Budgets and Markets

Chapter 9 L.627

Summary

Depending on your point of view, L.627 was a work of high-minded self-indulgence or a commendably responsible social intervention by a director whose commercial and artistic credentials are beyond reproach. Either way, this was not, and was never intended to be, a commercial movie, although the distributors who paid for it on the strength of Tavernier's reputation, and who have now underwritten its losses, were almost certainly hoping otherwise.

There was no audience for the film outside Paris, despite wide international distribution and generally excellent reviews. Partly this can be attributed to the difficult subject matter of the movie. Partly it can be attributed to the fact that Tavernier made few compromises: the ...