Harockerce What a beautiful movie!

Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

dromasca Life under German occupation was a subject that was treated in the French cinema in a gradual manner, differing according to the time of the production, reflecting the process of coping with the darkest hour of the history of France that the French society when through in the last 65 years since the end of WWII. From the heroic approach of the years that followed the war, to the variety of approaches triggered by the New Wave of the 60s (including comedy) up to the more lucid and more historically and artistically true approach of the last decade. To a certain extent Bertrand Tavernier's 'Lassez-passer' closes a cycle, as it deals not only with day-to-day life but also to film making under the occupation.Based on real experiences and memoirs the stories of the two heroes work make them work both in the film industry, but they never meet in the film, or if they do this is not shown on the screen. I find the idea genial, as the ways the two work and survive the war, the ways they oppose the occupation and resist not only physically but also morally are radically different. Director Jean Devaivre (Jacques Gamblin) is marginally involved with the Resistance but works for the hated German-led film house, where artists were obliged to make films glorifying the 'friendship' with the Germans, under the control and permanent scrutiny of the occupiers. Script-writer Jean Aurenche (Denis Podalydes) seems to be more interested in women, but his scripts insert subversive lines, and his actions alleviate the sufferings of a fellow writer imprisoned by the Germans. Both decide to continue to work under censorship and brutal control, and the moral rationale of this option is the key question of the film. Should the great artists of the time (names like Jean Gabin, Darielle Darieux, Michel Simon, director Clouzot) have refused to work under occupation/ Where does the positive will and need to continue life and to help the moral of the compatriots stop and collaboration with the enemy start? It is a long film, and especially the first 30 minutes are quite confusing, letting the impression of a difficult take-off, especially for viewers who are not necessarily familiar with all the heroes members of the milieu described in the movie. It can be felt that Tavernier was in love with the subject and wanted to make the complex picture of the period as complete as possible, but avoiding simplifications needs not necessarily result in a much longer film. The viewers are however rewarded in the second part of the film with two film moments of anthology, both having Devaivre (Gamblain) as a hero - the haunting bicycle trip from Paris to the 'campagne' in order to visit his family and the even more surrealistic episode where after getting hold of some secret documents he is flew into England to be briefed by the British espionage experts. If the episodes are also true as claimed they show that life in time of war can make sometimes stories greater than the stories imagined for the big screen.

Claudio Carvalho In 1942, in Paris, the assistant director and member of the French resistance Jean-Devaivre (Jacques Gamblin) joins the German studio Continental Films to be infiltrated and get a safe conduct. Along the years, he spies while making French movies produced by the Germans. Meanwhiile, the wolf bourgeois screenwriter Jean Aurenche (Denis Podalydès) spends his shallow life with his three lovers – the artist Suzanne Raymond (Charlotte Kady), the whore Olga (Marie Gillain) and Suzanne's friend and costumes stylist – and trying to not collaborate with the Germans with his work."Laissez-Passer" has a magnificent cinematography and reconstitution of occupied France, supported by top-notch performances. Unfortunately the story is tiresome, uninteresting and too long, and the subplot with Jean Aurenche goes nowhere. The narrative of the lead story with Jean-Devaivre is too cold, without any tension and could be shorter and shorter. My vote is six.Title (Brazil): "Passaporte Para a Vida" ("Passport for the Life")

writers_reign Far and away the best of the recent spate of WW11 movies from France this is also the only one to have played in England. It is inevitable that an Englishman living in a country that was never occupied and with no real first-hand knowledge of WW11 will look at this - or any film on the same subject - with different eyes from a French viewer, especially a French viewer whose memories encompass the years in question. For me, an Englishman, who loves craftsmanship, be it French, Italian, English or American, and has only contempt for the infamous essay in which Truffaut attacked the values personified by, among others, scriptwriter Jean Aurenche, who is a character in this film, and Tavernier, who made the film, a great deal of the pleasure was in Tavernier's defence of Aurenche and the 'well-made' school of filmmaking, but over and above that what we have is almost three hourse of superb storytelling and an evocation of a turbulent time. Denis Polyades (currently on French screens in a tasty remake of The Yellow Room Mystery (Le Mystere de la chambre jaune) is excellent as Aurenche although of course I never knew Aurenche other than via his great screenplays but Tavernier did know him and so presumably guided Polyades to a true portrait. French film buffs will be well versed in the period when 'Contintental' films was active under German control and will, theoretically, share my fascination in any light from whatever quarter that can be shed on it. I saw this movie initially in a small Paris Art House where it played after its initial release and, not unexpectedly in the Latin Quartier and just down the block from the Sorbonne, there were several students in the audience - for that matter out of, at a guess, 120-150 patrons about two thirds of them were under 50 and, by definition, could have no first-hand knowledge of wartime Paris - yet the film was greeted with respect and applause. I subsequently saw it in London, subtitled and with, presumably, a predominently English audience, and it was greeted much the same way.I accept that not everyone takes the view that I do, namely, that movies, like plays, novels, or any creative form, benefit from craftsmanship and professionalism, equally not everyone will despise the Truffauts of this world who thrive on iconaclism for its own sake - ironically, as I've remarked elsewhere, Truffaut eventually began to turn out exactly the same kind of well-crafted movie on which he had poured so much vitriol - but for like-minded film buffs there is so much to delight in when master craftsmen like Tavernier (and, to a lesser ambitious extent, Francis Werber, who is single-handedly filling the void left by Billy Wilder) unveil a new film.

Didier Fort I know I must resist the temptation to comment other reviews, so I'll let the title of mine shows what lead me to react. This Tavernier's opus is one of his most achieved work. The French filmmaker (and historian and archivist of cinema) is doing a revision, for sure, and breaking some codes of the reigning (and ageing) French political correctness ; besides, it doesn't make his movie a rehabilitation of the "régime de Vichy", neither Tavernier a glorifyer of French fascism. The film is simply pointing some facts that have been seldom told about filmmaking during the German occupation of France (from June 1940 to summer 1944). Tavernier talks about passion for filmmaking and reluctance to work under German or fascist rules, about need to stay a professionnal and despair to be endangered by a war still going on and Gestapo of Milice sending their murderers even in the studios. Furthermore, Tavernier talks about the role and place of the Communist party (joining French resistance after June 41...), a place which is rarely evoked in its most unpleasant aspects, usually. Let's remember that Clouzot's "le Corbeau" was tagged a collaborationnist film, and subsequantly his author blacklisted for a year, only because HG Clouzot didn't support the Communist party linked "Comité d'épuration" in the end of 1944. This is also of what "laissez-passer" is dealling with. Of a very classic form, excellently acted, this movie has the considerable merit of revisiting a period which is remembered as well as one of the darkest in French political and social history, and paradoxically as one of the most brilliant in French cinema history. A last word on Tavernier's conceptions of social duties for an intellectual : most of his works are giving the point of view of people having to deal with real life and what they understand as their duty ; those people are shown in fictions (the policeman in "L 627", the best ever made movie on police work ; the teacher in "une semaine de vacances") or documentaries ("la guerre sans nom"). Tavernier give them a right to free speach which makes his movies sort of manifestos in defense of the Republic and democracy. For this too, he'll be remembered, as he'll be honoured for his positions (by political means or by filmmaking, as "double peine") to support immigrant workers.