Author of the film cousin cousin A success in the United States and former president of the Cinémathèque française, director Jean-Charles Tacchella died in his sleep on Thursday 29 August in Versailles (Yvelines), at the age of 98.
Born on September 23, 1925 in Cherbourg (Manche), son of a shipping agent of Italian origin, the film buff Jean-Charles Tacchella arrived in Paris at the age of 19 to live in film criticism. He entered The French screenweekly founded in 1945, financed by the Communist Party and press groups of the Resistance, and soon distinguished itself by being, together with Roger Thérond (1924-2001), future editor-in-chief of Paris matchone of the only fervent defenders of American cinema.
We are in the times of the Cold War, but the debate is not only ideological: Tacchella is one of those who claims that Alfred Hitchcock has a style, an assessment denied by his colleagues who only see in the master of suspense A money makerIn 1948, he was one of the founders of Objectif 49, a film club intended to continue the debates started in the magazines and to advocate the emergence of a new avant-garde, rather than screening films from the repertoire. Like others (Jean Cocteau, André Bazin), he regretted that French cinema was restricted by administrative and trade union regulations.
In the camp of Alexandre Astruc against the communist Louis Daquin, in that of André Bazin against Georges Sadoul, he rubbed shoulders with Pierre Kast, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, Roger Leenhardt, all activists of this formalist resurgence that fights The French screenWith the activists of Objectif 49, the cradle of the New Wave, he created the Festival du film maudit in Biarritz (Pyrénées-Atlantiques) in 1949, the first auteur film festival.
Listening to the movements of society
Uncomfortable in this pro-Stalinist and anti-Hollywood magazine, he was hired as a gagman by the producer Pierre Braunberger (1905-1990), and in 1949, the year The French screen comes under the government of French lettersfounded Film compendiuma half-popular, half-intellectual magazine whose ambition is to allow for free expression. It publishes both the memoirs of Suzy Delair and a technical analysis by the editor Henri Colpi.
Jean-Charles Tachella began to want to move into the creative side. From 1955 to 1962 he was a screenwriter for Yves Ciampi, Christian-Jaque, Jean Dewever, Maurice Ronet, Alexandre Astruc; he directed a short film in 1969; He became a television serialist and playwright (three of his plays were performed at the Théâtre Mouffetard).
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