'A flesh-and-blood lion of French cinema' | Peter Bradshaw on Bertrand Tavernier

The director was a prolific and legendary figure, making films in a dizzying range of genres from crime to sci-fi, satire to jazz

If any film-maker was a living, breathing, flesh-and-blood icon of French cinema, it was Bertrand Tavernier, the legendary, prolific director and a proud son of Lyon - which was itself arguably the historical epicentre of cinema, as the city where Auguste and Louis Lumiere set up business. In 2017, I went to the Lumiere festival in that city, and was briefly introduced to him there. Tavernier's presence was indispensable: I have a photograph of a raucous dinner hosted by Thierry Fremaux with Benicio del Toro and Alfonso Cuaron, and Tavernier is an impish, grinning figure to be glimpsed in the mirror, loved by everyone there, a sprightly tutelary deity.

Related: Bertrand Tavernier, veteran French director of Round Midnight, dies aged 79