Bertrand Tavernier's ten best lists from Cahiers du Cinema 1961-1966

Bertrand Tavernier's tenure is usually described as being "only six months" or "when Eric Rohmer was editor" and Tavernier himself speaks of his preference for Positif which he contributed to in the same period. For the record, the on-line archive at the Cahiers credits him with 38 contributions, of which all but one are from 1961 to 1968 and it fails to reflect Tavernier's contributions to both the Dec 1962 special "New Wave" issue and the Dec 1963/Jan1964 special "American Cinema" issue. To put that number into perspective, it represents about half of Godard's 78 contributions but almost twice Chabrol's 21 contributions.
The selections in color are coded to the notes at the end.
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1961
1......Exodus (Otto Preminger)
........Elmer Gantry (Richard Brooks)
........Lola (Jacques Demy)
........Paris Belongs to Us (Jacques Rivette)
5......The Diabolical Dr. Mabuse(Fritz Lang)
........The Horse That Cried (Mark Donskoy)
7......Amazons of Rome (Vittorio Cottafavi)
8......The Bell Boy (Jerry Lewis)
9......Mask of the Demon(Mario Bava)
10.....The Time Machine (George Pal)
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1962
1......The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford)
2......The Wild River (Elia Kazan)
3......The Ladies Man (Jerry Lewis)
4......Chronicle of Flaming Years (Yuliya Solntseva)
5......Sweet Bird of Youth(Richard Brooks)
6......Hatari (Howard Hawks)
7......Education Sentimaentale (Alexander Astruc)
8......Hercules and the Conquest of Atlantis (Vittorio Cottafavi)
9......My Son, The Hero (Duccio Tessari)
10....West Side Story (Robert Wise/Jerome Robbins)
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1963
1......The Nutty Professor (Jerry Lewis)
........The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock)
3.......Adieu Philippine (Jacques Rozier)
4.......Il Sorpaso (Dino Risi)
5.......All That Heaven Allows (Douglas Sirk)
6.......Cleopatra (Joseph L. Mankieweicz)
7.......The Errand Boy(Jerry Lewis)
8.......Family Diary (Valerio Zurlini)
9.......Hands Over the City (Francesco Rosi)
10.....Raptus (Riccardo Freda)
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1964 no list selected
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1965
1.......Winter Light (Ingmar Bergman)
2.......Shock Corridor (Samuel Fuller)
3.......Black Peter (Milos Forman)
4.......317th section (Pierre Schoendoerffer)
5.......A Shot in the Dark (Blake Edwards)
6.......West of Montana (Burt Kennedy)
7.......The Collector (William Wyler)
.........Guns at Batasi (John Guillerman)
........Gun Hawk (Edward Ludwig)
........Il Magnifico Avventuriero (Riccardo Freda)
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1966
1.......The Courtship of Eddie’s Father (Vincente Minelli)
2....... Une Femme en Blanc se Révolte (ClaudeAutant-Lara)
.........Seven Women (John Ford)
4.......Young Torless (Volker Schlondorff)
.........Night Must Fall (Karel Reisz)
.........Objective 500 Million (Pierre Schlondorffer)
7.......Madimegella de Maupin (Mauro Bolognini)
8.......Harper (Jack Smight)
9.......Loves of a Blonde (Milos Forman)
10.....For a Few Dollars More (Sergio Leone)
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American films of the sound era (Dec 63-Jan 64 issue)
1......The Hanging Tree (Delmar Daves)
2......Pursued(Raoul Walsh)
3......Moonfleet (Fritz Lang)
4......Angel Face (Otto Preminger)
5......An Affair to Remember (Leo McCarey)
6......To Have and Have Not (Howard Hawks)
7......Silver Lode (Alan Dwan)
8......Singin’ in the Rain (Stanley Donen/Gene Kelly)
9......The Band Wagon (Vincente Minelli)
10.....The Searchers (John Ford)
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This film(also known as “Le Nouveau Journal d'une Femme en Blanc”), a sequel to “Le Journal d'une Femme en Blanc”which had been directed by Claude Autant-Lara and released the previous year, is an early example of an appreciation of Jean Aurenche on the part of Bertrand Tavernier. For, although the film’s page in the IMDb lists no writing, the review in the March 1966 issue of Cahiers gives sole writing credit to Aurenche who had co-written the script for the original film with René Wheeler. Since Tavernier had not contributed a list the previous year, there is no record of his reaction to the first film which was actually quite well received at Cahiers. In the “conseil de dix” feature in the May 1965 issue only one critic bulleted the first film. Jacques Rivette gave that film three stars and Eric Rohmer gave it two. The only critic to bullet “Le Journal d'une Femme en Blanc” was Positif’s Robert Benayoun. Benayoun who contributed often to Cahiers’s “conseil de dix was known for routinely bulleting Godard films and in that May 65 conseil, he bulleted “Alphaville” as well as the Autant-Lara film. He also bulleted Bergman’s “Winter Light” in that issue. Rivette and Jean-Luc Godard both selected “Le Journal d'une Femme en Blanc” for their respective ten best lists for 1965. In 1966, Cahiers was not quite as kind to the sequel, it did not collect as many stars as the original and two critics bulleted it. Robert Benayoun participated in that “conseil de dix” but he abstained on “Le nouveau journal”