Author Spotlight

Bertrand Tavernier

Director and writer Bertrand Tavernier (1941–2021) made films including The Clockmaker (1974), ’Round Midnight (1986), and My Journey Through French Cinema (2016). He was the author of 50 ans de cinéma américain (with Jean-Pierre Coursodon); Amis américains, entretiens avec les grands auteurs d’Hollywood, a collection of his 1960s interviews with Hollywood directors; and La guerre sans nom: Les appelés d’Algérie (with Patrick Rotman), and was a frequent contributor to La Croix, Positif, and Film Comment.

3 Results
Jean-Pierre Melville, My Father in the Art

Veteran French director Bertrand Tavernier reflects on how one of his greatest mentors fused two seemingly contradictory influences—that of the Resistance and of American genre filmmaking—into a remarkably cohesive body of work.

By Bertrand Tavernier

Features— Sep 30, 2019
Make Way for Tomorrow: We Laugh, and Our Hearts Ache
Like many other French cinephiles, I discovered Make Way for Tomorrow relatively late, although we had been interested in Leo McCarey for years. We had hunted down his Laurel and Hardy pictures, adored Duck Soup, the best of the Marx Brothers films, …

By Bertrand Tavernier

Essays— Feb 23, 2010
Classe tous risques: Beautiful Friendships

Decades later, we’ve come to understand that Claude Sautet’s film—in a less gaudy and obvious, more secretive, insidious way—was just as revolutionary as Breathless.

By Bertrand Tavernier

Essays— Jun 17, 2008