Lyon. Clockmaker Michel is visited in the morning by two police detectives who bring him to a place where his van was left on the road. Michel discovers that his missing son Bernard and his girlfriend Liliane are suspected of murder of factory guard Razon, setting also his car on fire. Devastated, Michel talks to Inspector Guilboud and gives interviews to reporters. Gradually, Michel hears from two women who worked in the factory that Razon caught Liliane trying to steal something, forced her to have sex with him, fired her, and that she said that to Bernard. The police catch Bernard, and even though Michel hires a lawyer to present the case as crime of passion, Bernard is sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Bertrand Tavernier's feature length debut film, "The Clockmaker", shows how this director makes movies about life, not movies about movies. Tavernier follows his characters and their little details and private lives, because he is more interested in them than the cinematic experience, which doesn't always work in some overstretched, "plain" or trivial moments, yet the viewers can almost feel and taste the lives of this milieu. This is already visible in the opening sequence: a group of men sit for a dinner at a tavern and talk about various topics, ranging from elections ("The French want Communist mayors as long as the government is right-wing!") to everyday life (the protagonist Michel, played by the excellent actor Philippe Noiret, is shown in his first scene fixing a clock on the wall in the kitchen, and then goes to eat and comments: "That's the advantage of bachelors. We can eat onions"), which feels genuine. The viewers still don't know what kind of a movie awaits them just from this opening sequence. The next morning, as two police detectives show up and inform Michel that his son murdered a man, the movie transforms into a character study about the older generation that lost touch with the new, young generation, whose radical conduct they cannot understand anymore, especially connected right after the rift of the '68 protests in France.
Tavernier is a conventional director, sometimes allowing the events to almost lead the film more than the (vague) story itself, especially since the arrest of Michel's son doesn't happen all until an hour into the film, yet he has a knack for good dialogues, mostly between Michel and the Inspector ("France is a strange country. It has 50 million people and 20 million snitches"; "I don't think anybody ever loved me that much as that little boy, even though it lasted only for a minute. I was unhappy only twice in my life. And I think I am starting to recover from this"; "We cannot even understand our own kids, let alone the other people's kids"), but also between the Inspector and the reporter, speculating about the motive for the burned car ("I wouldn't want to pronounce the word the left..." - "But you already pronounced it"). The best sequence is a suspenful one: two men randomly throw rocks and break the windows of the store, so Michael and his friend take the car, chase the two thugs, breat them up, whereas Michel even throws one of them into the river! It stands out the most because it is dynamic, and one wishes the movie had more of this, and less of overlong sequences of Michel wandering through the streets. Tavernier's characters are his main focus, though: in the end, as bad is it is that his son is arrested and awaits trial, Michel finally re-connects with him and begins talking and finding out more about him. "The Clockmaker" is a very good film, yet it is still below the status of a classic, as something is missing in Tavernier's lukewarm approach at times, which underwhelms occasionally.
Grade:+++
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