LAISSEZ-PASSER
SAFE CONDUCT |
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Director:
Bertrand Tavernier
Screenplay: Tavernier and Jean Cosmos
Cast: Jean Devaivre: Jacques Gamblin
Jean Aurenche: Denis Podalydes
Olga: Marie Gillain
Simone Devaivre: Marie Desgranges
Suzanne Raymond: Charlotte Kady
Reine Sorignal: Maria Pirarres
Awards: Best Actor (Gamblin),
Berlin Film Festival (2002).
Running time: 163 minutes
Production: France/Germany/Spain, 2002
Rating: Not rated
Gauge: 35mm, !VHS!
available instead of DVD (color)
Language: French
Distributor: Empire Pictures
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"A
rangy, irreverent, episodic odyssey through French filmmaking during
the Occupation [Safe Conduct] is one of the very best movies
ever made about the life of moviemaking... Tavernier’s exposition
is invisible, his textures evocative and unpretentious, his regard
for his characters fundamental and kind. A tense force field of moral
ambiguity surrounds every scene." Michael Atkinson, The Village
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Charting the
trajectories of two real-life figures working in the German-controlled
French film industry from 1942 to 1944, Tavernier paints a vast,
detailed canvas of a rarely portrayed aspect of the Resistance.
Offered a job as an assistant director at the German-run studio
Continental, Devaivre is faced with a dilemma. Despite his Resistance
activities, is working for the Germans tantamount to collaboration?
Ultimately he accepts the position, which allows him to feed his
family, and commits sporadic acts of sabotage on the side. At his
studio job he discovers a demi-monde of saboteurs who work to subvert
German propaganda messages. Aurenche, screenwriter and notorious
womanizer, is also wooed by Continental, but pretends to be overburdened
with other writing jobs. Remaining on the fringes of the industry,
he confines his resistance activity to the content of his scripts.
True to history, the two men cross paths but never have a significant
interaction. The narrative thus alternates between their two stories,
generating a fragmented structure that perfectly conveys the uncertainty
of the times. With 139 speaking parts and a wealth of period detail,
Tavernier fashions a fascinating and wholly convincing reflection
of a unique epoch in French history.
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| PHOTO Empire
Pictures |
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