Laissez-passer
***/****
starring Jacques Gamblin, Denis Podalydès, Charlotte Kady, Marie Desgranges
screenplay by Jean Cosmos, Bertrand Tavernier, based on the book by Jean Devaivre
directed by Bertrand Tavernier
by Walter Chaw The best didacticism is one carried by a strong sense of humanism, and Bertrand Tavernier's oft-brilliant Safe Conduct ("Laissez-passer") wears its heart on its sleeve–a few inches sometimes from where a yellow star would have been sewn in the occupied Paris where it sets its scene. There is a reason to Tavernier's rambling madness (the film clocks in at just about three hours), found in the care taken in establishing a sense of place, evoking a palpable paranoia and above all conveying a depth of humanity that encompasses the wonders of creation, kindness, good humour, and cruelty in equal measure. Based on the memoirs of director Jean Devaivre (Jacques Gamblin) and screenwriter Jean Aurenche (Denis Podalydès), the picture examines on the surface the French film industry under Nazi control but more pointedly the ways in which film often serves as the canniest vehicle for the spirit of any particular modern time. Hitting its emotional peak in a marvellous scene where Jewish screenwriter Charles Spaak (Laurent Schilling)–the co-writer of Renoir's Grand Illusion–is surreptitiously fed wine and a lobster's claw, Safe Conduct's triumph is its ability to profile the simplicity of human generosity even in the midst of unimaginably interesting times. Unfortunately, the poetry of Safe Conduct's anti-narrative approach (linking two barely-related stories together with allegory and craft), inevitably suffers from an unevenness of story and, ultimately, the realization that for as complete is our transportation into the reality of the picture (or more because of it), a scorecard and interpreter would have been helpful.
