Jacques Rosier, who directed critically acclaimed films like Adieu Philippines and Du Coté Drouet and was considered the last, if underrated, survivor of the French New Wave. , died in Taeul village on June 2. Surmer in Southern France. he was 96 years old.
His death was announced on social media by a friend and former collaborator Michelle Belson.
When Mr. Rosier emerged as a pioneer of French cinema in the late 1950s and 1960s, in his thirties he channeled the same rebellious spirit as his New Wave contemporaries such as Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut. , the surname became a one-word symbol. The brilliance of a bold director.
These celebrities recognized him as a member of what amounted to be one of the most exclusive clubs in the history of cinema, reinventing the art form by overturning conventional notions of what cinema is. We are working together.
And he outlived them all. After the death in 2019 of another director involved in the movement, Agnès Varda, Godard said in an interview with the Swiss public broadcasting network RTS that he and Rosier are now the two real new wave directors. He said there were only people left. Mr. Godard, a longtime friend of Mr. Rosier, died last year.
“Goodbye Philippines” (1962) is Rosier’s feature debut, telling the story of a young television technician who frolicks on the beach with two teenage girls before leaving for the Algerian War.
Although the film was not commercially successful, it inspired an emerging generation of mavericks.
The movement’s bible, the French film magazine Cahier du Cinema, described the film’s female stars, Yveline Séry and Stephania Sabatini, as ” “nouvelle vague” (“New Wave”) and called the film ” New wave paradigmone that has the virtue of Jeunesse Cinema Shine with the purest brilliance. “
Notable directors Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette also subscribed to the movement, declaring Adieu Philippines a masterpiece. Truffaut wrote that the film “is New Cinema’s most obvious success, as the spontaneity that is the result of long and careful work becomes stronger”. Before it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, Godard called it “simply the best French film of recent years.”
Still, it took Rozier, a single-minded director known for his feuds with producers, to earn modest recognition across the Atlantic.when “Goodbye Philippines” It finally premiered in New York in 1973, but New York Times critic Roger Greenspan wrote in his review that it was “especially ironic”. most comfortableand arguably one of the nicest films of all new wave movies” should have “had to wait so long.”
Still, Mr. Rosier spent the next few decades mainly as a critic and Sinesto’s darling.New Yorkers called him “A strange man appeared” in a 2012 assessment by critic Richard Brody, an advocate for his work. Seeing that none of his five feature films have been released in the United States, Brody wrote that Rosier “here wins the best undistributed French director award.”
Rozier was born in Paris on November 10, 1926. After graduating from the Higher Institute of Film Studies (now La Femi) in his hometown, he worked as an assistant in television and film productions such as Jean Renoir’s 1955 musical The French Cancan. Mr. Roget went on to direct many French TV shows throughout his 1960s.
Information about his survivors was not immediately available. His ex-wife, writer and actress Michelle O’Groll, died last year, following the death in 2021 of her son Jean-Jacques Rosier, who worked as an operator on several of her father’s films.
Nine years after Adieu Philippines premiered in Cannes, Mr. Rosier went to the legendary Côte d’Azur festival to “Du Cote Drouetis a rambling comedy shot on 16mm film released in 1973. It depicts three young women from Paris spending their vacation on the west coast of France.
At over two-and-a-half hours long, “and the ultra-casual ‘Du Cote Drouet’ is what Quentin Tarantino calls quintessential.” Movie “Hangout” Australian film site Sense of Cinema took notice in 2018.
For Rozier, rambling seaside movies were common. Among them is Robinson in his 1976 comedy “Les Naufragés de l’île de la Tortue” (“The Castaways of Turtle Island”), which depicts a travel agent setting up his Crusoe-esque vacations on the Caribbean islands. or “Maine-Ocean” (“Main Ocean Express”)a 1986 road comedy about a train traveling from Paris to Saint-Nazaire on the Brittany coast.
His films include his last work, a theatrical comedy. “Fifi Martingale” In his thank you to the New Yorkers, Brody wrote that since 2001 they have been “very nervous.”
“He builds them on elaborate improvisations, constructing long scenes of ludicrous misfortunes and sultry misunderstandings,” he writes. “He treats the minutiae of everyday life as playthings of cosmic destiny and infuses them with an extraordinary bittersweet romantic energy.”
