CHEZ MAX
In memoriam Max Tessier (1944 - 2025)
I first met
Max Tessier in the late 1970s in Hong Kong when I was running the Hong Kong
International Film Festival. I don’t know why but I still remember the images
of that meeting – Max looking trim and stylish with a cravat and tan jacket,
standing at a bar (I realise now that he was often in tan clothing!) We had
drinks – probably at the Furama Hotel which was opposite my office at the
time. He was an active film critic and my
aim was to get him to write about our relatively young film festival and especially
the Hong Kong film retrospectives that were a unique part of our programme. Although I knew him to be more of a Japanese
film expert, I tried to sell him on the idea of writing about Hong Kong filmmakers
such as Liu Jialiang, or more likely Li Hanxiang. But the only Hong Kong
filmmaker that he knew and was positive about was King Hu (and Michel Ciment
had written already about him in Positif following his Cannes award).
Max Tessier, Manila, 2010
I only
really appreciated the extent of his knowledge and engagement with Japanese
cinema when I later picked up a copy of “Le Cinéma Japonais au Présent 1959 –
1979” (Cinéma d’auhourd’hui). This “magazine” (it’s really more like a book) shows
the extent of Max’s pioneering work. In extended essays he covers the work of
Masumura, Oshima, Imamura, Teshigahara, Suzuki – all familiar names to us now
but not at that time, and runs down some of the principal themes that have
become standards to us now: the Tora-san series, Zatoichi films, and monster
movies. But Max’s intention was also to introduce the newer filmmakers – not
just the new wave of Oshima, but those generally unfamiliar to the West such as
Susumu Hani, Terayama Shuji, Kazuo Hara, Ogawa Shinsuke. His bio-filmographies
of contemporary Japanese filmmakers that were included at the end of the
magazine is astonishing in breadth – many of the filmmakers who later became
the subjects of retrospectives, tributes, geekdom, or “the far side of
paradise” (to use Sarris’ term) are presented here – Kinji Fukusaku, Susumu
Hani, Kurahara Koreyoshi, Okamoto Kihachi, Wakamatsu Koji among many others.
This surely must have been the first catalogue raisonné of the “new” Japanese
cinema, a kind of continuation of Donald Richie’s equally pioneering work from
the previous era. It certainly served as a reference for me, even though I was
only able to see the films in later years. Truly I learned much about this
other side of Japanese cinema through Max.
Although our
discussion at first was a little distanced (I was more into Cahiers du Cinéma
than his inclination towards Positif at the time) he warmed up when we talked
about mutual friends Mrs Kawakita (the doyenne of Japanese film ambassadors)
and her husband Nagamase, and our conversation drifted to Oshima (it was the
era of Empire of the Senses).
We met on
and off over the years. I regret not seeing him much in the 1980s especially
when he was engaged in Philippines cinema through Lino Brocka’s films. He used
to tease my curiosity by sending photos of him on set with Pierre Rissient and
Lino.
In
subsequent decades however we were in more regular communication and we would
meet in Hong Kong, Barcelona, Paris, Rotterdam, Manila, Udine and probably a
few other places on the globe. When I was ready to step down as Philippines programme
consultant for the Far East Film Festival in Udine, I recommended Max as my
replacement. In this role Max was able to work from a perspective of the past
(the golden age of Brocka, de Leon, Bernal, Chionglo and others whom he all
knew) and a nod to the future with younger upcoming filmmakers. Living in
Manila for at least half the year gave Max an in-country knowledge and
experience which proved invaluable to FEFF.
There are
many memories of Max and of his work in cinema whether in Japan or the
Philippines. But I think it’s also important to see him in the context of a
certain type of cinéphile who has had a profound effect on how we see and think
about cinema. This “group” are inveterate travelers and explorers of the
post-war era, constantly looking for what is new and different in the language
that they speak, the language of cinema. They had some connection to film
festivals and writing about films but their primacy comes from the fact that
they were there, on the ground, usually before anyone else. They were
there in countries at the beginning of burgeoning national movements in cinema.
They encouraged filmmakers in their ambitions and art, understanding them
before many others, and indeed brought international fame to some of them (in
Max’s case choosing Imamura for Cannes where he won Palme d’Or, gave the
Japanese filmmaker an international profile).
They truly
internationalized the cinema as we know it today through their curiosity and
relations that they developed. And they came from a developed aesthetic of
cinema, a cinéphilic enthusiasm which was not grounded in a particular country
or time (Max could talk about Hollywood movies stars of the past as well as
Filipino filmmakers of the present) but in the fervent pursuit of mise en scene,
the auteurist revelation and all the other compulsions that drives the
cinéphile. Not everyone agreed with them, nor did they often agree with each
other but in the end they all helped enlarge the map of cinema and create a
legacy and tradition of film scouting and talent spotting that continues to
this day.
Today when
exploration is more likely done on a computer than on the ground, they are
something of a vanishing species. Three
of them constitute something of a core continuum and they have all passed on:
Serge Daney, Pierre Rissient and Max Tessier. It’s not a grouping that they
would all agree with but, to paraphrase Groucho Marx and Woody Allen, “I would
never want to join a club that would have me as a member.”
Max, you are
now a member of the club and will be missed.
-Roger
Garcia
