L'Horloger de St Paul

For his film-making debut, ex-critic Tavernier took a novel by Simenon, made the lightly polemical choice to collaborate on the screenplay with veterans Aurenche and Bost (victims of Truffaut's early New Wave ire), set the result in Lyon, and emerged with a work of old-fashioned precision that the craftsman of the title would doubtless have been proud of. Noiret is superb as the eponymous 'horloger', realigning his self-willed solitude into credible relationships with his son, on the run with girlfriend after killing a swinish security guard, and the sympathetic police inspector (Rochefort) in charge of the case; while the physical and political ambience is rendered with a classically 'invisible' aura of authenticity.