Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 14/9/2017)

Rather fittingly, the odyssey opens with a shot of Philippe Noiret in Tavernier's first feature, The Watchmaker of St Paul (1976), entering the gate of the family home in Lyon where parents René and Geneviève Tavernier has hosted such literary luminaries as poet Louis Aragon while publishing the anti-Vichy journal, Confluences, during the 1940-44 Occupation. This commitment to freedom of expression and resistance to tyranny left its mark on Tavernier as a man and as an artist and he recalls the thrill he felt at seeing the city lit up on the night the first American troops arrived.

In many ways, sitting in a darkened cinema and seeing the screen illuminated continues to remind Tavernier of that sense of exhilaration and excitement. He was five when the family relocated to Paris in 1946 and reflects on the time he spent in a sanatorium in Saint-Gervais being treated for tuberculosis and a problem with his retina. During this period, he saw the first film he remembers and shares the car chase sequence from Jacques Becker's Dernier atout (1942) as a preamble to a discussion of the director who first shaped his artistic sensibilities.

Tavernier considers Becker a genius and uses clips from Casque d'or (1952) to show how deftly he captures the atmosphere of the fin-de-siècle demimonde and builds towards the climactic tragedy. Such was Becker's attention to detail that minor characters were as perfectly delineated as the leads played by Simone Signoret and Serge Reggiani. Tavernier dips into the Modigliani biopic Montparnasse 19 (1958) to extol the elegance of Becker's camera style and into Rendez-vous de juillet (1949) to claim that, as a huge fan of Ernst Lubitsch and Howard Hawks, he was one of the first French directors to introduce American tropes into popular films.

If the jazz played by Rex Stewart in the latter paean to youth caught the postwar mood, Becker captured the rhythms of screwball in Edouard et Caroline (1951) and reclaimed film noir from Hollywood in the gripping prison escape saga, Le Trou (1960). Yet Becker could also be very French in exploring everyday life Falbalas (1945) and Antoine et Antoinette (1947). He also ensure his gangsters were recognisably Gallic and not pale American imitations in Touchez pas au grisbi (1954), in which he dwelt on Jean Gabin's bedtime preparations in his hideaway flat to reinforce his individualism. Such attention to detail was also evident in rustic tales like Goupi mains rouge (1943) and urban parables like Antoine et Antoinette, which turns on a lost lottery ticket.

As the champion of an auteur cinema that countered the verbosity of what he dubbed `the Tradition of Quality', François Truffaut is seen in archive footage hailing Becker's technique and Tavernier employs snippets from his films to show the simplicity of his settings, his surprisingly modern storytelling style and the genuine empathy he felt for his characters. He compares Becker's ordinary decency to that of George Orwell and shows how milieu and character were intertwined to achieve an authenticity that made his work more plausible and potent, none more so than in the scenes in Le Trou designed to demonstrate how difficult breaking through the concrete floor of a cell would be. Sadly, however, Becker died shortly after finishing the film at just 52 and a montage of memorable images from his monochrome masterpieces ends a heartfelt and precisely analytical section on a personal hero.

When he started school. Tavernier developed an obsession with cult cinemas and we see stills of various venues from his youth, as he tells a story about Quentin Tarantino thinking it was cool that there was once a Parisian theatre called The Far West. We see a clip from Luc Moullett's Les Sièges de l'Alcazar (1989) about these much-loved fleapits and the kind of people who used to haunt them, as Tavernier recalls the modern American Westerns and crimes films he used to see, as well as older French films like Jean Delannoy's Macao, l'enfer du jeu (1939). a Sternbergian melodrama about the Sino-Japanese War with Erich von Stroheim, Sessue Hayakawa and Mireille Balin. He remembers liking its honest approach to sex and comments on the Roger Vitrac dialogue and the fact that Delannoy had to replace Von Stroheim with reshot scenes with Pierre Renoir during the Occupation so as not to upset the Nazis.

This refernece brings Tavernier to another hero in Jean Renoir. He recalls being stunned by the Marseillaise sequence at the outbreak of the Great War in La Grande illusion (1937) and being so aware that he was witnessing a new kind of French cinema that he remained in his seat and watched it twice more before reluctantly heading home. Tavernier was also taken by Une Partie de campagne (1936), a much-troubled featurette was only released in a truncated form in 1946, and La Marseillaise (1938), which he claims to have been the first historical film with the people as the heroes. But he was also fascinated by the shooting in depth in La Règle du jeu (1939) and the camera movements in Le Crime de Monsieur Lange (1935), which brought a subtle lyricism to lengthy takes that locked the characters into their environments and allowed Renoir to flit between facial close-ups as the dramatic focus of a scene shifted.

In Toni (1935), Renoir anticipated neo-realism and Tavernier finds echo in its dining-table sequence with one in La Chienne (1931), which starred the incomparable Michel Simon. He notes the contribution made to the latter by editor Marguerite Renoir and to Jacques Prévert's script for Le Crime de Monsieur Lange. But he lingers on Renoir's relationship with Jean Gabin, who was so popular with French audiences in the 1930s that his roles were almost a barometer for national self-esteem. Tavernier recalls meeting Gabin and relates an anecdote about Renoir instructing Curt Courant how to light a footplate sequence in La Bête humaine (1938). He also shows the kitchen scene at the train drivers' digs to contrast the Zolaesque realism with the romanticism he brings to Gabin's scenes with Simone Simon.

According to Tavernier, Renoir respected his Impressionist father's painting style. but had his own approach to framing and composing shots. Yet, as the `Petite Navire' sequence in La Grande illusion and the tenement shooting in Le Crime de Monsieur Lange reveal, Renoir was also a master of improvisation and Tavernier highlights how the camera movements around the windows overlooking the courtyard were inspired by a spur of the moment decision that brought the scene to more vivid life. We see a clip of Renoir explaining his technique and how it used to free actors and cameramen to shoot in long, fluid takes that retained the integrity of the action.

It saddens Tavernier, therefore, that this generous, intelligent and intuitive artist should have written letters of an anti-semitic nature in 1940 and he avers that it's probably a relief for Renoir's reputation that he left for the United States so that he didn't do anything he might later have regretted during the Vichy era. Nevertheless, Gabin never forgave him for his views and perceived bigotry and always qualified acknowledgements of his artistry with blunt assessments of his personality. Screenwriter Charles Spaak supposedly told Tavernier that Renoir had a fondness for Italian Fascism, but he was eventually forgiven and returned to make French Cancan (1955), which saw him reunite with the ever-excellent Gabin and make bracing use of colour during the exuberant dance set-pieces.

Akin to James Cagney and Spencer Tracy in Hollywood, Gabin epitomised working-class machismo in film like Marcel Carné's Le Jour se lève (1939), in which he co-starred with Arletty and Jules Berry. In Julien Duvivier's La Belle équipe (1936), he was the spirit of the Popular Front, while in Jean Grémillon's Remorques (1941) he embodied the embattled wartime soul. Even when he played a deserter in Carné's Le Quai des brumes (1938), Gabin remained a man of the people. Yet he also spent much of the war in Hollywood and told Tavernier that he was more use there than in being manipulated into a false hero during the Occupation.

Eventually, however, Gabin joined the Free French Forces and fought in North African before participating in the Liberation of Paris. Yet he struggled to regain his status, despite films like René Clément's Au-delà des grilles (1949). He later reflected on his wartime adventures in Gilles Grangier's Sous le Signe du taureau (1969), but never shied away in interviews from what he called his black curtain period. Tavernier blames Marlene Dietrich for prolonging this, as their affair kept Gabin from making a potentially triumphal comeback in Carné's Les Portes de la nuit (1946). However, he returned to his trademark everyman roles in the likes of Georges Lacombe's La Nuit est ma royaume (1951), in which he drove another steam train. Tavernier also highlights Grangier's Gas-Oil (1955), Henri Verneuil's Des gens sans importance (1956) and Pierre Granier-Deferre's Le Chat (1971) and declares Gabin's performance in Henri Decoin's La Vérité sur Bébé Donge (1952) to be one of his bravest, as he was cast against type as an anti-hero.

He was only marginally more sympathetic in Becker's Touchez pas au grisbi and Julien Duvivier's Voici le temps des assassins (1956). But, once again, Gabin came to embody a new France in Claude Autant-Lara's En Cas de malheur (1958), in which he resisted the charms of Brigitte Bardot. Getting too old to play the romantic lead, he displayed a gnarled gravity in items like Grangier's Le Désordre et la nuit (1958). in which he play a vice cop who develops a soft spot for drug-addicted prostitute Nadja Tiller. Autant-Lara exploited Gabin's little-used comic gifts in La Traversée de Paris (1956), yet still gave him a scene in which he rails against those who had betrayed France during the war. Around this time, the fiftysomething Gabin moved into grand homme roles in Verneuil's Le Président (1961), while assuming the part of Georges Simenon's great detective in Jean Delannoy's Maigret tends une piège (1958). But Gabin also showed a commendable lack of vanity, as a has been opposite rising star Jean-Paul Belmondo in Verneuil's Un Singe en hiver (1962). Indeed, directors like Henri Decoin were just pleased to have him in thrillers like Razzia sur la chnouf (1955) because he was the consummate professional and knew how to play a scene better than any writer or director. Tavernier recalls Gabin needing to do things his own way, but he remains a fan of the bluff charm that helped define the French cinema of his heyday.

Curiously, Tavernier begins his analysis of Marcel Carné with his penultimate fictional feature, Les Assassins de l'ordre (1971), to suggest that he always managed to create a credible world, in spite of leaving the writing of his films to others. Over clips from Le Jour se lève and Hôtel du Nord (1939), Tavernier recalls scenarist Henri Jeanson declaring that Carné was a difficult man to work with because he was obsessed with creating atmosphere. We see footage of Jeanson complaining about Carné being fussy about casting decisions and initially being unconvinced by the iconic actress, Arletty. But their collaborations on the aforementioned and Les Enfants du paradis (1945) suggest that Carné could mould raw talent, although he was happier working with natural screen actors like Louis Jouvet, who is seen in a scene from Hôtel du Nord. But the cantankerous Carné also fell out with his favoured scriptwriter, Jacques Prévert, when he refused his suggestion of Simone Simon for the lead in Les Portes de la nuit.

Ultimately, the part went to Nathalie Nattier, whom Tavernier considers a disaster. But, if Carné wasn't a born writer and didn't always get his casting decisions right, he had an eye for detail and a feel for authentic characters. He was also prepared to discuss proscribed topics like the Spanish Civil War in Hôtel du Nord, which even contained a gay character. Moreover, he appreciated the benefits of studio realism and forged a valuable link with production designer Alexander Trauner, whose street set for Le Jour se lève is shown in construction so that it isolated Gabin's fugitive anti-hero. We also see the scene of Jules Berry tumbling down the staircase after being shot, which is accompanied by the reflections of future director Claude Sautet in a Positif review that extols Carné's virtue as a director of people and places.

While in Poetic Realist territory, Tavernier also explores the work of composer Maurice Jaubert, whom he claims understood the use of a music in cinema better than anyone else. We hear the jaunty folk tune as Gabin strolls along a street in Hôtel du Nord and the ingenious use of accordion and saxophone in Jean Vigo's L'Atalante (1934), with the joke about Michel Simon being able to play a record with his fingernail remaining a gem eight decades later. There's a melancholic melodic sweetness to the soundtrack of René Clair's Quatorze juillet (1933), while, over a scene from Duvivier's Un Carnet du bal (1937), Tavernier notes that Jaubert instinctively felt that music lay at the heart of a film because it could convey emotions without needing words. To prove the point, he contrasts the swelling romance of the ballroom dream sequence with the pulsating percussion used in Le Jour se lève, as Gabin paces his garret room with his fate seemingly sealed before the bullets start to shatter the window.

Tavernier hails the 40 year-old Jaubert's death while fighting for his country a tragedy. But he was glad to be able to talk Truffaut into using some of the music from L'Atalante in L'Histoire d'Adèle H. (1975) and was even more delighted when some of the music from his favourite French composers was finally released on LPs. Moving on, Tavernier discusses the way Hollywood tends to use orchestras, while there is much greater nuance in Narciso Yepes's solo guitar in René Clément's Jeux interdits (1952). Jean Wiener's mournful harmonica in Touchez pas au grisbi and Miles Daviss's soaring trumpet in Louis Malle's Lift to the Scaffold (1958). Tavernier also admires the way Robert Bresson employed a Mozart mass in A Man Escaped (1958) before commending the work of Georges Auric on Jean Cocteau's La Belle et la bête (1946), Georges van Parys on Max Ophüls's Madame de... (1953), Jean-Jacques Grunewald on Bresson's Les Anges du péché (1943) and Jacques Ibert on Maurice Tourneur's Justin de Marseille (1935). He also states that film music is one of the ways in which French and American cultures differ, as French scores owe more to modern composers, while Hollywood's are more rooted in the classical tradition.

We hear a Joseph Kosma harmonica strain playing over a scene in Carné's Les Portes de la Nuit, as Yves Montand begins to sing along. Kosma wrote several songs with Jacques Prévert and Tavernier notes the Berlin influence of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill on his work. The lyricism of his score for Renoir's Une Partie de campagne captures the bliss of a summer day beside the river, while composer Antoine Duhamel suggests that his marches in La Grand illusion managed to be anti-militaristic. The emotion surges as Gabin kisses and nearly throttles Blanchette Brunoy by the trackside in La Bête humaine, while it playfully counterpoints Jean-Louis Barrault's mimed adoration of the statuesque Arletty in Les Enfants du paradis. Ending this section, we see a clip from Henri Calef's lesser-known Bagarres (1948), as the music helps build the tension as Jean Murat climbs the stairs to menace Maria Casares, and Tavernier notes that Kosma only came to film because Prévert wanted him to compose his song in Le Crime de Monsieur Lange and Tavernier is baffled that it isn't better known.

Moving into the realms of commercial cinema, Tavernier alights upon American actor Eddie Constantine, who became a cult figure in France as troubleshooter Lemmy Caution in films like Jean Sacha's Cet Homme est dangereux (1953). Considering him a breath of fresh air n postwar cinema, Tavernier lauds the dialogue of Marcel Duhamel over a scene of Constantine driving a speedboat and urging his female companion to speak French because the public doesn't like subtitles. Tavernier is also a big fan of Sacha, who started out doing distinctive caricatures of Hollywood stars and later edited films for Max Ophüls and Orson Welles and Tavernier sees the latter's influence in Cet Homme est dangereux and credits cinematographer Marcell Weiss for the expressionist lighting and oblique angles in the noirish visuals.

In Bernard Borderie's La Môme vert-de-gris (1946), Constantine escapes from a fire and finds a dead body before the viewpoint shifts to a subjective shot that consciously hommaged a scene in Delmer Daves's Dark Passage (1947). Tavernier also notes the violence of the action, as Lemmy shoots one man, hits another with a hammer and snaps the neck of a third. But the witty voiceover also shows Lemmy talking to himself in order to steel his confidence and thanking himself for his good wishes. You can almost feel Truffaut, Chabrol and Godard hugging themselves in the darkness as they watched such gleeful self-reflexivity.

John Berry also worked with Welles as an actor in the Mercury Theatre, but sought sanctuary in France after coming under HUAC suspicion for directing John Garfield in He Ran All the Way (1951). He made his mark with another Constantine thriller, Ça va barder (1955), which Tavernier considers one of the first great French noirs. Its dialogue was penned by Jacques-Laurent Bost, a lover of Simone de Beauvoir and the brother of the more famous screenwriter Pierre, who forged a partnership with Jean Aurenche that was despised by Truffaut, but admired by Tavernier, who collaborated with the pair on four occasions). He also enthuses about Jacques Lemare's American-influenced imagery and the part played by character actors Jean Carmet, André Versini, Clément Harari, Jean Danet and Roger Saget in keeping the action cracklingly authentic.

Tavernier regrets that Constantine made more formulaic films as time went by, but he enjoyed a revival after Michel Deville's Lucky Jo (1964) and Godard's iconic Alphaville (1965). This mention of the nouvelle vague leads into Truffaut's Les 400 coups (1959) and Tirez sur la pianiste (1961), which Tavernier saw when he was writing reviews and thinking about making films himself with his okl lycée friend, Volker Schlondörff. They spent a lot of time at Henri Langlois's Cinémathèque Française in the Rue d'Ulm and Tavernier recalls having his glasses broken during a demonstration to prevent Langlois's dismissal by culture minister, whose Spanish Civil War classic, L'Espoir (1938), was one of the films that most surprised Tavernier at the Cinémathèque, along with Duvivier's Allo Berlin? Ici Paris! (1932), which made audacious use of skewed point-of-view shots.

It was while he was enjoying Langlois's eclectic programming that Tavernier met Yves Martin and Bernard Martinand, with whom he formed the Nickel-Odeon ciné-club that tried to show new and older films in need to reclamation. Among them were Delannoy's Le Garçon sauvage (1951), which had been written by Jacques Lourcelles and Henri Jeanson, and Jacques Panijel's Octobre à Paris (1962), which was banned by the authorities for its discussion of the Algerian War. Tavernier recalls how handling such marginalised films taught him a lot about the need to preserve nitrate films. But he also recalls the pride the trio took in unearthing obscure titles and in rediscovering Edmond T. Gréville, who worked in both France and Britain.

In Remous (1934), Gréville explored sexual impotency after athlete Maurice Maillot is injured in a car crash and wife Jeanne Boitel drives him to suicide by ogling other men. During one kiss sequence, Gréville resorts to almost avant-garde fast cutting to convey the unleashed passions. In Menaces (1939), he considered the threat posed by Hitler in a story set in a hotel for refugees, with a shot of faces peering accusingly through the clear squares of a glass door being matched by the Janus mask worn by the mysterious Erich von Stroheim, who is torn between peace and war. Unsurprisingly, the film was banned during the Occupation. But when Gréville came to film an epilogue after the Liberation, stars like Ginette Leclerc and Jean Galland had been interned for collaborating with the Nazi film company, Continental (which was the subject of Tavernier's fine 2001 film, Laissez Passer) and he had to use lookalikes.

Gréville produced another brooding study of sexual frustration in Le Diable souffle (1947), which saw cinematographer Henri Alekan make fine use of the Rhône countryside, as Charles Vanel and Spanish fugitive Jean Chevrier fight over Héléna Bossis. We also get a clip from one of Gréville's undervalued British films, Noose (1948), which has a palpable sense of noir menace. However, he died young and the ciné-club contributed towards the cost of his funeral. René Clair (who had directed Sous les toits de Paris, 1929) wrote a letter in praise of Gréville and Tavernier subsequently helped to publish the novel he had written at 19 and his memoirs.

Taking the sophistication level up a notch, Tavernier now moves on to Jean-Pierre Melville. whose Bob le flambeur (1956) he had first saw in a cinema next to a strip club. He recalls the ease with which the opening shifted from Montmartre to Pigalle and the smooth performance of Roger Duchesne in the title role and the sexy innocence of Isabelle Corey. The same air of noirish melodrama informed Deux Hommes dans Manhattan (1959), which Tavernier reviewed with enthusiasm in L'Etrave. This led to him interviewing Melville at Studios Jenner and he remains in awe of the first director he ever met and remembers trembling in his presence.

We see clips from Le Doulos (1963), as we learn that Melville was an insomniac who used to write at night and hear that he sent a letter to Tavernier's parents informing them of his enthusiasm for cinema when offering him a job as an assistant on Léon Morin, prêtre (1961) alongside Volker Schlondörff, whose cameo as a German soldier is shown. We also hear a recording of a row between Melville and Jean-Paul Belmondo on the set of L'aîné des Ferchaux (1963), as the latter disliked the way the director threw his weight around with the crew. During the shooting of L'Armée des ombres (1969), things became so strained that Melville used assistant Georges Pellegrin to pass on instructions to Lino Ventura and his cast mates. But Melville was a meticulous craftsman and Schlondörff explains in an archive interview how he measured precisely when composing images. He also made imaginative use of the Jenner studio, with corridors, offices, staircases and doorways cropping up in various guises in his pictures.

We see clips from Le Samouraï (1967), Le Cercle rouge (1970) and Un Flic (1972), as Schlondörff recalls how literally Melville treated book adaptations and how well he paced dialogue sequences like those involving Emmanuelle Riva and Bemondo and Ventura and Simone Signoret. He was fond of depicting bars and made evocative use of mirrors and used long takes, while also borrowing elements from American noirs like André de Toth's Crime Wave (1953). However, the scene in Le Doulos involving Serge Reggiani and René Lefèvre in the attic by the railway influened Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds (2009).

According to Tavernier, Melville created his own melancholic world in which realism and melodrama overlapped like a cross between Robert Bresson and William Wyler. But his restraint in the big moments made his films seem authentic, especially as he rarely used music to counterpoint them and usually filmed them simply without directorial flourish. He might have been an awkward customer, but Melville had a singular vision and remained rigorously faithful to it Despite proving a poor assistant director, Tavernier made a better impression as a press officer for producer Georges de Beauregard's Rome-Paris Films on titles like Jacques Rozier's Adieu Philippine (1963). This job enabled him to get to know Godard and Chabrol, while also meeting idols like John Ford and promoting landmark features like Agnès Varda's Cleo de 5 à 7 (1962), which he still commends for its insights and freshness. We see clips from Chabrol's Landru (1963) and Godard's Pierrot le fou (1965), on which Tavernier got to watch Raoul Coutard in action and meet the Hollywood maverick Samuel Fuller. He also discovered the effort that composer Antoine Duhamel put into his score. Yet in order to satisfy co-producer Carlo Ponti, the music that Georges Delarue produced for Le Mépris (1963) was replaced in the Italian version by a score by Piero Piccioni.

Tavernier considers one of the best films he promoted for De Beauregard to be Pierre Schoenendorffer's Le 317ème section (1965), which is set in Indochina in the 1950s and among the most unflinchingly gruelling war films ever made. Howver, he admires Claude Sautet in the attic by the railways Classe tous risques (1960), which he ranks among the finest polar crime films. We see a clip of the street robbery with Lino Ventura before moving on to Jean-Paul Rappeneau's La Vie de château (1966) and Maurice Labro's Le Fauve est lâché (1959), which Sautet refine his writing skills. Sautet took his directorial debut from a novel by ex-crook José Giovanni (who also inspired Becker's Le Trou) and took a risk in casting comic actor Dario Moreno (known for lighter fare like John Berry's Oh! Qué mambo, 1959) and turned him into a heavy.

In particular, Tavernier praises the post office scene and the street finale and lauds Sautet's control of his story and actors in Les Choses de la vie (1970) and Max et les ferrailleurs (1971), which both featured Michel Piccoli and Romy Schneider. Tavernier explains that Sautet's scripts seemed rigidly formal, but he liked visual fluidity and also knew his music. Indeed, he co-wrote the theme for the latter with Philippe Sarde. But, at this juncture, Tavernier decides that he has reached journey's end (for now) and we leave him outside the cinema museum in Lyon discussing what native sons Auguste and Louis Lumières would have shouted to start the Cinématographe rolling for the first moving pictures in the 1890s.

This insert running alongside the closing credits could be taken as a covert advertisement for Lumière! (2016), Cannes supremo Thierry Frémaux's portmanteau of restored pioneering flickers, which Tavernier co-produced. But it seem brings proceedings back to the birthplace of both cinema and Bertrand Tavernier and beckons cinephile to embark upon their own exploration of a glorious screen tradition. Sadly, many of the titles cited here and expertly juxtaposed by editors Guy Lecorne and Marie Deroudille are not available on disc in this country and one or two remain rarities in France. But those with deep pockets will be richly rewarded by following Tavernier's 95 recommendations, as he knows his stuff and is not so hung up on trendy critical theories as to limit his selections to art cinema.

Doubtless, some will lament the absence of silent masters like Georges Méliès, Max Linder, Louis Feuillade, Louis Delluc, Germaine Dulac, Jean Epstein and Marcel L'Herbier, as well as such divisive figures as Abel Gance, Sacha Guitry and Marcel Pagnol. But it's to be hoped that they will feature in the tele-sequel, along with Jean Grémillon, Max Ophüls, Robert Bresson, Georges Franju, Jacques Tati, Alain Resnais, Louis Malle. Jacques Demy. Eric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, Maurice Pialat and Bertrand Blier. It will also be interesting to see whether Tavernier finds room for more women film-makers, as well as middlebrows like Roger Vadim and Claude Lelouch and such broad comics as Fernandel, Bourvil and Luis de Funès. Equally intriguing will be which foreign-born directors he decides to discuss and how up to date he will elect to go, as there is nothing on view here beyond the mid-1960s. However, he has done enough to earn our trust with this splendidly astute and sincerely personal introduction and leave us eagerly awaiting what will surely be his magnum opus.