An attempt by Bertrand Tavernier, one of France's most respected film directors, to rehabilitate the country's wartime collaborationist cinema industry will be launched here this week in an atmosphere of scandal after an accusation of 'treachery'.
A Paris court has decided that the producers of Laissez-passer must rewrite the credits to ensure full acknowledgement is given to help from its fictionalised hero, Jean Devaivre, who claimed that Tavernier duped him for commercial reasons.
Perhaps it was asking for trouble to bill the film as a true story and risk the wrath of Devaivre, 89, a wartime director who has accused Tavernier, born in 1941, of twisting the truth. Devaivre's secret resistance activities while working for a German-run production company, Continental Films in Paris, are the subject of an autobiography to appear in March.
Devaivre, who started his career in 1942 as assistant to Michel Tourneur, is seeking damages for what amounts to alleged plagiarism, which he described as 'treachery'.
Tavernier, head of Lyon's Lumière Institute - the prestigious museum of cinema - includes the great postwar stars among his childhood heroes, despite a record of collaboration that drew in names such as Fernandel, Arletty, Maurice Chevalier, Edith Piaf and Charles Trenet without harming their peacetime popularity.
Directors such as Sacha Guitry, Tourneur and Claude Autant-Lara also survived accusations that they played into the hands of Hitler by their acceptance of German censorship and finance, and obeyed orders to boycott Jewish directors, actors and producers, who were banned from the industry.
French cinema produced some 220 films between 1940 and 1944 and the subject of collaboration has been a highly sensitive issue ever since the Liberation. But Tavernier, using the experiences of Devaivre and scriptwriter Jean Aurenche, as his inspiration for Laissez-passer , wanted to correct the image of a supine industry and show that resistance started as soon as General de Gaulle made his call for rebellion from London in June 1940.
What he did not count on was the character of Devaivre who wanted the film to be withdrawn after claiming that Tavernier 'deceived, robbed and betrayed artistic creation and my friendship for commercial reasons'.
Tavernier, who spent several years preparing the £10 million film with Devaivre's help, implied in return that the real quarrel was about money, rather than truth. The man whom he called 'my hero' had at first refused any payment, but his family later demanded both recompense and acknowledgement that the work was inspired by the autobiography.
'I am not a conspirator nor a vampire,' Tavernier said. 'I have spent my life admiring other cineastes and making their work known - Devaivre among them.'
Nonetheless, Judge Francis Delphin said that Laissez-passer , already booked as the main event of the forthcoming Berlin Festival, could not go on circuit without recognition of his contribution.
The controversy has at least revived interest in Devaivre whose career as a director petered out after two films, La Dame d'onze heures - The 11 o'clock Lady - and La Ferme des sept pêchés - The Farm of Seven Sins.
