L'HORLOGER DE SAINT-PAUL / THE CLOCKMAKER (1974)

Already established as film critic, fest organizer, historian & raconteur extraordinaire on all things cinematic, Bertrand Tavernier was 33 before he directed his first feature, this much acclaimed adaptation of a Georges Simenon novel with Philippe Noiret, in the first of eight collaborations, equally acclaimed as the distanced father of a murderer.  Though never quite as good as its rep (it’s fine as far as it goes), Tavernier only came into his own when he made a stylistic u-turn halfway thru his output, leaving French classicism for a momentum-based approach (breathless but you catch up to it*) that felt like he’d finally found the real Tavernier and could stop mimicking films admired in the past.  (This film dedicated to classic French screenwriter Jacques Prévert, ‘nuff said.)  A strange novel for Simenon, it echoes Dostoevsky, Camus and that perennial bestseller Jesus (mostly ‘The Prodigal Son’).  Tavernier moved it from America to France, specifically Lyons, where food is taken even more seriously than in Paris.  Meals suffuse nearly every scene, with Jean Rochefort, who co-stars as the detective on the murder investigation of Noiret’s estranged son, never without a meal in front of him; sometimes two since he orders for Noiret then eats off both plates.  The murder case, a murky affair,  involving his son’s new girlfriend, who Noiret had never met, and their boss at the factory, a thorough lout who’s forced himself on many a factory girl.  Yet the son insists he had other reasons for the murder; and the father, not quite sure of, nor caring what they were, decides to stand by his son without reservation.  The plainspoken appeal of the film still moving.  Look for a fabulous scene where Noiret goes into a church after the verdict.  To pray?  Or to have a look at the workings of a clock with moving figures ringing the hours.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *To see later Tavernier at his best, try the WWII story SAFE PASSAGE/’02 or WWI’s even better  CAPTAINE CONAN/’96.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/09/laissez-passer-safe-passage-2002.html