Death of Jean-Charles Tacchella, director of “Cousin Cousin”, nominated three times for an Oscar

Author of the film cousin who triumphed in the United States and former president of the Cinémathèque française, the director Jean-Charles Tacchella died in his sleep, Thursday August 29, 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 cinephile Jean-Charles Tacchella came to Paris at the age of 19 to try his hand at film criticism. He entered The French Screena weekly newspaper created in 1945, financed by the Communist Party and press groups from the Resistance, and he soon distinguished himself there by being, with Roger Thérond (1924-2001), future editor-in-chief of Paris Matchone of the few fervent defenders of American films.

We are in the era of the Cold War, but the debate is not only ideological: Tacchella is one of those who affirm that Alfred Hitchcock has a style, an appreciation denied by his colleagues who see in the master of suspense only a money maker. In 1948, he was one of the founders of Objectif 49, a film club intended to extend the debates started in the magazines and to advocate the emergence of a new avant-garde, rather than showing films from the repertoire. With others (Jean Cocteau, André Bazin), he deplored the fact that French cinema was constrained by administrative and union regulations.

In the camp of Alexandre Astruc against that of the communist Louis Daquin, in that of André Bazin against Georges Sadoul, he rubs shoulders with Pierre Kast, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, Roger Leenhardt, all militants of this formalist renewal that he 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 in which The French Screen comes under the thumb of French lettershe founded Cinema Digesta half-popular, half-intellectual magazine whose ambition is to be able to express oneself freely. It publishes both the memories of Suzy Delair and a technical analysis by the editor Henri Colpi.

Jean-Charles Tachella began to want to move to the creative side. From 1955 to 1962, he was a screenwriter for Yves Ciampi, Christian-Jaque, Jean Dewever, Maurice Ronet, Alexandre Astruc; signed a short film in 1969; became a television serial writer, and a playwright (three of his plays were performed at the Théâtre Mouffetard).

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