...to the 1930s when he had worked with the likes of Jean Renoir and Marcel Carne, creating elegantly structured screen plays that were part of the famous tradition of quality. "I can't give you a New Wave screenplay," Aurenche is supposed to have told Tavernier. "I know," replied the fledgling director, "I want one of yours!"

Aurenche and Pierre Bost (another veteran recruited by Tavernier) obliged and the film was The Watchmaker of Saint-Paul (L'Horloger de Saint-Paul), the young director's first success. It still makes fascinating viewing. Aurenche and Bost adroitly use a thriller structure to explore the character of the watchmaker of the title (Phillippe Noiret) as this simple, law-abiding man comes to identify himself with his son's radicalism. Tavernier's direction may not be as stylish as in his mature work, but he rose to the challenge of this beautifully crafted screenplay and achieved the first of the series of character-driven works that have won him admirers all over the world.

As they worked together, Aurenche regaled Tavernier with stories of the old days and his adventures as a screenwriter. These, plus the book by director Jean Devaivre, are the basis for Tavernier's 2002 film Safe Conduct (Laisser-Passer), yet another overseas masterpiece ignored by Australian distributors (it was first shown here on Foxtel's World Movies).

The film cuts between the experiences of the writer Aurenche and Devaivre--then an assistant director to the great Maurice Tourneur. Tavernier and his co-writer Jean Cosmos make no attempt to create links between their two protagonists: they pass each other in corridors a couple of times, and that's it. But each man's story illuminates the film's portrayal of what it was like to work in French movies during the Occupation.

According to Tavernier, the industry acquitted itself fax better under Vichy and the Nazis than other French institutions that collaborated in the deportation of the Jews. As usual with a Tavernier film we are plunged straight into the experience, with Aurenche entertaining the actress Suzanne Raymond (Charlotte Kady) in his lodgings during an air raid; a good sport, she puts up with his providing iced champagne on a freezing night when she has asked for tea, only at the end insisting on making love when he wants to take her to a shelter: "No, no, no, no, we'll do what we came for!" This is counterpointed by scenes showing Devaivre and his wife rescuing their child from the 1940s equivalent of a daycare centre, followed by a sequence where he goes onto the set of a film where he is the assistant director.

Although portrayed in the script, it helps non-French viewers to know that Joseph Goebbels had sent an ardent Nazi, Alfred Greven, to set up Continental Films to make meaningless French movies. The irony was that Greven was actually a good producer who had very high standards. Devaivre works for Continental while doing jobs for the French Resistance, but refuses to...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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