Jean-Paul Rappeneau, the director of Cyrano de Bergerac, has left us

A demanding and rare artist, author of eight films in six decades, he left an indelible mark on French cinema.

Jean-Paul Rappeneau died this Tuesday at the age of 94, one of his sons announced to AFP on Wednesday.

The director is particularly known for his triumphant adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac (1990), awarded the Best Actor Prize at the Cannes Film Festival (for Gérard Depardieu), 10 Césars, the Golden Globe for best foreign language film and the Oscar for best costumes.

A filmmaker and author as meticulous as he is ambitious, he only directed eight feature films during his career. His style and his career were forged by his childhood rejection of French cinema (“Fernandel’s films for example did not interest me at all (…) it was mainly Hollywood that fascinated me and in particular Lubitsch and Hawks“) then his desire to stand out from the New Wave, in full swing when he launched into the profession:

“When I saw all these first films systematically shot in the streets of Paris, I said to myself that our common destiny was to film Rue Soufflot or Boulevard Saint Germain. It depressed me. I lived there on Boulevard Saint Germain, I saw it every day, I couldn’t dream of films happening just down the street from me! It can’t carry me that“, he declared to First in 2015 on the sidelines of the promotion of his latest film, Beautiful families.

Rappeneau made his debut as an assistant director and screenwriter in the 1950s. He for Louis Malle (Zazie in the metro, Privacy) or Philippe de Broca (The man from Rio, The Magnificent), then signed his first film with Castle life (1966), where he notably directed Catherine Deneuve and Philippe Noiret. He won the Louis-Delluc prize and already impressed the young actress whom he would meet almost ten years later on The Savage (1975).

“I remember that when I met him at the time of his first film, La Vie De Château, I found him like a bird, very graceful, explaining things and correcting himself, in a very light way… At that time I had little experience and it’s true that this film was important for me. I learned a very particular rhythm there. Jean-Paul’s cinema is very musical, basically.”

This desire to magnify rhythm reached its climax with Cyrano de Bergerac, where he transformed Edmond de Rostand’s play into an immense critical and popular success (more than 4 million admissions in France) by directing Gérard Depardieu in one of the most beautiful performances of his career. A great costume film full of lines and cult scenes which marks the history of French cinema.

Rappeneau returns 5 years later with another period film, The Hussar on the roof. The budget is enormous ( ), and the success is quite evident (2.5 million admissions in France). But this is the last time that the director will benefit from so many resources. Too intransigent, too demanding, his career was also punctuated by unfinished projects, such as Chic which was to bring together Catherine Deneuve and Isabelle Adjani in the 1980s. Deneuve confided to us, still in 2015:

“I regret that he made so few films. He should have toured more. Jean-Paul is a filmmaker who needs time, more than anyone else. He regrets it. He would like to tour more, but he can’t. He CANNOT. He also tackled projects that he developed and that he was unable to bring to fruition, notably one with me, which was called Chic and which I was to shoot with Isabelle Adjani. It was the story of a fashion editor, me, and a girl who arrived in the offices and took up all the space, Adjani. She was so endearing and vampiric that I ended up caring more about her than the newspaper. The problem is that films are expensive. Jean-Paul’s films in particular, which are long, eventful, detailed, and require many days of filming. On Chic, he didn’t see how to develop the fashion side. He didn’t know the world and the atmosphere of couture well, he didn’t know how to do it… But what would I have liked to shoot with Isabelle Adjani…”

In recent years, Rappeneau had once again tried to put together a final feature film, in vain.