Tavernier has since made two more films, but this initial effort is a work of assurance and ease. The Clockmaker” was produced in 1973 and Mr. The screenplay is by Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost-wro wrote the adaptation of “Le Diable au Corps” and are closely identified with the French cinema establishment of the 1940's against which the New Wave a reaction-but it is the first feature to be directed by Bertrand Tavernier, a young French critic and film scholar who belongs to the post‐NewWave generation. The film, an adaptation of the Georges Simenon novel “The Clockmaker of Everton,” is a rather startling combination of old and new talents. Michel cooperates in the police investigation, but it's as if they were searching for a stranger. He wakes up one morning to learn that the son he has raised as a companion has murdered a factory foreman, burned the man's car and run off with a young woman whose existence Michel had never been aware of. “The Clockmaker,” which opened yesterday at the Embassy 72d Street and Quad 4 Theaters, is a fine, precise, very moving account of what happens to Michel in a situation where order and accuracy have no application. Michel is not a fussy or fearful man, but to the extent that he ponders the inner workings of his life, he values order and accuracy. Yes, he supposes, he is a widower at least technically.

His wife, he says, left him many years earlier, but she is now dead. When he is asked if he is a widower he considers the question with care. He waits for the “walk” sign before crossing the street, even when there are no cars and no policemen in sight. Michel Descombes (Philippe Noiret) is a Lyons clockmaker by trade and by nature an observer of the rules.

The clockmaker of st. paul