Bertrand loved to write. He had to think about his Memoirs, which you have in your hands. On screen, the monumental Journey through French Cinema, this introspection conducted into his own cinephile past, took time to mature: it was nevertheless up to him to tell this story, but no doubt the pride of being in charge of it was mixed with a restraint which, contrary to appearances, was a striking trait of his character. On the other hand, he took the decision to gather his memories alone. Was it because he felt that each new film project would be a difficult struggle (like that American screenplay he had just written with Russell Banks and which he failed to edit) that this hyperactive man decided to undertake his autobiography - or, to use one of those contemporary understatements that made us both laugh, the "story of the self"? He would never have given up on making one more film, on creating once again. But since he chose to write, this text must be considered as part of his work.
Because reading the emotions of a young film buff, the beginnings of a filmmaker who will come of age, delighting in a text full of verve and life from a pure writer, seeing actors or simply fundamental figures of French cinema revived under his pen, rediscovering what the defense of authors and the fight against the colorization of works were, the commitments of artists and political disillusionments, in his way of exhuming the submerged world of France from the 1950s to the 2000s, we will only regret, despite the six hundred pages already blackened, that he could not choose to put the final point himself to a confession that we have rarely seen so intense. And once the book was closed, we would have liked to be able to tell him that among the great books written by filmmakers, he had just joined the authors he loved. (Excerpt from the foreword by Thierry Frémaux)