Jean-Charles Tacchella (born 23 September 1925) is a French screenwriter and film director. He was nominated for an

Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay The Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay is the Academy Awards, Academy Award for the best screenplay not based upon previously published material. It was created in 1940 as a separate writing award from the Academy Award for Best Story. Be ...

for his film '' Cousin Cousine'' (1975), which was also nominated for the

Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film The Academy Award for Best International Feature Film (known as Best Foreign Language Film prior to 2020) is one of the Academy Awards handed out annually by the U.S.-based Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). It is given to a ...

and which was later (1989) remade in a US version starring

Ted Danson Edward Bridge "Ted" Danson III (born December 29, 1947) is an American actor. He achieved stardom playing the lead character Sam Malone on the NBC sitcom ''Cheers'', for which he received two Primetime Emmy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards. He ...

and titled ''

Cousins Most generally, in the lineal kinship system used in the English-speaking world, a cousin is a type of familial relationship in which two relatives are two or more familial generations away from their most recent common ancestor. Commonly, ...

''.

Early career

Jean-Charles Tacchella studied in

Marseilles Marseille ( , , ; also spelled in English as Marseilles; oc, Marselha ) is the prefecture of the French department of Bouches-du-Rhône and capital of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. Situated in the camargue region of southern Franc ...

and, just after the Liberation, left for Paris with the aim of becoming a film director. He joined ''L'écran Français'' when he was nineteen where he worked with Renoir, Becker and Grémillon. While with the magazine, he wrote about filmmakers, actors, films and met

André Bazin André Bazin (; 18 April 1918 – 11 November 1958) was a renowned and influential French film critic and film theorist. Bazin started to write about film in 1943 and was a co-founder of the renowned film magazine ''Cahiers du cinéma'' in 1951, ...

Nino Frank Nino Frank (born 27 June 1904 in Barletta, Italy − Paris, 17 August 1988) was an Italian-born French film critic and writer who was most active in the 1930s and 1940s. Frank is best known for being the first film critic to use the term "film noir ...

Roger Leenhardt Roger Leenhardt (23 July 1903 – 4 December 1985) was a French writer and filmmaker. Early life Born in a bourgeois Protestant family, this brilliant student of philosophy was very soon fascinated by cinema. Through a cousin, he started working ...

, Roger Thérond and

Alexandre Astruc Alexandre Astruc (; 13 July 1923 – 19 May 2016) was a French film critic and film director. Biography Before becoming a film director he was a journalist, novelist and film critic. His contribution to the auteur theory centers on his notion o ...

. He became friends with

Erich Von Stroheim Erich Oswald Hans Carl Maria von Stroheim (born Erich Oswald Stroheim; September 22, 1885 – May 12, 1957) was an Austrian-American director, actor and producer, most noted as a film star and avant-garde, visionary director of the silent era. H ...

Anna Magnani Anna Maria Magnani (; 7 March 1908 – 26 September 1973) was an Italian actress.Obituary ''Variety'', 3 October 1973, pg. 47 She was known for her explosive acting and earthy, realistic portrayals of characters. Born in Rome, she worked her ...

Vittorio de Sica Vittorio De Sica ( , ; 7 July 1901 – 13 November 1974) was an Italian film director and actor, a leading figure in the neorealist movement. Four of the films he directed won Academy Awards: ''Sciuscià'' and ''Bicycle Thieves'' (honorary) ...

and created the monthly “Ciné Digest” with

Henri Colpi Henri Colpi (; 15 July 1921 – 14 January 2006) was a French film editor and film director. Early life Colpi graduated from the IDHEC in 1947. During 1950 to 1960, he edited films for such notable French New Wave directors as Agnès Varda and G ...

. In 1948, Tacchella, along with Bazin,

Jacques Doniol-Valcroze Jacques Doniol-Valcroze (; 15 March 1920 – 6 October 1989) was a French actor, critic, screenwriter, and director. In 1951, Doniol-Valcroze was a co-founder of the renowned film magazine ''Cahiers du cinéma'', along with André Bazin and Jo ...

, Astruc, Claude Mauriac,

René Clément René Clément (; 18 March 1913 – 17 March 1996) was a French film director and screenwriter. Life and career Clément studied architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts where he developed an interest in filmmaking. In 1936, he directed hi ...

and

Pierre Kast Pierre Kast (; 22 September 1920, Paris20 October 1984, Rome) was a French people, French screenwriter and film and television director. Biography A member of the ''Cahiers du cinéma'' in the 1950s, Kast created many short films and documentarie ...

, established Objectif 49, an avant-garde film club whose president was

Jean Cocteau Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau (, , ; 5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, designer, filmmaker, visual artist and critic. He was one of the foremost creatives of the su ...

. Objectif 49 became the birthplace of the New Wave.

Film director

Jean-Charles Tacchella has since directed eleven features, many of which have had successful international careers and been awarded prestigious prizes. They include ''Voyage to Grand Tartarie'' (1974), ''Cousin cousine'' (1975, nominated for the Oscars Césars, Silver Shell for Best Director at the 1976 San Sebastian International Film Festival), ''Le Pays bleu'' (1977), ''It's a Long Time I've Loved You'' (1979, Jury Prize at the Montreal Film Festival), ''Croque la vie'' (1981), ''Staircase C'' (1985, Prix de l'Académie française, Grand Prix at the Uppsala Film Festival), ''Travelling avant'' (1987, Best Male Newcomer for Thierry Frémont – Golden Tulip for Best Director at the Istanbul Film Festival), ''Gallant Ladies'' (Best Director, Digne Film Festival 1990), ''The Man of My Life'' (1992), ''Seven Sundays'' (1995). Tacchella is described as being "a smooth technician, Tacchella's camera work is fluid and precise". And his movie ''Traveling avant'' (1987), roughly equivalent to the American film term "Tracking Shot", is described as "a semi-autobiographical paean to his youth as a cinema fanatic and cine-club enthusiast in post-war Paris".

Cinémathèque

Tacchella was President of the

Cinémathèque Française The Cinémathèque Française (), founded in 1936, is a French non-profit film organization that holds one of the largest archives of film documents and film-related objects in the world. Based in Paris's 12th arrondissement, the archive offers ...

from 2000–2003.BFI.org
BFI Site

Selected filmography

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Tacchella, Jean-Charles 1925 births Living people French male screenwriters French screenwriters French film directors