Death of Jean-Charles Tachella, Intimate Filmmaker and Author of Cousin Cousine

Director, screenwriter and former president of the French cinema Jean-Charles Tachella died on Thursday, August 29. “sleeping”At his home in Versailles. Becoming a director late in life, he directed 11 feature films, including the most famous, Cousin, cousine (1975), for which he received an Academy Award nomination and the Louis DeLuca Prize.

Fascinated by cinematography from an early age, Jean-Charles Tachella moved to Paris at the age of 19 to become a journalist at L’Écran français. There he worked with some of the biggest names in cinema, including directors Jean Renoir, Jacques Becker and Jean Gremion. In 1948, together with André Bazin, Alexandre Astruc and René Clement, he founded the avant-garde film club Objectif 49, whose president was Jean Cocteau.

The first film… at the age of 45!

The following year allowed him to take his first steps on the set as planned. He then became a screenwriter in 1955, writing for Yves Champ (The Heroes Are Tired), Gérard Oury (Crime Does Not Pay) and Alexandre Astruc (The Long March), among others. Eager to bring his scripts to the big screen, he had to wait until he was 45 to make his first feature film, Voyage en grande Tartarie, with Jean-Luc Bidaud.

Cited for an Oscar

His next film, Comedy of Manners Cousin, CousinIt was also a surprise success on the other side of the Atlantic, where the film received three Oscar nominations in the categories of Best Foreign Language Film, Best Screenplay and Best Actress for Marie-Christine Barol. A remake, signed by Joel Schumacher, saw the light of day in 1989 with Isabella Rossellini and Ted Danson.

Intimate cinema and Maufasan

Despite this triumph, he regularly encountered difficulties in forming his next, more personal projects. After the intimate Vienna, Jean-Charles Tachela develops a work full of nuances, as in Croque la vie, a chronicle of the misery of the 70’s thirty-somethings who refuse to grow up, or in Escalier C, which tells the story of a man’s everyday life. The Paris building where the tragedy takes place.

His last feature, the ensemble Les Gens qui s’aims, which brings together Jacqueline Bisse, Richard Berry and Julie Gaye, did not meet with the audience. In the 2000s, the filmmaker devoted himself exclusively to the small screen, for which he wrote several episodes of the series Chez Maupassant and Au siècle de Maupassant.