Safe Conduct

Customer Reviews:

Acts of resistance.......2007-08-19

Laissez-Passer aka Safe Conduct is at times almost like Day For Night Goes to War - richly ironic considering Francois Truffaut famously attacked the `Tradition of Quality' in French cinema that screenwriters Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost represented since both are characters in Bertrand Tavernier's lengthy but entertaining wartime comic drama that defends that very tradition of cinematic craftsmanship and professionalism. Indeed, the film is based on anecdotes that Aurenche (Denis Podalydès), who wrote several of Tavernier's early successes such as The Watchmaker of Saint-Paul and Coup de Torchon/Clean Slate, and director Jean-Devaivre (Jacques Gamblin) told about their wartime experiences at German-owned producers Continental Films during the Occupation.

The best-funded but most despised film company in France during the war, many of its employees would later find their careers handicapped by association (particularly Henri-Georges Clouzot, whose critique of informers Le Corbeau was widely criticised as a slur on French dignity), yet among its numbers could be found resistance workers and even Jews protected by the German management who prided themselves on making the best films. While Continental was few French filmmakers first choice, Tavernier shows how many would slyly insert subversive messages into the films while juggling with increasingly absurd practical limitations - not only did they have to limit the length of shots because they could only get short ends of film to use or deal with constant power cuts but often didn't even have enough wood to build the sets because the studio sold their allocation for coffins for the Eastern Front. The company even rented out office space to the Gestapo to earn a few extra Francs.

Rather than opt for a relentlessly grim view of the Occupation, Tavernier instead focuses on the absurdity of the situation. Much of the strength of the film comes from the way it shows how people adapted their everyday life to an increasingly askew way of life, where bad actors get bit parts in exchange for black market food, extras eat fake stage food because they are so hungry and you can come home one day to find an anti-aircraft gun has suddenly appeared on your apartment roof and keeps on waking the baby. Even the great and the good of French cinema fall in and out of favour in these times just as easily as the obscure: the screenwriter of La Grande Illusion, let out of jail during the day to rewrite a script on the set, writes food into every scene because he's been starved in solitary confinement for two months, while Jean-Devaivre's interrogation by British officers during a surreal and unplanned trip to England suddenly warms up when the subject of Maigret and Harry Baur (himself tortured to death by the Gestapo) comes up in the conversation. Yet it's not unaware that events often took a darker turn, as an early air-raid threatening a children's ward, a collaborator interrupting a dinner party to beat up a tramp in the street below and one striking moment singling out an extra in a forgotten movie on television powerfully bring home.

Fans of classic French cinema will have a field day with the many references - particularly Douce, Le Corbeau, Au Bonheur des Dames and La Main du Diable as well as figures like Maurice Tourneur, Claude-Autant-Lara, Michel Simon and Charles Spaak - but they're not essential to enjoying the film. As always with Tavernier, people come first. Tavernier is a director who genuinely seems to like his characters, even (and sometimes especially) the flawed ones, and his habit of providing reasons for doing what they do made this film in particular an easy target for some who saw it as excusing wartime collaboration. Yet the film shows the issue as at once both more mundane and complex than a simple issue of them and us, with even the communist resistance who urge members to infiltrate Continental later turning on them as policy changes. But in their very different ways the two main characters DO resist, and each in a manner appropriate to their character. The writer Aurenche resists through the language of his scripts, while the assistant director Devaivre resists with practical actions, in a way representing how it was possible to covertly resist with thoughts as well as deeds.

It's slightly problematic at times that the two main characters never really meet, with Aurenche increasingly sidelined as the film concentrates on Jean-Devaivre's attempts to juggle his resistance activities with his work as an assistant director, but it's a problem you notice more after the film than during it. Chances are you'll be enjoying yourself too much watching it.

Whereas Artificial Eye's UK PAL DVD includes an excellent 45-minute interview with Tavernier on the background to the film and its real-life characters and the unsubtitled French 2-DVD set includes plentiful extras including deleted scenes, Region 1 customers sadly have to make do with just the film itself.

Making movies in Nazi-occupied Paris . . ........2007-07-31

This long and rambling - though fast-paced - film is loosely based on the memoirs of two French filmmakers, who worked in the movie industry during the Nazi occupation of France in the 1940s. Jean Devaivre is a serious-minded, striving young director who agrees to assistant direct for a German-run studio, while working also in the Resistance. The other, Jean Aurenche, is a hyperactive screenwriter, juggling writing assignments and relationships with several women while living out of suitcases. The film toggles back and forth between their two storylines, introducing a broad cast of other characters who pass in and out of their lives.

The mood of the film shifts between anxiety, sorrow, and farce, reflecting the director's belief (as explained in a DVD extra) that a single point of view doesn't adequately represent the experience of life in occupied France - at least for those not rounded up or arrested and sent off to die in the camps. And the period costuming and set design often expand the scale of the film, filling the screen (the bigger the better) and achieving a persuasive authenticity. A night-time air raid early in the opening scenes, as Paris is bombed, is heart stopping. As usual, director Tavernier isn't so much interested in a strongly plotted story as immersing us in the details of his characters' richly varied lives, making vividly real the time and place they inhabit.

Fantastic!!!.......2007-06-23

This true story is spectacular! French filmmakers struggle to hold onto their creativity, protect their loved ones and cling to their sanity during the occupation of the Nazi German soldiers. Jean Devaivre is an assistant director who just wants the Germans out and takes great risks to try to help an underground rebel movement do just that. Jean Aurenche is a screenwriter who practically has to be hit over the head to prevent him from saying something to the Germans to get into trouble. He barely does stay out of trouble, moving often when a lunatic German soldier mistakes him for a Jew. Great screenplay and I didn't mind the subtitles at all.

Chrissy K. McVay - Author

Triumph of the Human Spirit: Artists in a Time of War.......2005-09-08

'Laissez-passer' (Safe Conduct) is an epic film not of the giant battlefield scenes type, but of the inner humanity placed in jeopardy during war times. Director Bernard Tavernier has been making important films since the 1960s and here directs a story by Jean Cosmos and Jean-Devaivre that explores the survival of writers and actors and filmmakers during the German occupation of Paris in World War II. The result is an intensely rich examination of that period of time when the French Resistance successfully and bravely struggled against the Nazi invaders: yet another result is a film that is so long that it calls for an entire evening's concentration on a story that begs to be edited.

Based on a true story of screenwriter Jean Aurenche (Denis Podalydès), firm in his conviction that he would never write in support of the Nazi regime, and director Jean Devaivre (Jacques Gamblin) who opted for complying on the surface with a film production company headed by the German occupiers while retaining his firm stance as part of the French Resistance, the story involves a large cast who portray actors, production people, friends, victims, Germans, etc and the plot is at times so convoluted that you may need to pause and backup to make sure you have not lost any important information.

The actors are outstanding and the complete production crew of this film has created a tense, atmospheric, intelligent tale that makes the audience respect even more the incredible bravery of the French Resistance movement. This is brilliant filmmaking - it just goes on a bit too long at 2 hours and 45 minutes! Grady Harp, September 05

Safe Conduct.......2005-09-06

If you like movies about movies, this one delivers the goods, and so much more. Literate and atmospheric, "Safe Conduct" portrays the many small, quiet acts of bravery undertaken throughout occupied France, weaving an inspiring story about the necessity of art, even in the midst of insanity- and also about a country occupied, but never conquered. Another Tavernier triumph.

Laissez-Passer (Original French Version with English Subtitles)

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Laissez-Passer (Original French Version with English Subtitles)
Director: Bertrand Tavernier
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B000BTK1HM

Product Description

In occupied France, German-run Continental Films calls the shots in the movie business. Assistant director and Resistance activist Jean Devaivre works for Continental, where he can get "in between the wolf's teeth and avoid being chewed up". Fast-living screenwriter Jean Aurenche uses every possible argument to avoid working for the enemy. For both, wartime is a battle for survival.

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