The watchmaker of St. Paul
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The watchmaker of St. Paul |
| Original title | L'Horloger de Saint-Paul |
| Country of production | France |
| original language | French |
| Publishing year | 1974 |
| length | 105 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Bertrand Tavernier |
| script |
Georges Simenon , Pierre Bost , Jean Aurenche , Bertrand Tavernier |
| production | Raymond Danon |
| music | Philippe Sarde |
| camera | Pierre-William Glenn |
| cut | Armand Psenny |
| occupation | |
| |
The Watchmaker of St. Paul is a French crime drama directed by Bertrand Tavernier in 1974 based on the novel L'Horloger d'Everton by Georges Simenon . The film was released in French cinemas on January 16, 1974. In Germany, the film ran in June 1974 at the Berlinale and was first shown on television on April 7, 1975. The film has little plot and is more of a psychological study of a father who is confronted overnight with the fact that his son is wanted as a murderer. It is the first directorial work by lawyer and film critic Bertrand Tavernier. He later made several films with leading actor Philippe Noiret .
action
The watchmaker Descombes lives quietly with his teenage son Bernard, whom he is raising alone, in the old town area around St. Paul in Lyon . The level-headed man is totally absorbed in his job and is popular in his professional and social environment. With his friends, some of which union - left oriented and socially critical, he meets regularly to eat together, drink and discuss. He is rather reserved and apolitical. One day the police show up and take him to Inspector Guilboud. He told him that his son had shot the head of security in a factory. He asks him for help so that he will face. The watchmaker learns bit by bit that his son has a friend named Liliane who was allegedly blackmailed for theft by the security manager of the factory where she worked. She is also said to have instigated Bernard to do the crime. He realizes how little he knows about his son, and the more he learns, the more understanding he develops for what he did.
Journalists and photographers who ruthlessly demand explanations from him out of lust for sensation and even break into his apartment, harass him, to which he initially reacts helplessly and in good faith, but increasingly critical. When strangers from around the killed security guard throw in the windows of his shop with boules balls, he and a friend follow them and beat them up. The inspector doesn't leave his side either, but in the end he behaves fairly and prudently, feels sorry for his father and tries to help him. After all, there is no friendship, but something like mutual respect between the two men. Descombes investigates and learns that Madeleine Fourmet, an elderly woman who looked after Bernard as a child, knows his son better than he does. Eventually, the son and his girlfriend are arrested in northern France. He takes the train there with Guilboud, but his son doesn't want to speak to him. The arrested persons, the father and the police officers fly back to Lyon in a plane; even now the son avoids talking to the father, but allows eye contact.
Descombes hires a lawyer, with whom he does not get along: He wants to bring about mitigating circumstances for the accused and present the act in court as an emotional short-circuit act out of jealousy because of sexual assault by the victim on his girlfriend; the inspector also advises such an approach. The father rejects this, however, because his son acted for social reasons and because the victim was “a pig”, but not out of jealousy. Both defendants admit the crime and are sentenced to long prison terms (Bernard 20, Liliane 5 years). The father shows his solidarity with his son, visits him in prison and promises him that he and the parents of his pregnant girlfriend will look after the child. It remains to be seen until the end what the exact motives for the act were.
background
After two short films from 1964 and working as an assistant director and press agent, Der Uhrmacher von St. Paul Taverniers was his first film project. He was deeply moved by the novel, The Watchmaker from Everton , and he asked Georges Simenon for a film option, which the latter initially refused and only granted after Tavernier had analyzed the novel in detail in a lengthy exchange of letters. When creating the script, Tavernier relied on two experienced writers who had not been in the film business for several years: Pierre Bost and Jean Aurenche . On the one hand, he expected them to be particularly ambitious, regardless of the unsecured funding;
Tavernier made numerous adjustments to the novel, so he moved the plot from the American Everton to his hometown Lyon and also adapted the plot time to the present. The most profound change was the film's political dimension, which Simenon's novel is completely lacking. According to Tavernier, 80 percent of the finished script was based on Simenon's novel. Lucille F. Becker, on the other hand, spoke of 80 percent scenes specially designed for the film. For them, The Clockmaker of St. Paul was a good example of how far one would have to stray from Simenon's novel for a successful film adaptation. Among other things, Tavernier expanded the character of a police commissioner to a second main role and the counterpart of the watchmaker. Even the murder victim, a driver who is hardly detailed in the novel and who becomes a chance victim, has also turned into a brutal plant security manager.
With the script, Tavernier managed to win Philippe Noiret for the title role. However, financing the film turned out to be tedious and lengthy. The directorial debutant had to accept numerous rejections before he could win Raymond Danon as a producer. Shortly before shooting began, François Périer , who was slated for the second lead role, dropped out in favor of his son's film project, and Tavernier had to change the role to Jean Rochefort at short notice . For the camera, he engaged Pierre-William Glenn , who was still at the beginning of his career, for the film music Philippe Sarde , who had supported Tavernier in particular in the income-free development phase of the film.
Reviews
The Filmdienst celebrated Tavernier's film in its contemporary critics as a "Simenon adaptation that is created entirely on criticism of conditions in France towards" . The watchmaker from St. Paul remains “dialogue-oriented” and the “political argumentation rather theoretical” , but the film is “carefully staged and played” .
Awards
The film received a Silver Bear in 1974 , the Louis Delluc Prize and the Étoile de Cristal for Philippe Noiret.
Web links
- The Clockmaker of St. Paul in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Arte website about the film
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Stephen Lowentstein: Bertrand Tavernier: The Watchmaker of Saint-Paul . In: My First Movie . Pantheon, New York 2000, ISBN 0-375-42081-9 , pp. 156-170. ( Online )
- ↑ Lucille F. Becker: Georges Simenon . House, London 2006, ISBN 1-904950-34-5 , pp. 119, 123.
- ↑ Andrew Pulver: Watch and learn: Bertrand Tavernier's The Watchmaker of Saint-Paul (1974) . In: The Guardian, April 2, 2005.
- ↑ cf. Lexicon of International Films 2000/2001 (CD-ROM)