Bertrand Tavernier: The Hollywood Interview

Filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier.

BERTRAND TAVERNIER: TAKING RABBITS OUT OF HATS
By Alex Simon

Bertrand Tavernier was bitten by the cinema bug at a tender age, falling in love with a diverse slate of films and filmmakers like Jean Renoir, Fritz Lang and Buster Keaton. Born in Lyon in 1941, Tavernier abandoned his law studies to write for the now-legendary French cinema magazine Cahiers du Cinema, which also launched auteurs like Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. Making his directing debut with The Clockmaker of Saint-Paul in 1974, Tavernier’s career has been a prolific one, with 35 films to his credit, and dozens of awards, including the Best Director prize at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival for A Sunday in the Country.


Tavernier’s latest film is the sweeping epic The Princess of Montpensier, an adaptation of a 1662 novel which was published anonymously, but later credited to French noblewoman Madame de La Fayette. Set in 1562 during the reign of Charles IX, when religious wars are tearing apart the fabric of Europe. Young Marie de Mezieres (Melanie Thierry), heiress to one of the kingdom’s greatest fortunes, loves romantic soldier Duc de Guise (Gaspard Ulliel), known in the annals of history as “Le Balafre” (“Scarface”) from the dueling souvenirs on his cheeks. To increase her family’s fortunes and prestige, however, her father has promised her to the Prince de Montpensier (Gregoire Leprince-Ringuet), whom she has never met. A violent, passionate rivalry soon erupts between the two men, with Marie’s hand as the prize. Beautifully shot, impeccably directed and designed, with a talented young cast of Europe’s best, Princess is one of the year’s cinematic highlights. Sundance Selects opens the film in New York and Los Angeles April 15, when it will simultaneously be available on Sundance Selects’ video on demand platform.

Bertrand Tavernier sat down with The Interview during a stopover in L.A. last month. Here’s what was said:

This is a beautiful and epic film. You wrote the script with Jean Cosmos even though there was already a script in place.

Bertrand Tavernier: Yes, and it wasn’t a horrible script, but the portrait of the princess was not good. The original writer described her as a femme fatale, as in film noir, and that wasn’t correct. I saw her as a victim, not as somebody who wanted to seduce the man. If I have that, I have a very ordinary character. If I have somebody who is trying to survive, who is trying to fall in love with her husband, which is not expected, but can’t help love her the man she truly loves, that is a character that is very interesting, and very complex.

You take a very feminist point-of-view with this film.

Well, I am a feminist! (laughs) That’s where I disagree with Madame de La Fayette, that love is the most inconvenient of all emotions. I found that statement terrifying.

Lambert Wilson confers with Tavernier on the Princess set.

Was it difficult finding an actress who would embody all those qualities?

Yes, because Marie had to be beautiful, she had to look good in period costume, which not everybody is. You have a great actress like Sigourney Weaver who, when she played the Queen of Spain, just didn’t look right for the period. Rarely do you find an American actor who looks correct in a (16th century) setting, whereas most British actors fit the part very easily. Cate Blanchett, in the newest Robin Hood, even in a thankless part, she’s extremely believable. But Robert De Niro in 1900 and Al Pacino in Revolution, they were so bad. They felt too contemporary to fit in. The only actors in America who could very easily fit into period films were those who did lots of westerns, like Burt Lancaster. In Il Gatopardo (The Leopard), he was the best Sicilian prince you could dream about. He didn’t look disguised in costume, so I had to find somebody who had all the colors of the part: the sensuality, but also the teenager. She’s a very young girl who likes to have fun, to flirt, behave like a young kid in school. Then in the next minute, she becomes class-conscious and aristocratic. And Melanie fit that perfectly.

Tavernier and Melaine Thierry as The Princess of Montpensier.

As a celebrated filmmaker yourself, as well as a devoted cinefile, how do you see the state of cinema today?

First, I have to be clear that I am not a cinefile anymore. Even if I gave DVDs to a few of the actors as gifts, it was for them to discover great actors and films. But when I make a film, I don’t talk about other films. I’m not a critic, or a historian. I’m a filmmaker, period. The state of cinema is such that there are moments when I’m optimistic and then equally pessimistic. When I started out, even if you had people in the business who were stupid, vulgar, cheap, they made decisions quicker, and it was a lot more fun. Now you are dealing with big corporations and you wait four months because you have committees studying your screenplay, making abstract predictions based on figures, but they never in their lives take into account the real price of filmmaking. For example, in Princess we had a ratio between a shooting schedule of eight weeks, and then what you see on the screen. Then you have the ratio between the actual cost of the film, which was about eight million Euros less than a few modern films that took place near a river outside of Paris. But never in their eyes, do they see the reality of what it takes to make a film. So it’s less exciting now. Plus there’s no room for compromise anymore. Darryl Zanuck was legendary for compromising with directors. When William Wellman brought him The Ox-Bow Incident, Zanuck said “This won’t do well for us, because it’s a bleak film about lynching, but I think it’s a great project. I’ll do it if you’ll agree to direct these three other pictures for me.” And Wellman agreed, and did the film for free! No committee. That would never happen today. But, some great films are still being made: Winter’s Bone, Frozen River, you have the Coen brothers, whose film A Serious Man was, to me, a masterpiece. Most of the popular films in Europe now are American, but American movies always dominated after World War II.

What changed in terms of films being funded nationally by the French government?

It’s not that anything shifted. The government never gave its own money to film production. It is something that goes back to 1948 which was a brilliant idea by some public servant that was put in place to fight against an American dictatorship in France. The American government said that in order to pay for the Marshall plan, after World War II, no cinema in France could play French films more than twelve weeks a year. This was a demand from the American government. When you speak about Imperialism, this is completely forgotten. So the whole profession fought back: directors, writers, actors, cameramen, and took to the streets. So we got one week more out of that: from twelve to thirteen weeks. Then they came up with the great idea to take 13% of the price of every movie ticket sold, and give it back to French productions. So that’s where the money comes from, and it’s still in effect today. So it’s not government money. In many ways, I should thank Steven Spielberg for all the money his films make in France, because he’s helped to finance my movies! (laughs) It was a very clever way to create a national act to fight against a rule that would’ve absolutely destroyed French cinema.

You’ve done a few films in English. Have you ever had the desire to make a Hollywood film?

Never. I’m a French filmmaker. I’ve done French-financed films here because the subject matter interested me, like Round Midnight. And I did In the Electric Mist because I’m absolutely passionate about the work of James Lee Burke.

You’re one of the few directors left who still uses Cinemascope.

Yes, and I use real Cinemascope, not the one you do in the lab. I love it, and never understood people who said it was only good for snakes. (laughs) It is good for epics and intimate settings. In the close-up, you still have the décor on the character. You can feel it. The character is not cut from the world. I think I’ve done about 2/3 of my films in Cinemascope. It causes more problems with the focus, but this is not my problem. It’s the problem of the focus puller. (laughs)

When you left law school and started writing for Cahiers du Cinema, had you always had a love of film or was it something you discovered at university?

Oh no, I had always loved film, and wanted to be a director from the time I was 13. I was also an avid reader and listening to a lot of music, jazz and classical. The film that made me decide I had to make movies was John Ford’s She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. I said “I want to be like John Ford. I want to film the sky. I want to film the landscape.” I love the cavalry films of John Ford. I’m moved by the music, too. Cinema is magic, it’s like taking rabbits out of hats, and Ford made us believe that you could have a ranch in Monument Valley. Nothing could grow there, but everyone still believed it! (laughs)

Tavernier's book "Amis Americains," a collection of photos, essays and interviews.

You’ve written books about many directors and their work. What would you write about if you did an autobiography?

I wouldn’t do it, first of all. I’m not so much interested in looking at my own films once they’re done, or examining the past. I remember meeting Nicholas Ray in Paris toward the end of his life. He was a very sad figure who was only looking at his old films, talking about the past and very much a prisoner of his own image, in addition to being a prisoner of drugs and other things. I remember thinking that I didn’t want to be like that when I got older. I wanted to be like Michael Powell or Andre De Toth, who were still vital and curious and seeing new films and talking about them. That’s how you stay young. (laughs)

British filmmaker Michael Powell.

Did Powell ever talk to you about his time in exile, so to speak, after the controversy of Peeping Tom?

This is interesting. I went to meet him in London and I had no idea initially of what had happened to him after 1960, when he was effectively blacklisted in the business for making this film. We spent a lot of time together, and I had no idea how broke he was. He invited me to his club, he was full of life and always very positive. It turned out that he was so poor during this time that he sometimes wasn’t even eating two meals a day. But he was hiding this very well. He was very proud, very laconic, very funny. I loved Michael. I love his films, and when I have a moment of depression, I always watch one of his films because they show such tremendous confidence in the intelligence of the audience. They are not films done by committee. I published his books in France, his autobiography, which is one of the great books ever written about filmmaking, and about life.

The first film of yours I ever saw was Coup de Torchon (aka Clean Slate), which was also how I discovered Jim Thompson, who became one of my favorite authors. Tell us how you took this very American novel, and re-set it in Colonial Africa.

In those days I felt that I hadn’t the knowledge to do an American film. I didn’t know enough about West Texas to do it there. I tried for about five years to think of a way to transpose it to France, with no luck. Then one day, I read a comparison of West Texas to Senegal, and I thought: perfect! I’ll transport it to Africa, just before the war. Jean Aurenche, the screenwriter, had worked on my three first films and had been in Africa before the war, and I wanted to use his knowledge in the script. He brought many original, great, and surreal ideas to the script. Later on, he said it was “a screenplay dictated by God. If you don’t like it, complain to Him.” (laughs)

Philippe Noiret and Tavernier on the set of Coup de Torchon, 1981.

The star of the film, Philippe Noiret, is someone you worked with several times. What was he like?

He was…I have a lot of emotion when I speak of Philippe, because he starred in my first film. He was a famous actor who said ‘yes’ to a young director with no real credits to his name. He even agreed to cut his salary in half. I asked him later, what made him stand by me in those days, and from then on. He said “I gave you my word,” and that’s the man he was. He was somebody…he had the politeness to make you feel everything was easy. He didn’t have to do what so many of those American stars do: thirty minutes of silence between takes. Philippe was making jokes, telling stories, then you said ‘action,’ and he was great. He wanted to make you believe that he knew nothing, that he was good by accident. Of course, this wasn’t true. (laughs) When he was very, very sick, he was doing a play, Love Letters. He could barely walk, but when he came out to take his bow, he was running out on to the stage. One of his co-stars said to him “Philippe, I thought you were so sick, but I can’t keep up with you when you run out on stage. What happened?” He said “Simple: here, darling, I am acting.” Then he spent his last days, on his deathbed, teaching another actor to take over his role when he was gone. That was Philippe. I absolutely adored him.

He and Isabelle Huppert played off each other beautifully. That was the first really adult role I remember seeing her in. Prior to that, she’d played Lolita-like nymphets.

Yes, exactly. And she was so funny, so sexy in that part. I think when Isabelle is funny…she is the best French actress of her generation. This year, she did two films that were really wonderful, very funny.


Was it a difficult shoot, being in rural Senegal?

No, not at all. Everyone got along well, no one was difficult. Stephane Audran was a bit shy in the beginning because she had a strange habit. She would never say her lines during rehearsal. That was the way she concentrated, and un-concentrated everyone else. So after ten rehearsals where she couldn’t remember a thing, we finally decided to shoot, and she remembered it all! (laughs) But she had to look completely lost in order to get there. It was a feast shooting that film.

Another film you did right before that was Death Watch, with Harvey Keitel and Romy Schneider.

It’s going to be re-released in the States. I’ve had two offers to buy the film. That was a film that was, I think, very much before its time about the way television manipulates the fate of people.

Yeah, in many ways it was a more serious version of The Truman Show.

Yeah, I liked that film. I like Peter Weir very much. I think he’s a very unheralded filmmaker in many ways, because all his films are so different. I think Master & Commander is the best film ever made about a ship at sea.

And Gallipoli is one of the best films about war.

Yes, absolutely. Wonderful film.

Romy Schnedier and Harvey Keitel in Death Watch, 1980.

You worked with Romy Schneider toward the end of her life. Much of her appeal came from the fact that her beauty had such a vulnerability to it, and it sounds as though she was that way in life, as well.

She always said that Death Watch was one of the happiest shoots for her, but she was very unhappy in general. Once or twice, she had a problem with Harvey, because they weren’t working in the same way. Harvey is a stunning actor, and I’m glad he’s being taken seriously, but he was sometimes a bit difficult with her. He didn’t want to rehearse, forgetting that she wasn’t working in her own language. So they fought sometimes, and then I had to referee, if you will. (laughs)


When I started film school, Round Midnight was one of the first films they showed us pre-release. I gained a lifelong love of jazz from it, and especially of Dexter Gordon’s work. How was working with Dexter?

It was incredible. Sometimes it was difficult to bring him in front of the camera, because crossing the courtyard of the studio could last one hour. (laughs) But once he was there, he was so smart, so on top of it, and so knowledgeable about the camera. I never did more than three takes with him. He was amazing. One day he didn’t show up. The next day, I wanted to kill him, but he came up to me and said “Lady Bertrand, I made a huge mistake. I knew I had to come and work, but my mind was set on going to the Turkish baths. And strangely enough, I could not change my mind.” (laughs) And what can you say to that? You cannot scream and yell, and be angry.

That was his character in the movie, too. So charming.

Yes, he had the charm, the wit, the dedication, the intelligence. I said ‘You haven’t done many films, Dexter.’ He said “Well, I was filmed when I played with Louis Armstrong, but they felt that my skin was too light, so they put Max Factor number five on me, and I was looking like Cesar Romero.” (laughs) That’s such a wonderful statement. I remember when he was questioned by American television for the release of the film. They asked him “Do you want to do another film, Dexter?” He said “Yes, but I want a part less demanding, less difficult for me. Something lighter, something easier…Hamlet?”



I would have loved to see him play Hamlet.

Wouldn’t that have been great? He called me one night, and said told me that he had a broken bridge, and he was very upset. Then he said “I just received a letter from Marlon Brando about Round Midnight.” So he read me the letter, and Brando said that after watching Dexter in Round Midnight, it was the first time in thirty years he’d learned something about acting. He says “Lady Bertrand, after such a letter, who cares about a broken bridge?” (laughs) Years later, when I was doing In the Electric Mist, John Goodman told me he almost quit acting after he saw Dexter in that film. “I thought to myself, how can I possibly call myself an actor when I see this man turn in a performance that’s so honest, so real, so organic?” I told John I was happy he abandoned that foolish idea.

Legendary French auteur Jean-Pierre Melville.

You got your start under the wing of the great Jean-Pierre Melville. What was he like?

Yes, I was a second, or third assistant on Leon Morin, Priest, a very beautiful film. Some of his films made a great impression on me, like Bob le Flambeur and Les Enfant Terribles. I went to interview him and he became my sort of godfather in film. He went to my parents to ask their permission to let me work for him in film. So I became his assistant, and it was tough. On the set, he had the greatest charm, a great raconteur. He loved to have you under his control. He would give me an appointment, and he’d show up four hours late. Then he’d arrive in his big convertible Cadillac, with electric windows, and driving through Paris telling stories about the French underground, the resistance, showing you where famous gangsters had been killed. He’d take me to dinner, take me to films, and he’d keep me up all night, because Melville could not sleep. Then on the set, he was one of those people who had to have enemies. He had to have a few people to humiliate in front of everybody. The atmosphere was very tense. The first day, for example, he’d say “I’m saying ‘Hello and good-morning’ now for the only time during the shoot. I’ve calculated that if I’m saying ‘Hello and good-morning’ to everyone every day, I’m losing the equivalent of one day’s shooting.’ He could be really tough to the point that he created an atmosphere on the set where we’d all be shaking. I felt like I did in school when I’d go to math class. I was always afraid he’d ask me to do something I couldn’t do well, and then he’d just nail you, in front of everybody. At the end of the shoot, he said “Bertrand, you will be a lousy assistant director, and I’ll have to fire you. But I think you will be a very good press agent.” So he went immediately to the film’s producer and told him that he must hire me to do the publicity for the film. So I was fired and hired on the same day. And he was right—I was a lousy assistant. (laughs)

What advice would you have for a first-time director?

Be curious. Be open-minded. Be passionate. Know the films made before you. It is vital that you know that. You will not reinvent the wheel. Some people keep trying to reinvent the wheel, unsuccessfully. Also know the world, not just the street in front of you, because that will broaden your vision. Even if directors of a certain generation were not what we’d call “film buffs,” they recognized great work from others. John Ford was not a film buff, but he admired the films of F.W. Murnau.



And he’d lived life. Ford served in the Navy. William Wellman was a decorated flying ace in WW I.

Yes, exactly. But Wellman, too, when he was seeing a good film, he knew. But Ford was marked by German expressionism. He knew there was a way of lighting that was complicated, and he used that. And Wellman, when he was invited to see Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here, (directed by Abraham Polonksy, one of the original Hollywood Ten, who was blacklisted through the ‘50s and most of the ‘60s), he said “I don’t want to see a film by that dirty Commie!” Then he went, and he found the film extraordinary. He said “This is a film I would have loved to have made.” Wellman found out that Universal wasn’t too excited about the film, so he called (MCA chief) Lew Wasserman, who’d been his agent years earlier, and told Wasserman’s secretary “Tell Mr. Wasserman that he’s an asshole! Tell him that he’s a piece of shit, if he can’t see that Willie Boy is one of the greatest films ever made, he has no taste, no intelligence, and go tell him fuck himself!” (laughs) I met Wellman once. He had the most piercing blue eyes I’d ever seen. Some of his films are stunning. Some of them are undone by bad moments of comedy, but one of his best is called Westward the Women, which is a masterpiece. There is no music during the whole film, very unusual for that period.