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 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. Beginning with th ...

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. ...

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,

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. 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 ...

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

and created the monthly “Ciné Digest” with Henri Colpi. In 1948, Tacchella, along with Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, Astruc,

Claude Mauriac Claude Mauriac (25 April 1914 – 22 March 1996) was a French author and journalist. He was born in Paris, the eldest son of the author François Mauriac. Mauriac was the personal secretary of Charles de Gaulle from 1944 to 1949, before becoming ...

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, 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 s ...

. 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 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