Remembering Tachella, devoted disciple of The Seventh Art

Director Jean-Charles Tacchella with Marie-Christine Barrault who starred in his Cousin, Cousine Photo: UniFrance

Film director and script-writer Jean-Charles Tacchella who in the Seventies gave le cinéma français one of its greatest international hits with Cousin, Cousine with Marie-Christine Barrault, has died at home in Versaille at the age of 98, his family have announced.

He was a dedicated film buff who confided in his book Mémoires, that: “At 11 years old I saw every film that came out; at 13 I made the decision that I would devote my whole life to The Seventh Art.”

He was a discreet and elegant filmmaker whose subtle comedy of manners Cousin, Cousine proved a huge hit in the States where it was Oscar-nominated. The film dealt delicately with a pair of distant cousins who meet at a wedding and develop a friendship so deep that their spouses become suspicious. He also received the Prix Delluc for the best French film of its year - 1975. At the time he said he was delighted to be associated with Delluc whom he described as the first French film-maker to set out to make “cinéma d’auteur.” He was probably less delighted with the US remake - made in 1989 and titled Cousins withTed Danson and Isabella Rossellini.

Marie-Christine Barrault and Victor Lanoux in Cousin, Cousine, an international hit in the Seventies Photo: UniFrance

Tacchella was born in 1925 in Cherbourg where his father was an agent for a shipping company. He finished his studies in Marseille before moving to Paris after the end of the Second World War. He found gainful employment aged 19 with the film magazine L’Ecran français. His job gave him access to some of the legendary figures in cinema at the time, among them Jean Renoir, Jacques Becker and Jean Grémillon. He counted among his circle of friends André Bazin, Erich von Stroheim, Anna Magnani, and Vittorio De Sica.

With a group of friends, including René Clément and André Bazin he founded the film club Objectif 49 whose president was Jean Cocteau and which became a cradle for the birth of the New Wave.

From 1955 to 1962 he worked mainly as a script writer and signed a first draft of Gérard Oury’s hit La Grande Vadrouille. With his first short film as a director Les Derniers Hivers he won the Jean-Vigo prize in 1971. Two years later at the age of 50 he embarked on his feature film career with Voyage en Grande Tartarie with Jean-Luc Bideau.

His notable successes included: Blue Country (Le Pays Bleu) (1977, with Brigitte Fossey), Silver Anniversary (Il Y A Longtemps Que Je t'Aime) (1979, with Jean Carmet) and Croque la vie (1981, starring Carole Laure and Bernard Giraudeau). He scored considerable success in 1985 with Escalier C starring Robin Renucci and Jean-Pierre Bacri, which received two César nominations and recounted several interlinking stories of the residents of a Parisian apartment block. Two years later he made Travelling Avant, about his own adolescence and love for cinema, with Thierry Frémont, Ann-Gisel Glass and Simon La Brosse.

Tacchella was a former president of the French Cinématheque.