier felt compelled to write this war time story of two men he personally knew so well, the director Jean Devaivre and the screen writer of many of his films, Jean Aureche.

Bertrand Tavernier has never made an unworthy film. There is so much professional ability and such a passionate desire to be educated through the struggle with his subject. It is our loss when we don’t take the time to see and listen!

Rinus, June 2022