Though I selected A Week’s Vacation for mostly mercenary reasons, it proved an appropriate artistic choice as well. And my instincts proved right: a total of 502 paying customers attended the two screenings that Sunday night! So I recouped my seed capital and the Cinematheque got a grand sendoff-with money in the bank for future shows. Since I was staking my own money on the inaugural Cinematheque screening, this “oldie” seemed the safest bet I could make. A Week’s Vacation was also French (and thus suitable for a Bastille Day screening) and, most importantly, it starred Nathalie Baye, an art-film headliner at the time (thanks mostly to 1982’s The Return of Martin Guerre). It was one of many movies on a mental list I kept of recent films that had not opened theatrically in Cleveland (hence the need for the Cinematheque). This 1980 release was five years old when we showed it.

It played on July 14, 1985, in CWRU’s Strosacker Auditorium. Tavernier was a noteworthy figure in the history of the Cinematheque-not because we played many of his 25+ features over the years (from Life and Nothing But and L.627 to Captain Conan and The French Minister) but because he directed the first film ever shown by the Cinematheque, A Week’s Vacation. French filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier died in March at age 79.

Moviemaker renoir