Abstract
Safe Conduct (Laissez-passer), dedicated to all those who lived through the occupation, opens with an RAF bombing raid on Boulogne, where Jean Devaivre and his wife, Simone, are rushing to a nursery to collect their son. It is 3 March 1942 and Tavernier sets this opening within the French context: occupied by the Germans and bombed by the British. The film is based on the memoirs of Jean Devaivre1 (played in the film by Jacques Gamblin) and on the book by Jean Aurenche (Denis Podalydes).2 Tavernier’s movie is a chronicle of the French film industry during the German Occupation of France, and Tavernier depicts the slow but inevitable fall of the French movie industry into the German net and the everyday consequences for French filmmakers.
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Notes and References
Jean Devaivre, Action. Mémoires 1930–1970 (Saint-Amand-Montrond: Nicolas Philippe, 2002).
Jean Aurenche, La Suite à l’écran. Entretiens avec Anne et Alain Riou (Paris: Institut Lumière/Actes Sud, 2002): p. 109.
Christian Delage, «L’autre combat perdu: la bataille des images», in Tendres ennemis: Cent ans de cinéma entre la France et l’Allemagne (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1991): p. 231.
Jacques Siclier, La France de Pétain et son cinéma (Paris: Henry Veyrier, 1981), Rééd. Ramsay Poche Cinéma, 1990: pp. 17–18.
Alain Pinel and Philippe Braud, Une police de Vichy: Les Groupes Mobiles de Réserve (1941–1944) (Paris, L’Harmattan, Collection: Sécurité et Société, 2004);
Raphaël Delpard, Aux ordres de Vichy: Enquête sur la police française et la déportation (Paris: Michel Lafont, 2006).
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© 2007 Diane Afoumado
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Afoumado, D. (2007). Safe Conduct: A Tribute to The French Film Industry During the Second World War. In: Paris, M. (eds) Repicturing the Second World War. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230592582_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230592582_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-28081-0
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-59258-2
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