Bertrand Tavernier interviewed by Barrie Pattison, first published in Film (UK) Magazine, August 1974.

There have been a lot of good Simenon film adaptations - Renoir's La Nuit de Carefour, Duvivier's  La tête d'un homme, the Albert Préjean and Gabin Maigrets. or the current batch like Granierre Deferre's La Veuve Coudec and Le Chat. What is the appeal of this story?

The thing which immediately attracts me is the line said by the cop to the clockmaker, "Your son has killed a man." It is so simple that when you read it, you never say I never thought of that. The concept at the beginning and the end are always very good. I mean they are very simple, and Simenon does one thing that helps the screenwriter. The dramatisation is not overdone. Sometimes you advance only a few steps between the beginning & the end of the story. Let's say that in most stories the people go from A to Z, but in Simenon you go from A to B, a very small way and in the genius of Simenon is how he makes that alive but at the same time very simple and rooted on the social context, which in most of his stories is very true and that is one of the reasons they have been so popular, I mean much more than the so called atmosphere - I mean fog, rain.

Decaying buildings.

Yes, that kind of stuff. I think it's first very literary and then it belongs very much to a kind of philosophy which is very much post-war, I mean 1945-6. It's the children of Camus, Gide. Gide I've always admired. To explain why I have always wanted to adapt his stories, it's Simenon's simplicity, much more than his pessimistic atmosphere.

When was this story "L'Horloger d'Everton" written?

In 54, I think. 

It wasn't about the confrontation of the left & the right?

Sylvain Rougerie & Noiret in court.

No, there was nothing political in the book. In a way, it belongs to Simenon's American period. For instance, the boy and the girl go into the farm, and they really provoke the police, a bit like some of the gangsters of the thirties. It's not said but you have to guess about how the murder was committed. We only know that they took a gun and they shot someone to steal his car. I wrote to Simenon. I had a long correspondence, and I told him that in America, if you take a gun to a car it's that you really want to kill, because it's very easy to steal a car without a gun, I mean and Simenon says yes, you are right. It was really a gesture which was planned and it was planned as a gesture of revolt and rooted in a certain American context, so I had to change it. make it more French, also the context had changed between '54 and 70 and Simenon too was influenced by Gide, by "Caves du Vatican", that kind of "Meurtre gratuit" you know.

How was your collaboration with the Aurenche and Bost writing team (Pastoral  Symphony)? 

Very good - I mean we worked together for four months. It was the same kind of relationship in the film, I mean we discovered each other. I needed someone older than me to write a few points of a man of 45, which maybe I wouldn't make as convincing. They found a few things- I think sometimes personal  because we all put personal things in the film. I put a few things.  The house with the old woman is the house where I was born. I found them very young. I mean they are people of seventy and they are some of the youngest men I ever met in my whole life.

A lot of films now look like a compromise between an imitation of a TV serial and publicity films - just a succession of fast shots and I felt that I needed scenes.

Protracted confrontations between the characters.

I wanted to respect the characters - I mean to respect the pace, to respect their rhythm of life. 

I'm interested that, when mentioning their work, you singled out Le diable au corps because your film seems to resemble it in the way situations are brought back and shown differently.

Le diable au corps - Philippe & Presle

Maybe, because Le Diable au corps was an important film - I mean to be made in that period - and I think too that that's what I like in Aureche & Bost. It's a thing too that I like in (Jacques) Prévert  - why I dedicated my film to Prévert - to have a quiet mood and a quiet pace and inside that to be aggressive  and violent. I think that's more interesting than to have blood. The thing I liked about Le diable au corps is that it was a very aggressive picture, in a way against France and in France it provoked incredible reaction with the front page headline of Le Figaro saying it was an insult to France. I mean the French Ambassador left the middle of the premiere openly, with all his family. That film shocked incredibly. I wanted that slowly and slowly the audience gets involved with (Philippe) Noiret.  For me the character of Noiret is a great hero. I mean, he is without any slogan, without anything superficial in what he does. A few journalists in France have been shocked by that and we received some letters and some very violent phone calls, very violent phone calls from unknown people.

Some of the Delannoy films have this quality - Dieu a besoin des hommes.

Yes - and in (René) Clement - Gervaise and Forbidden Games but mostly it was Autant-Lara. For Instance Traversée de Paris is an incredibly aggressive picture. It's a superb film and before Chagrin et la pitié, the only true picture made about the occupation.

One thing I noticed is that you've been careful to locate the film exactly, not in Paris either but in Lyons which is somewhere most people will not know.

Yes and, except for one or two things, which I cheated a little bit and that nobody, even the old-time Lyonaise, ever remarked, everything is true. I mean, when they walk from point to point, from street to street it's the exact  ... 

Geography! The only other film where I've noticed that is the Joseph Losey Time Without Pity. All your film was shot in real settings. How much did you set dress the rooms? 

Yes, everything was shot in real locations.  I kept a few things from the rooms in which we shot. For instance, the skull was in the room. I brought the quotation from Celine, that I'm against war because war, it takes place in the country and the country bores me to death.

The burning car under the titles contributes an effective motif. That's worth comment.

I wanted that, because in France - I don't know if it's true in England but it's so important in France. There was a line written about the riots of '68 saying that the students lost sympathy when they began to burn cars. I think it's true. I have no car, and I wanted to make an anti-car film. Yes, not anti-car  Anti... 

This infatuation with the car!

I mean the line that says you have the right to kill someone but not the right to burn his car. I think it's been said on TV ... and you cut away to the left-wing friend saying what great TV the French have.

Yes, TV and cars are the things I don't like. I don't like the "religion' around TV and cars and it is used to put people to sleep. I think the left wing on that point is very late. I mean the Communist Party, the Socialists don't take TV seriously as they should. When I see a good review of  Jeux sans fontières (It's a knockout), the kind of games quiz in (left-wing paper) Humanité, that makes me sick because these games are designed to avoid confrontation with reality,

People make film a religion, too.

Yes - but I never see people fighting over a TV serial. I've seen people fighting over films. People love films and will study film. Sometimes it's a way to wake them up. I think film is still powerful and energetic. It's contrary to what people say. It doesn't do - what do you say? 

Anaesthetise them ... Tell me a little about the crew. A few years ago every French film seemed to have a score by Michel Legrand. Now they have music by Philippe Sarde.

He's very conscious of that. He's refusing a lot of films. Last year, he did at least ten films. We had a lot of discussion about the music which was done in London, at Wembley, with very good English musicians.

Pierre William Glenn? 

He's great, Glenn. He's not only a very good lighting cameraman but he's a great operator. He did all the hand-held himself and that was done on direct sound. The sound is nearly all direct sound. I dubbed a few lines in the open market, not because it was not possible to listen but because there was so much noise that the actors spoke too loud and it became a bit emphatic. Glenn's going to do the next Costa Gavras. He did State of Siege. He did two films by Jose Giovanni, one called Aller Simple, which was quite good. He did Une belle fille comme moi. I mean he's got two Louis Delluc prizes, two Caesars - State Of Siege and mine and one film which is a candidate for the Oscar, which is not bad for a cameraman of thirty.

Jean Rochefort is not known here.

In the theatre, he's quite a star. He was, with Delphine Seyrig, one of the people who brought Pinter to France.

In film, he did Feux de la chandeleur.

The Clockmaker - Noiret & Rochfort

He played in Le grand blonde avec le chasure noir, a film by Yves Robert, and he was very good in one of his first films, which was by Jacques Deray, called Symphony pour un massacre. He's very friendly with Noiret. They lived in the same neighbourhood and they played a few films together, one being La porteuse de pain by Mauice Cloche which is an interesting film photographed by Henri Decae, in which they were two villains. They used to say there's no such fun as playing in those films. There were no problems once we began to rehearse. Everybody was laughing. I think most of the handling takes place outside the set. It's more when I went to a certain restaurant with Noiret and we began to discuss about food.

Food was very much featured.

Yes, because for me it's very important, especially in France, a lot of things take place when you eat. In many films I can see that the director knows nothing about food - not Claude Chabrol, because he is a man who knows how to eat... The only thing I shot with two cameras is the meal at the beginning. I didn't want people to re-eat things, so I made a dish which would be very easy to warm up. It was rabbit civet - rabbit in casserole with red wine sauce, onions and bacon too. - very good. They finished it all. I mean, it is very easy for a man like Noiret to play while he is eating because he knows how to eat. I think food was a kind of ritual for the film. 

The directors we've been talking about that your work reminds me of - Autant Lara, (Jacques) Becker, Clement - are not the usual popular choice.

Some people of my generation are interested in them. Pascal Thomas is interested in Becker and Lara. They are French, which is for me one very important thing. I love so much the American film that I try to make French film because I see so many people loving the American cinema and...

making imitation American films.

Yes, imitations.

Melville in many cases.

Yes, and I think that is one of the worst loves you can have in France, one of the proofs that you don't understand that cinema, because what is really great in some of the best American cinema is that it is really rooted into something that is specific, very national. I mean it's impossible to study American idealism without understanding Capra. Of course Capra is not true - millionaires changing their minds and suddenly and killing themselves and bad people becoming good. That's not true. That's a fairy tale but I belive that is a very good reflection of a certain American attitude. It fascinates me. People like Becker admired the American Cinema too. The best way to prove my love of it was to adapt that kind of quality to a French film and to make it French. That's why I admire Becker. I think Casque d'Or was one of the great masterpieces of the French cinema.

Tavernier's In the Electric Mist - Tarantino, Keitel & director.

Barie Pattison 2026