A Journey through French Cinema

Veteran director Bertrand Tavernier ('Round Midnight, The Princess of Montpensier) is the perfect host for this affectionate forage into French movie history. It's no year-by-year chronicle, but rather a chance for Tavernier to reflect on the film-makers who inspired and influenced him during his youth after the Second World War, ranging from great masters like Jean Renoir (La Grande Illusion), Marcel Carné (Les Enfants du Paradis) and Jean-Pierre Melville (Le Samouraï) to lesser-known luminaries such as Jacques Becker, Claude Sautet and "prince of fringe directors" Edmond T Gréville. Succinct analysis and illuminating anecdotes from the likes of iconic superstar Jean Gabin (how his hair turned white overnight; his pointed views on Renoir) blend seamlessly with a cornucopia of wonderful clips. Surprisingly, Tavernier has less to say about the French New Wave - though Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt and Pierrot le Fou do feature - but instead enthuses at length about the pulp crime flicks of Eddie Constantine and the composers Maurice Jaubert and Joseph Kosma. It may be a long haul at over three hours, but Tavernier is charm personified as he serves up both a fine dish for cineastes and a tasty appetiser for the uninitiated.