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).
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