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Director Jacques Rozier, who was regarded as the last surviving member of the French New Wave, has died at the age of 96.
French media reported that a close acquaintance of the filmmaker had confirmed his death on June 2 in his native city of Paris, after a short spell in hospital.
Rozier never achieved the renown of Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, Agnès Varda, Jacques Demy, Claude Chabrol or Eric Rohmer but his work had its place in the French New Wave and pushed boundaries in ways that laid a path for filmmakers today.
After studying at the early French cinema school IDHEC, Rozier cut his directing teeth as a TV assistant, while making his own shorts including Rentrée Des Classes (1956) and Blue Jeans (1958).
The latter work played at a short film festival in the city of Tours, where it caught the attention of then-film critic Godard, who highlighted it as one of the stand-out works of the edition alongside shorts by Varda and Demy.
Rozier’s first feature Adieu Philippine premiered in the inaugural edition of Cannes Critics’ Week in 1962 alongside films such as U.S. director Rick Carrier’s Strangers In The City and I Nuovi Angeli by Italy’s Ugo Gregoretti.
Set in the summer of 1960, it revolves around a young TV assistant on the cusp of being sent to Algeria for his obligatory military service.
Deciding to make the most of his last days of freedom, he quits his job and heads to Corsica with two inseparable young female friends he recently met in Paris.
Featuring a young amateur cast scouted on the streets of Paris and characterized by an Italian neo-realist aesthetic, the film authentically captured the mood among French youth at the time.
This youthful vibe continued in his second film Du Côté d’Orouët (1971), an observational work following three young women on holiday in Brittany.
Rozier only made five features across his career but also kept busy with shorts, music videos and TV series.
One notable short is the 1964 work Paparazzi, exploring Brigitte Bardot’s relationship with the photographers trying to capture her every move during her time on the Italian island of Capri for the shoot of Godard’s classic Contempt.
It was one of the first works to explore the rise of celebrity culture and the loss of privacy that came with international stardom. It is included as a bonus on Studiocanal’s upcoming 4K restoration re-release of Contempt.
Subsequent features included The Castaways Of Turtle Island (1976), about a package holiday scheme giving tourists a Robinson Crusoe experience, and Maine Ocean, set on the train of the same name running between Paris and the port city of Saint-Nazaire. The latter film won the Jean Vigo prize in 1986.
His final film Fifi Martingale, starring Jean Lefebvre as a successful theatre director and writer who rewrite his new comedy to escape the clutches of a cabal with unexpected consequences, premiered in Venice in 2021 but never secured theatrical distribution.
Rozier’s death marks the end of an era for French cinema as foretold by his lifelong friend and supporter Godard, who died last September.
French media quoted Godard as writing in 2019: “When Agnès Varda died, I thought: the real New Wave, there’s only two of us left, me… and Jacques Rozier who started a bit before me.”
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