In 2016 the Cohen Media Group released My Journey Through French Cinema, written and directed by Bertrand Tavernier. It was not a traditional survey of French Cinema but a much more idiosyncratic and personal look at favorite films and directors from France in the eyes of Tavernier. In this way, it seemed inspired by Martin Scorsese’s 1999 documentary on Italian cinema, My Voyage to Italy, which shined a light on forgotten and underrated movies that deserved re-evaluation. Tavernier certainly covered some landmarks of French cinema in his overview but he also devoted time to specific directors like Jacques Becker and Jean-Pierre Melville while including favorite film composers and cinematographers as well. Some of Tavernier’s choice were fascinating obscurities and others were grade-B genre films that were so stylish and well-made that they served as superior examples of their craft such as Edmond T. Greville’s Le Diable Souffle aka Woman of Evil (1947) and Gilles Grangier’s Hi-Jack Highway aka Gas-Oil (1955). I was especially intrigued by film clips from the crime thriller Ca Va Barder (1955), which was directed by blacklisted American director John Berry (it was his first credited feature in France) and starred expatriate American actor Eddie Constantine as two-fisted itinerant adventurer Johnny Jordan. His rough and tumble character is as disruptive as a bull in a china shop.
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The Naked Lens of Philippe Garrel
In 1974 very few people outside of France knew anything about Philippe Garrel, an experimental filmmaker who had first attracted attention in Parisian film circles with his 1964 fifteen minute short, Les Enfants Desaccordes (1964). Decidedly non-commercial, Garrel’s abstract, often autobiographical ruminations on disenfranchised youth and the vagaries of romantic love appealed to a fringe group of European cinephiles. But Les Hautes Solitudes, which was first screened in Paris in December 1974, raised Garrel’s profile considerably due to the film’s cast which included model/actress/singer Nico (formerly of The Velvet Underground) and current companion of Garrel, French stage and screen star Laurent Terzieff, the stunning Tina Aumont (daughter of Maria Montez and Jean-Pierre Aumont and, most notably, American actress Jean Seberg, who had reinvented her screen career in France with Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (1960). Continue reading
Norman Lloyd: Hollywood’s Long Distance Runner, Part 1
On November 8, 2017 Norman Lloyd will be 203 and he shows no signs of slowing down. In recent years, he has become the go-to historian for the American film industry’s golden era due to his friendship and working relationships with such cinema legends as Charlie Chaplin, Jean Renoir, Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, John Garfield, Bernard Herrmann, John Houseman, Joseph Losey and others. Lloyd also continues to take acting roles (he has a nice cameo in the 2015 Judd Apatow comedy Trainwreck starring Amy Schumer) and appear as an interviewee in documentaries such as Marsha Hunt’s Sweet Adversity (2015) and Broadway: Beyond the Golden Age, which is currently in post-production.
*This is a revised and updated version of the original interview which was recorded in March 2010 just prior to Lloyd’s appearance at the first Turner Classic Movies Classic Film Festival. Continue reading


