MY JOURNEY THROUGH FRENCH CINEMA
D: Bertrand Tavernier (2016) ¢ ¢ ¢
Bertrand Tavernier looks back at some of the filmmakers and some of the films that have influenced his own life and work, from Jacques Becker and Jean Renoir to Jean-Pierre Melville and Claude Sautet. The clips are wonderful and you see a lot of Jean Gabin, whose career covers roughly the same time frame the movie does. On the minus side, the talking-head witnesses are unidentified, leaving casual viewers in the dark about who they are, and reading the subtitles while Tavernier narrates in French takes your attention away from what you really want to be looking at. (I usually prefer subtitles, but this is one foreign-language film that should've been dubbed.) A documentary aimed squarely at cinemaphiles, specifically those who already know French.
Bertrand Tavernier
(1941-2021)
