Former film critic Bertrand Tavernier's latest, which screens at the Dryden Theatre this Friday evening, depicts an interesting period in French cinema. That statement may cause most people to assume Safe Conduct is about the much-heralded French New Wave, but this film focuses on what it was like to work in the Parisian motion picture industry during the years of German occupation.

There are two main characters in Conduct, and the most interesting is Jean Devaivre (Jacques Gamblin), a former cycling pro who reluctantly accepts an assistant director gig at Continental Films and becomes a propaganda-producing German collaborator...or is he really using his credentials (the film's title, Laissez-Passer, refers to a "safe conduct" pass that allowed Devaivre to freely roam the streets) to aid the French Resistance and stash his family safely out in the country?

On the opposite end of the spectrum is Jean Aurenche (Denis Podalydès), a stubborn screenwriter who refuses to work "with" the Germans and still finds clever ways to sneak his own anti-Nazi messages past censors and into his scripts. He's also a womanizer, constantly on the move between a married actress (Charlotte Kady), a flophouse floozy (Marie Gillain) and a contemporary in the industry (Maria Pitarresi) while living out of two shabby suitcases.

The double Silver Bear winner in Berlin features an epic-sized cast (there are as many speaking roles here as in Russian Ark) as well as a streak of dark humor which is, at times, a little off-putting. There are plenty of inside jokes for viewers intimately familiar with period French cinema (or at least that's what I've been told). The story is actually based on a book written by the real Devaivre, who collaborated with the real Aurenche, who worked with the real Tavernier when his career was getting started. Alain Choquart's camera barely stops moving, portraying both the turmoil of the time and giving Conduct a perpetual sense of urgency, which, for a film that takes nearly three hours to unspool, is both funny and irritating.

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