When French director Bertrand Tavernier passed away recently, I was ashamed to say I’d not seen any of his movies. A number of them are on the Criterion Channel until the end of June, which gave me a timeline to at least see a few. I started with his first film, The Clockmaker Of St. Paul (1974) or The Watchmaker Of St Paul (aka L’Horloger de Saint-Paul). I saw it on a list of French neo-noir movies, but its not really neo-noir despite its attention grabbing opening with a car set on fire in the night by the train tracks. As a crime movie, based on George Simenon’s novel, it takes an oblique, side-step approach. There are two lovers on the run after a murder – but they are kept mostly off-screen. We mainly deal with a parent, a clockmaker named Michel (Philippe Noire) who seems affable and unimposing at the start, hanging out with his middle aged friends. Yet the news that his son is wanted for murder becomes an emotional journey and a character study about a father learning about his child and undergoing his own coming-of-age. Jean Rochefort plays the detective on the case and rather than an investigative procedural, we hear updates through their semi-regular conversations. Noire has immediate empathy with his hang dog expressions but its a brilliant, subtle performance, which tracks a political awakening intermixed with a deeper understanding of the crime. By the last conversation exchange of the movie, I was in tears, surprised by its culminative power. The other thing that took me by surprise with director Tavernier’s high style – the way the camera would move with energy in certain scenes, and how for a character-based drama, there is a sense of pace; you can see why he and Scorsese became friends alongside their deep love of movies. Shot in Lyons with a sense of place and residents as background extras. Available to stream on Criterion Channel until the end of June. I took a chance on it and was rewarded with the satisfying inner glow of a great movie. Recommended.
VHS Tracking 