Bertrand Blier, the acclaimed director who scandalized, fascinated and entertained France in the 1970s and 1980s with his often brutal projections of French men's sexual fantasies, died on Monday at his home in Paris. He was 85 years old.
His death was confirmed by his son Léonard Blier.
For 20 years, Mr. Blier has been one of France's most decorated directors, winning the Cannes Film Festival Grand Prix and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film for his 1978 film “Handkerchief,'' the French equivalent of the Oscar. He has also won numerous Cesar Awards.
In a statement after his death, President Emmanuel Macron praised Mr. Blier (pronounced Bree-AY) as “a giant of French cinema for 50 years with a free and poignant touch.”
Mr. Blier launched the careers of men and women who would dominate French screens for decades, including Gerard Depardieu, with whom he made nine films. One of Mr. Blier's last public acts was to join others in the French film industry in defending Mr. Depardieu in the face of sexual harassment and assault accusations against him in 2023. Ta. (Mr. Macron also defended Mr. Depardieu, who is now facing criminal charges and a trial in March.)
Mr. Blier's estate is being contested on the same grounds as Mr. Depardieu. His best-known films, particularly his 1974 blockbuster Les Valseuses (Going Places), starring Mr. Depardieu, are permeated with misogyny and depictions of women as sexual objects. . Billed as a dark comedy, “Going Places'' (the French title is slang for “testicles'') was a huge success upon its release, attracting nearly 6 million viewers.
The film captures the imagination of French men and an aspect of French culture that sees women as bodies that exist to fulfill men's needs.
“Going Places'' is a road-and-buddy movie about rape, sexual assault, and accidental theft by two thugs, set against the harsh backdrop of a working-class suburb and an abandoned beach town. But it's also cloaked with an incongruous gaiety, further enhanced by the upbeat music by jazz violinist and composer Stéphane Grappelli.
The film was seen by some critics as a targeted attack on the esoteric materialism of postwar bourgeois France. Writing in The New Yorker in 1978, Pauline Kael called it “an explosively funny erotic farce, both a celebration and a satire of male daydreams.” She called it “terribly funny.”
Not everyone was amused. Demonstrations broke out in front of some movie theaters where the film was being shown, and the newspaper Le Figaro called for the screening to be banned. One particularly damning scene shows two friends sexually assaulting a nursing mother, played by Bridget Fosse, on an empty train.
When invited to appear on French television last March, Fosse refused to watch the scene again. French actress Miomiou, who stars in the film, said the filming was “humiliating”.
This film is still debated to this day. French television stations have been debating for years whether Les Valceuses should continue to be broadcast. One of the screenings scheduled for last year was canceled, and the other was scheduled to air this year, but only at a later time. Critic Caryn James rewatched the film when it was re-released in theaters in 1990 and wrote in the New York Times that the film had an “ugly atmosphere”.
“The two friends, played by Gerard Depardieu and Patrick Deware, prey on women in a cruel and derogatory way,” she wrote, adding, “The flow of women who choose to be seduced and abused by men… By creating this, the film strongly suggests the following: All women are prostitutes. ”
None of Mr. Blier's subsequent films matched the commercial success of “Valseuse,'' but many others were trafficked with similar, albeit less brutal, themes. In “Give Me Your Handkerchief,” Depardieu's character offers his depressed wife to a stranger to make her happy. She ends up sleeping with a 13 year old. In Beaupère (1981), a stepfather has an affair with his 14-year-old stepdaughter. In 1981, Times critic Janet Maslin said that while the case was “less than Nabokovian incisive,” its “exploitative aspects were also kept to a minimum.” Brier tells this story very gently. ”
“Too Beautiful for You,'' which won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival in 1989, depicts a plot twist in which Mr. Depardieu abandons his beautiful wife, played by Carole Bouquet, for a more modest secretary (Josiane Balasco). It is. “Their sex is thoroughly erotic, and Mr. Bryer records it with hot humor and truth,” Vincent Canby wrote in the Times.
By the early 1990s, Mr. Blier had largely stopped making successful films. Time seemed to have passed him by. Cahiers Du film critic Yal Sadat pointed out what he called the “paradox” of Mr. Blier's career in a retrospective on radio station France Culture this week.
“He turned French society upside down and captured the spirit of the 70s,” he said in an interview with the channel. But Sadat added: “Since then, he has been relegated to being a relic of an era, as if he were trapped in the era he so well captured.”
Bleier himself denied being a misogynist. In an interview with French television personality Thierry Hardison, he said, “The stupidest fools in my films are always the men.” In response to the suggestion that he was preoccupied with sex, he replied: Sports? There's death, there's sex, there's women. ”
In 2010, he told France Culture magazine, “I like lost people, losers,” suggesting that successful people bore him. “There needs to be some kind of violence in movies,” he says.
Bertrand Blier was born on March 14, 1939 in Boulogne-Billancourt, a suburb of Paris, the son of Bernard Blier, a well-known character actor in the French film industry, and Gisèle (Bruné) Blier, a pianist. Bertrand never earned a baccalaureate, France's ubiquitous secondary school diploma, and never went to university. He learned his craft by interacting with his father's actor friends, and by the age of 20 he was working on film sets for famous French directors.
His first film was the documentary “Hitler, Conne Pass'' (1963), which roughly translates to “Hitler, I've Never Heard of Him'' and depicts the hopes and aspirations of post-war France. This is a series of interviews with his colleagues. He went on to describe himself in the 1967 feature film “If I Was a Spy'' as a fiery man who was “handsome, seductive and very funny'' and “the most important person in my life,'' he told an interviewer. supervised his father. However, in the early 1970s, he turned to writing novels because movies didn't seem to be for him.
That novel was the basis for “Going Places,'' and Mr. Blier discovered the duo of Mr. Depardieu and Mr. Dewar, who had previously played supporting roles, and who would accompany him for the next 10 years. (Mr. Deware died by suicide in 1982 at the age of 35.)
“What I did in 'Valseuse' (French title) was despicable in its crudeness,” he once told an interviewer for the television station Ciné+. “And I loved that misbehaving side of things.”
“We were made to work together,” he told French Culture in 2010 of Mr. Depardieu.
Mr. Boulier is survived by his third wife, actress Farida Rahoazi. two daughters, Leila Brier and Beatrice Brier; son Leonard; sister Brigitte Brier; and one grandchild.
“He was never an intelligent director,” critic Sadat told France Culture this week. “He was more sensitive than anything and he was funny.”
Susan C. Beachy, Daphné Anglès, and Catherine Porter contributed to the research.
