Capital Celluloid 2017 - Day 259: Tue Sep 19

My Journey Through French Cinema (Tavernier, 2016): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 7pm


This film is being screened on an extended run at BFI Southbank (full details here) with the event on September 15th featuring a Q&A with Bernard Tavernier. Information here.

Chicago Reader review:
Veteran director Bertrand Tavernier (Life and Nothing But, It All Starts Today) presents a personal, epic history of the French cinema, just as Martin Scorsese did with Italian cinema in My Voyage to Italy (1999) and U.S. cinema in A Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese Through American Movies (1995). Even at 200 minutes this is a pretty narrow journey, focusing almost exclusively on classical French cinema of the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, but as with Scorsese, the reminiscences can flower into precise and passionate criticism. The great masters roll by—Jacques Becker, Jean Renoir, Marcel CarnĂ©, Jean-Pierre Melville, who mentored Tavernier—but more distinctive and revealing are the fannish tributes to tough guys Jean Gabin and Eddie Constantine, innovative composers Maurice Jaubert and Joseph Kosma, and forgotten auteurs Edmond T. GrĂ©ville (Menaces) and Pierre Schoendoerffer (The 317th Platoon).
JR Jones


Here (and above) is the trailer.

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