Celebrated French director and screenwriter who has been known to take five years or more in between projects and who, while being a national treasure in his native land, does not seem concerned that directors less acclaimed in France have a greater international profile. Jean-Paul Rappeneau began to be a name dropped by cineastes in the U.S. only after his heralded adaptation of de Rostand's "Cyrano de Bergerac" (1990), and his "The Horseman on the Roof" (1995), which told of heroics during a cholera epidemic. Although he directed a few short films in the late 1950s, Rappeneau broke into
