Passaporte para a Vida

Bertrand Tavernier is, arguably, the greatest living director of French films, and "Laissez-Passer" ("Safe Conduct") is his masterpiece. By recreating the working and personal lives of two actual French artists, screenwriter Jean Auranche and director Jean Devaivre, Tavernier provides a rich tapestry -- at once funny, tender, exciting, and moving -- of the French film industry during the darkest days of World War II. Although the studio for which Auranche and Devaivre worked was under Nazi patronage and control, almost every writer, director, and technician who made French comedies, dramas,and musicals tried to subvert Nazism by subtly incorporating themes of revolt and resistance into the films they made. Tavernier asserts this truth while he explores his heroes' real-life participation in the French underground: stealing German documents and passing these on to the Allies and finding jobs for creative, but indigent, friends. Moreover, the affection with which Auranche and Devaivre regarded the cinema talent of their days -- Pierre Fresnay, Raimu, Danielle Darrieux, Harry Baur, even the lightly satirized Fernandel -- is part of Tavernier's epic vision of the French film scene of its time. And he gives us invaluable insights into how brave people continued to work at their craft despite the poverty, hunger, and oppression they suffered daily. It's a pity that some of Tavernier's younger critics cannot appreciate either his concepts or his visually fluid and arresting style (for sheer cinematic beauty, he captures the squalor of everyday French life during the Resistance by alternating it with glowing sequences of the country's rural life). "Laissez-Passer" is faultlessly acted; seldom has such a large cast of players -- of all ages -- been in such beautiful synch with a director.

I know I must resist the temptation to comment other reviews, so I'll let the title of mine shows what lead me to react. This Tavernier's opus is one of his most achieved work. The French filmmaker (and historian and archivist of cinema) is doing a revision, for sure, and breaking some codes of the reigning (and ageing) French political correctness ; besides, it doesn't make his movie a rehabilitation of the "régime de Vichy", neither Tavernier a glorifyer of French fascism. The film is simply pointing some facts that have been seldom told about filmmaking during the German occupation of France (from June 1940 to summer 1944). Tavernier talks about passion for filmmaking and reluctance to work under German or fascist rules, about need to stay a professionnal and despair to be endangered by a war still going on and Gestapo of Milice sending their murderers even in the studios. Furthermore, Tavernier talks about the role and place of the Communist party (joining French resistance after June 41...), a place which is rarely evoked in its most unpleasant aspects, usually. Let's remember that Clouzot's "le Corbeau" was tagged a collaborationnist film, and subsequantly his author blacklisted for a year, only because HG Clouzot didn't support the Communist party linked "Comité d'épuration" in the end of 1944. This is also of what "laissez-passer" is dealling with. Of a very classic form, excellently acted, this movie has the considerable merit of revisiting a period which is remembered as well as one of the darkest in French political and social history, and paradoxically as one of the most brilliant in French cinema history. A last word on Tavernier's conceptions of social duties for an intellectual : most of his works are giving the point of view of people having to deal with real life and what they understand as their duty ; those people are shown in fictions (the policeman in "L 627", the best ever made movie on police work ; the teacher in "une semaine de vacances") or documentaries ("la guerre sans nom"). Tavernier give them a right to free speach which makes his movies sort of manifestos in defense of the Republic and democracy. For this too, he'll be remembered, as he'll be honoured for his positions (by political means or by filmmaking, as "double peine") to support immigrant workers.

This deeply humane film is the first that I, as a child of a British generation who once faced the real and imminent possibility of life under Nazi dictatorship, have ever seen that allows me to understand just what a nightmare it was, to actually live in the collaborationist state of Vichy. How could the human soul survive such radical compromises as were required of the French every day of their war-time existence? How, except by a unique form of cultural prostitution, could people negotiate for the temporary return of their own lives, which was the best accommodation for which they could hope?

Without the obvious and utterly stylized heroism beloved of the Hollywood dream-factory, and of communist ideological fantasists, alike, this film reveals and communicates more of the agony of ordinary lives under Vichy - largely through the microcosm of the 'film family' - than any other I know. The gains in such directorial and authorial humility are in the honesty this permits in the observation of the shifts people are put to to survive: Such as the dog-end scam of a floor sweeper, who encourages harried fumeurs to stub out barely-smoked cigarettes on their way to the air-raid shelter; or the retrieval of river fish, stunned by the repercussions of British bombs, detonated nearby, and their free distribution to the film crew. This process of adaptation to extreme situations comes over as deeply sympathetic. Indeed, the whole business of earning your living (for that is what it amounts to when the means of life are so scarce and so insecure) by making films to pander to your conqueror's debased notions of your culture - which films yet contrive to be, in some residual sense, an expression of your innate and irreducible Frenchness - seems to me to be all of a piece with such simple, even seedy, everyday strategies for survival, that also, and despite appearances to the contrary, permit a conquered nation to retain some semblance of its pride and integrity. Thus a captive people secretly harbours dreams of what it once was, and must be again. 'The wind must change one day' says one of the lesser characters who teem through this film.

The insistence on sheer craftsmanship as a value in itself, despite the malign vagaries of German-sourced film-stock, material, and equipment, is a most eloquent rebuttal of Truffaut's somewhat facile and intemperate post-war Cahiers du Cinema rejection of most of the ill-starred war-generation of French film-makers. The fact remains that he was the talented if disturbed son of these tragic fathers, whether he chose to acknowledge them or not. (And he did have a lurking affection for some of them - Guitry, par exemple.) Of course, his rebellion has value - as who can possibly deny who appreciates the fruits of the Nouvelle Vague? We should make the effort to understand this paternity, albeit it is one that appeared only negatively influential in terms of cinema history. Indeed, Tavernier sees that it is time that justice was done to this lost generation of film makers. Further, he divines that their metier was a microcosm of a France effectively governed by Germany.

Therefore, it is with a shock, that, towards the end of the film, we are introduced, during Devaivre's unexpected debriefing session in England, to a proud and still independent people who are clearly managing to hold their own against Hitler; a people whose straightforwardness - even bluntness - grates unavoidably against the psychologically complex reality of the Occupation, which the Frenchman despairs of communicating to them. This wonderful scene, which is full of a balanced, good-natured satire, and is reminiscent of the style of Powell and Pressburger's great wartime films, has been carefully cast with English actors, and reveals Tavernier as an artist of international stature. The complexity of the course of the obscure affairs of ordinary flawed mortals towards an illumination of all that is best about human beings is almost miraculously realised. Out of the very particular, even embarrassingly private, troubles of his country in those dark days, he has fashioned both a detailed account of the experience for his fellow-countrymen (and francophiles!), and a moving drama of the human spirit under adversity, that should rank this work amongst the greatest films of war-time.

To understand is (indeed) to forgive. This film allows us to comprehend a very dark chapter in the history of France. This is how most British people would have lived, I'm sure, if the whole of Britain had gone the way of the Channel Islands. I really don't see any reason for the French to be embarrassed by such a film: It explains them to the world, in terms of their own experience.

Clearly, collaboration was no cake-walk - more a Purgatory for an entire nation.

In 1942, in Paris, the assistant director and member of the French resistance Jean-Devaivre (Jacques Gamblin) joins the German studio Continental Films to be infiltrated and get a safe conduct. Along the years, he spies while making French movies produced by the Germans. Meanwhiile, the wolf bourgeois screenwriter Jean Aurenche (Denis Podalydès) spends his shallow life with his three lovers – the artist Suzanne Raymond (Charlotte Kady), the whore Olga (Marie Gillain) and Suzanne's friend and costumes stylist – and trying to not collaborate with the Germans with his work.

"Laissez-Passer" has a magnificent cinematography and reconstitution of occupied France, supported by top-notch performances. Unfortunately the story is tiresome, uninteresting and too long, and the subplot with Jean Aurenche goes nowhere. The narrative of the lead story with Jean-Devaivre is too cold, without any tension and could be shorter and shorter. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Passaporte Para a Vida" ("Passport for the Life")

It's really interesting that there are so few reviews on this film, as of 14.03.03! I caught it in a small University Film Theatre in Stoke-On-Trent, but surely this must have had a country wide release in France, so why not more reviews for this work from acclaimed French Film Director Bertrand Tavernier?

The film is nicely shot with an interesting story-line that looks at the lives of two men involved in the French Movie industry during the German occupation of Paris in the 40's. It has a frenetic camera style, and drops the viewer straight into the lives of the characters with no back-ground or build-up - so this, along with sub-titles (as I do not speak French), made for a bewildering first 15 minutes - however you soon adapt to this, and the lives of the two main characters are easy to follow.

There is a meandering, almost self-indulgent style to this film that made it a long 170 minutes for me. There would be lots of speedy camera moves around the great period movie set or Parisian streets, but no real point to these segments as it would not develop the story or characters. The character Jean Devaivre is always busy - so perhaps this is designed to capture some of that energy and the merciless deadlines of producing movies during this period. However, this style really grated on me after awhile and ended up being distracting, as there a very few "stationary" shots during the film.

The film explores life during extreme war-time experiences like Air-Raids, rationing, occupation, racism - and how people would deal with this. I refrain from using the term "ordinary people" as these characters (by there own admission) are French Bourgeoisie and almost exempt from the war as they are "artists". But they still feel compelled to resist in some way, and either do so by refusing to work for the German owned film company, or by aiding the French resistance where they can. Based on real events and people - this is the strongest aspect of the movie, however I felt this got lost in the meandering storyline, and blurred by the sub-plot concerning the politics of 40's film-making - with the lack of materials, writing talent and censorship. In my opinion it would have been better to concentrate on fewer aspects, had stricter editing and brought it in at 120 minutes - however that's just my view and story preference....

Aside from the above, this is a fine film and worth viewing if only to get away from the dominance of the Hollywood Movie Machine for a few hours. It will make you think, engage you and elicit some form of a reaction - as all good movie-making should.