Director Bertrand Blier died at 85

“A director is not an easy job: you have to be in love with actresses, play dad to actors, laugh with them… And know how to do a little cinema all the same,” he joked in November 2020. Bertrand Blier died Tuesday January 21, « peacefully at home in Paris, surrounded by his wife and children », declared his son Léonard Blier to AFP.

One of the last giants of French cinema has passed away. He knew how to invent his own cinematographic universe, wrote and directed unforgettable films for several generations, and directed the greatest actors. A great reader, he is also an informed music lover, fanatic of jazz and classical music.

A legacy of talent

In line with French cinema with unforgettable dialogues, Bertrand Blier assumes the legacy left by his father, Bernard Blier. The filmmaker grew up on film sets. He was only twenty years old when he became John Berry’s assistant for the film Things. And it was alongside great directors like Georges Lautner, Delannoy and Christian-Jaque that he gradually learned his profession.

Very quickly, Bertrand Blier distinguished himself from other members of the profession. Cynical, non-conformist and provocative, he dreams of a style that belongs only to him. Successful ambition with masterpieces like Prepare your tissues, Evening wear or Too beautiful for you. In most of his films, men are the victims of manipulative women. One more stone in the pond! Alongside his films, Bertrand Blier tried his hand, with success, at writing books (his most famous, The Valseuses will become a memorable film) and plays.

Politically incorrect

In 1974, Bertrand Blier directed The Valseusesa provocative drift, prohibited for those under 18, which revealed the director and three actors, Patrick Dewaere, Gérard Depardieu and Miou-Miou. Two young thugs «sales» and without faith or law, Jean-Claude (Gérard Depardieu) and Pierrot (Patrick Dewaere), travel across provincial France. On foot, by bike, by motorbike, hitchhiking or by car, especially in a faded green DS 21 “borrowed” to go see the sea. The story of these two “guys who have fire under their feet, who can’t sit still”, according to the director, begins in a public housing estate in Valencia.

Idle, Jean-Claude and Pierrot terrorize the inhabitants before dragging their bell bottoms on the roads of France according to their impulses and their moods. Politically incorrect, “in reaction to bourgeois cinema”Bertrand Blier hears “amuse” et “shock”. He offers Gérard Depardieu and Patrick Dewaere roles suited to them in this “French version ofA Clockwork Orange» taken from his black novel, The Valseuses (Editions Robert Laffont, 1972). Blier’s work today comes under criticism for its misogyny or the way in which it depicts male domination.

Thanks to his film Prepare your tissuesBertrand Blier is one of the rare French people to be awarded an Oscar, for Best Foreign Film received in 1979. His eleventh feature film, Too beautiful for youwhich features the Depardieu-Bouquet-Balasko trio, received five Césars: best film, best screenplay, best director, best actress (Carole Bouquet) and best editing as well as the Grand Jury Prize in Cannes.

The 1990s and 2000s were less prosperous, with the exception of Noise of ice cubes , where an alcoholic writer (Jean Dujardin) “dialogues” with his illness which takes the form of a man, played by Albert Dupontel.