Jean Yatove

Composer Jean Yatove and iconic French screen comedian Jacques Tati first worked together on the 1936 short "Soigne ton gauche." They reunited a decade later for "L'École des facteurs," which Tati expanded into the comedy classic "Jour de f'te," which Yatove again scored. The jaunty mix of accordion and strings greatly enhanced the film's essential Frenchness. But Yatove never wrote for Tati again, as he turned to Polish-born jazz composer Alain Romans, with whom Yatove had worked on "Les Amants maudits," a 1952 melodrama directed by his longest-standing collaborator, Willy Rozier. Yatove scored 22 pictures by the maverick Rozier between 1934 and 1976 that included a trio of crime comedies with Tony Wright playing the hapless shamus Slim Callaghan. However, their most celebrated teamings came on Brigitte Bardot's second feature, "The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter" (which spawned a soundtrack album entitled "The Girl in the Bikini," which became a collector's item), and "56, Rue Pigalle," a 1949 film noir that infamously led to Rozier fighting a sword duel with critic François Chalais. A competent craftsman, Yatove mostly teamed with minor talents like René Jayet and Georges Péclet. But he did score the dramas "Marie-Octobre" and "Boulevard" for Julien Duvivier, a quartet of Gilles Grangier crime sagas (including the Jean Gabin vehicle "Le Désordre et la nuit") and a couple of comedy thrillers for Georges Lautner, starring Paul Meurisse as the cop nicknamed The Monocle.