Claude Chabrol (1930-2010)

[kingrat]

The recent death of Claude Chabrol has made me realize how few of his films I've actually seen, around five out of 50-60 films: LE BEAU SERGE (1958) and LES COUSINS (1959), his first two films; LES BONNES FEMMES (1960), exactly 50 years old; LA FEMME INFIDELE (1969), one of his best-known films in this country, which, like several of his films, develops a triangle in the manner of Hitchcock; and the much later L'ENFER (1994).

The early New Wave successes LE BEAU SERGE and LES COUSINS seem to me closer to the British films of the early 60s than to Truffaut and Godard, though I'm not sure how much direct influence Chabrol had on those filmmakers. The late Clive Donner's NOTHING BUT THE BEST (1964) has affinities with Chabrol's view of life, and it's too bad Donner didn't do an English remake of LES COUSINS with, say, Terence Stamp, Tom Courtenay, and Julie Christie.

LES BONNES FEMMES was such a financial disaster that for several years Chabrol had to sign on for projects like--you have to love this title--MARIE-CHANTAL VS. DOCTOR KHA. However, LES BONNES FEMMES has subsequently been seen as a masterpiece by some. If you respond favorably--immediately, viscerally--to Chabrol's angle of vision in LES BONNES FEMMES, and I do, you'll like it a lot. If not, you probably won't care for it at all. The realistic interactions between the shop assistants and their behavior outside work, the more than Hitchcockian twist, the dark humor, and could those be hints of tenderness almost hidden in the darkness?

Do the rest of you have strong feelings about some of Chabrol's films? Any particular ones we should look for? I've wondered about THE CRY OF THE OWL (1987) because I admire the Patricia Highsmith novel it's based on.

[charliechaplinfan]

I have seen a couple of Chabrol's films, my favorite being Le Boucher, a strange yet compelling movie about the relationship between a teacher and the town's butcher, the butcher it turns out doesn't just butcher animals. I watched Les Biches but didn't really connect with it. I'm glad you've started the thread, I didn't feel that I knew enough about him, I'd love to hear others views.

[moirafinnie]

The first movie I remember seeing of Chabrol's was Une Affaire de Femmes (1988) with Isabelle Huppert as a working class woman in Nazi occupied France who finds a way to feed her family by renting out a room to a prostitute and later helping other women get abortions. The fact that these activities provide her children with food and clothing and her wounded veteran husband with care makes it harder to judge her actions. Part of what makes this material fascinating is that the director and the actress present this character fairly and dispassionately. Based on a true story, the woman is made an example of by the Nazis and the French. The attitudes of those accusing Huppert of various crimes are shaped by their own callousness and sexism as well as their need to distract the people from their evil and callousness on a national scale. Despite a certain revulsion for Huppert's character, her attitudes and actions are understandable thanks to the way the story is told. Marie Trintignant as a warm-hearted prostitute is one of the few characters who is truly likable.

Given my description, I would imagine most people might avoid this movie, and by the end a curious emptiness may leave a viewer wondering why it is so hard to feel something for this woman. Despite this, it was a compelling film.

[Mr. Arkadin]

I'm only acquainted with his early period, which seems almost exclusively Hitchcockian influenced, but would like to check out more of his work. He seems to use players as props in these films, in a mathematical approach (he loves geometric ideas like circular plots and trianglular relationships), manipulating the the audience with the camera, much like his hero did.

Les Bitches, The Unfaithful Wife, and Le Boucher seemed to strip away some of the excess of the earlier films and are a bit more interesting to me (Although I like the early stuff as well, and KR is right about Les Bonnes Femmes. Another great one is Landru [1962]). If you've never seen 1964's The Mute, it's quite a different tone for him, where a boy who cannot stand his parents fighting puts in a pair of earplugs, only to be deaf to his mother's cries when she falls down a flight of stairs!

The first movie I remember seeing of Chabrol's was Une Affaire de Femmes (1988) with Isabelle Huppert as a working class woman in Nazi occupied France who finds a way to feed her family by renting out a room to a prostitute and later helping other women get abortions. The fact that these activities provide her children with food and clothing and her wounded veteran husband with care makes it harder to judge her actions. Part of what makes this material fascinating is that the director and the actress present this character fairly and dispassionately. Based on a true story, the woman is made an example of by the Nazis and the French. The attitudes of those accusing Huppert of various crimes are shaped by their own callousness and sexism as well as their need to distract the people from their evil and callousness on a national scale. Despite a certain revulsion for Huppert's character, her attitudes and actions are understandable thanks to the way the story is told. Marie Trintignant as a warm-hearted prostitute is one of the few characters who is truly likable.

Given my description, I would imagine most people might avoid this movie, and by the end a curious emptiness may leave a viewer wondering why it is so hard to feel something for this woman. Despite this, it was a compelling film.

Actually, this sounds very interesting to me! Thanks for recommending it.

[MichiganJ]

Along with Chabrol's earlier films already mentioned, I would also recommend many from the 70s including Nada (1974) and Innocents with Dirty Hands (1975). Merci pour le chocolat (2000) is a pretty good representation of his later work.

While Chabrol was certainly influenced by Hitchcock in genre and plotting, I don't see much Hitchcock in Chabrol's execution or in characterization. And unlike Truffaut's Bride Wore Black, I can't recall any Chabrol film that is an out-and-out homage to Hitchcock.

I would also definitely recommend his book, Hitchcock: The First Forty-Four Films co-written by fellow future New Waver, Eric Rohmer. (I'm just finishing re-watching most of Rohmer's films--just about all of which I highly recommend.)

Sadly, the quality of the prints used in most Chabrol DVD releases are pretty poor. Stay clear of the Fox/Lorber DVDs, which have abysmal prints. The Kino and Pathfinder prints are better, but nowhere near great.

[Ann Harding]

I am personaly a great fan of Chabrol. He made some very interesting pictures through the years -as well as some turkeys.

Moira, you are right to mention Une Affaire de femmes (1988), it's one of his best. Isabelle Huppert gives a riveting performance. Actually, this actress plays in many Chabrol pictures and they are among their best pictures individually. I recommend warmly Violette Nozières (1978) where she plays also a real person. Violette Nozières is the daughter of a lower-middle-class family who tries to kill her mother and father. With such a part, she does wonder. The same with Madame Bovary (1991) where she gives her Emma all the self-loathing necessary. Again, La Cérémonie (1995) based on a Ruth Rendell novel is an incredible study of class distinction in provincial France. (Be aware that the film is rather disturbing but equally impressive).

Among his earlier features, my favourite is Que La Bête Meure (1969) (based on a novel by Cecil Day-Lewis) where a father whose son was killed by a hit and run driver looks for the murderer to avenge the crime. It sound very dark, but the film is full of black humour and played brilliantly by a host of great French actors. For such a dark story, it's shot in sunny Brittany in the middle of superb seascapes. Le Boucher(1970), that Alison mentioned, is also superlative. I am also very fond of Landru (1963), the story of real French serial-killer during WWI. Landru killed widows and single women for their money. This masterpiece of black humour boasts a great female cast: Danielle Darrieux, Michèle Morgan, Hidegard Knef, Catherine Rouvel et Stéphane Audran. The film looks like a Gaumont feature of the teens with its elegant sets.

When I heard that Chabrol had died, it was quite a shock. Most film lovers like me were expecting their little treat every year with a Chabrol picture. It won't happen again. But thank God, there are still all the pictures he made that we can enjoy for ever.

[charliechaplinfan]

I've just been completely engrossed in Une Affairs De Femmes Moira's description didn't put me off at all, in fact it made me want to watch this fascinating movie. I found it strange because it's very difficult to empathise with Marie, I can empathise with her situation, I can empathise if she thought she was doing it for the good of the woman like in Vera Drake but she loves the money too much to make it possible to be on her side. The money is her driving force, she shuns her husband completely not even caring to keep her affair secret. The only love she shows is to her children. She could have redeemed herself when the abortion went wrong but she still took the money and the poor woman with 6 extra mouthes to feed.

I felt she hadn't a conscience, that somewhere her conscience had been lost and perhaps that's the point that Chabrol was trying to make, France was suffering so badly through the occupation, why have a conscience when others don't. It's easy to think that what you are doing is alright when others are doing worse. Marie displays an incredible niavete, not covering her tracks, spending her money freely. She is the key to her own undoing. Her demise, she is held up as an example to others in 1943 whilst France was struggling to overcome the Nazis and rid themselves of bigger horrors than what Marie inflicted on the world.

[charliechaplinfan]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie-Louise_Giraud

This is the link to the real life case, Marie Louise Giraud didn't take money for abortions. It's interesting what is said about the birth rate, something I never knew.

[kingrat]

I've just seen This Man Must Die (Que la Bete Meure) (1969), unfortunately in a dubbed version, and as AnnH mentioned, this seems to be one of Chabrol's best films. It was great to see Michel Duchaussoy in the impassive role of the grief-stricken father bent on revenge just after I'd seen him as the extroverted nutcase in Jessua's The Killing Game (Jeu de Massacre). A first-rate plot, beautiful location shooting in Brittany, good set design, outstanding cinematography by Jean Rabier, who shows us the wide range of colors that are going to disappear in the American films of the early 1970s. I'm not crazy about making the character played by Jean Yanne a total pig; this doesn't seem like the most interesting approach. Yanne is sort of like Elliott Gould playing a James Bond villain.

The scene where Yanne slips and must cling to a cliff is poorly staged; Hitch would definitely have made the fall more believable. I also thought that the ending could have made even a bigger impact, but these are minor issues. Chabrol doesn't create Hitchcock-like suspense, but he moves the thriller into a more character-driven space. There are many visual felicities, too, like the scene of Duchaussoy and Caroline Cellier in bed where we can only see one eye of each person.

[kingrat]

No wonder Le Boucher is so often mentioned as a favorite Chabrol film. This would be a good place for anyone to start investigating his work. The opening shot (cinematography by Jean Rabier) shows a beautiful pastoral landscape, and the film was made on location in the town of Tremolat in Perigord (southwestern France). In fact, the importance of the setting is a link back to Chabrol's first film, Le Beau Serge. The outline of the story is simple: at a wedding the headmistress of the two-room school (Stephane Audran) and the local butcher (Jean Yanne) become better acquainted. She's still unwilling to pursue a romantic relationship because of an unhappy experience in the past; he has been scarred by his military service in Indochina and Algeria. The slow growth of their friendship becomes complicated when one woman in the area is killed, and then another.

Chabrol has learned from Hitchcock, but his suspense films diverge from the master in interesting ways. Films like Le Boucher, This Man Must Die, and La Femme Infidele take a turn toward French classicism: fewer characters (Le Boucher has only two characters who matter); less interest in secondary characters or subplots (imagine what Hitchcock would make of the detective and the bridegroom in this film, for instance); and a concentration on character development and psychological suspense rather than a reliance on big action set pieces.

If you know a little French, you'll pick up that right to the end, the man and the woman continue to use the formal vous to each other rather than the familiar tu. This is a touching detail. The moment when Chabrol cuts from a scene in the forest to the schoolchildren practicing a courtly dance is magical. I also think that Chabrol and Audran have judged precisely the amount of encouragement the teacher gives the butcher after their conversation at the wedding party.

[kingrat]

The Claude-a-palooza continues. So far this week I've seen four Chabrol films. It's been a good week. By the way, JUST BEFORE NIGHTFALL (JUSTE AVANT LA NUIT) is now available on DVD, for those of you who are interested.

If the absolute best of the four films I saw is LE BOUCHER (1970), described above, all of the four were worth seeing, even the least interesting of the group, TEN DAYS' WONDER (LA DECADE PRODIGIEUSE) (1971). I'd like to see it again in a good print, rather than a poor VHS tape. Given the quality of Jean Rabier's cinematography in other Chabrol films, that might make a difference in my view of the film. Chabrol reduces the story to four important characters. Orson Welles plays a bazillionaire not unlike his role in MR. ARKADIN. His troubled foster son is played by an expert in that kind of role, Anthony Perkins. Welles' much younger wife is played by Marlene Jobert, known to me only from RIDER ON THE RAIN, and Michel Piccoli is the friend Perkins calls upon when he discovers himself in a Paris hotel with no idea how he got there or how he got the blood on his hands. The slow psychological approach Chabrol favors is somewhat undercut by the typical Ellery Queen denoument.

Moira, AnnH, and CCFan have already praised UNE AFFAIRE DES FEMMES (1988), and I agree. The English title is STORY OF WOMEN, which doesn't fit the film at all; WOMEN'S BUSINESS or A MATTER FOR WOMEN would be better. Marie Latour (Isabelle Huppert), a poor woman with two children and, at the beginning of the film, a husband working in Germany, finds a way to improve her lot during the Nazi occupation of France by serving as an abortionist. Ultimately the authorities, both German and French, take their revenge on her.

I can easily imagine a Susan Hayward version of this film, melodramatic, emotional, and sentimental, where Marie is basically a good woman wronged by the system. It's easy also to imagine the Susan Sarandon version, where Marie is a noble activist and the film is sanctimonious, concerned with political point-making. Chabrol's film, on the other hand, couldn't be more matter-of-fact, concerned neither with emotionalism nor political ideology. Marie is not even a very likeable person. Both Susans would turn down this part, but that's all right because Isabelle Huppert fits Chabrol's approach. She's a bit too refined of features for this poorly educated woman, but otherwise she's outstanding. Perhaps my favorite moment in the film is the scene with the new servant Marie hires and the suggestion Marie makes to her. This film doesn't necessarily seem like characteristic Chabrol, but it's a major addition to his oeuvre.

[kingrat]

Is LES BICHES (1968) an acid test for whether you're really in tune with Chabrol? LE BOUCHER and THIS MAN MUST DIE seem like safe recommendations to just about anyone, but LES BICHES is a different matter. I seem to recall some of the original reviews being quite hostile. The basic situation of the film is easy to grasp: Frederique (Stephane Audran), a rich woman--think The Real Housewives of St. Tropez--picks up a street artist named Why (Jacqueline Sassard) and spirits her off to St. Tropez. When Why falls for Paul, a rich architect (Jean-Louis Trintignant), Frederique takes him away from her. These triangle situations don't usually end happily, do they?

Some of the reviewers at imdb and Amazon don't get Chabrol's approach. One complains that it doesn't deliver the thrills of SINGLE WHITE FEMALE; another that Chabrol doesn't explore bisexuality in a serious, contemporary way. True enough, but that's not what he has in mind. Chabrol deliberately avoids psychological exploration, with no attention to the background and experiences of any of the characters. Trintignant seems somewhat miscast in an Alain Delon role, but this doesn't matter much because we don't get to know Paul as a character. That ought to be a damning comment, but it isn't, and I'll try to explain why. As for Why, I'm not sure Sassard can act, but Chabrol uses her far more effectively than Losey did in ACCIDENT, and she has all the right qualities for the part. Audran is perfect as Frederique, and seeing her in this role the day after I'd seen her as the teacher in LE BOUCHER made me appreciate her range as an actress.

Even some admirers of Chabrol have described his films as slow, but that's not the way they strike me, and I'm usually the first to complain about that, as in numerous gripes about Francis Ford Coppola. Chabrol gives us so much to see and watch and ponder and listen to--an incredible score by Pierre Jansen--that he doesn't seem slow, even if there's not a lot of plot. Consider two moments of the film I really liked: 1) One of the two obnoxious gay hangers-on at Frederique's villa is in bed reading to the other from the sayings of Chairman Mao. This is both a solid hit about the seriousness of the then current fad for Mao among French intellectuals and a comment on the all-powerful Frederique and the danger she faces from the powerless. 2) As Paul, Frederique, and Why get drunk in front of the fireplace, with Jansen's music--modern romantic with a touch of dissonance--on the soundtrack, Trintignant tries to tell a story about someone going to visit an Indian sage. Meanwhile, Chabrol's camera moves around the group. The total effect is hard to analyze, but it's amazing cinema. Trintignant is great in this scene.

Love and even sex are entirely secondary to power relationships. What matters is what the characters do, not what they are, not what they feel, not what caused them to be the way they are when the film opens. I watched this film on a bad VHS tape which would go to blue or have lots of visual static, then clear up to show the beautiful cinematography of Jean Rabier. It was more than worth the effort.

[kingrat]

THE HORSE OF PRIDE (1980) is an uncharacteristic film for Chabrol, in semi-documentary style about peasant life in the Bigouden region of Brittany in the early years of the twentieth century. Based on a memoir, the film is nearly plotless, but the unusual customs and the landscape held my interest. For instance, the narrator's parents sleep in a bed like a cabinet with a door that pulls shut. After a woman gives birth, she must remain at home for a number of days, and then must go to a priest for a special blessing, apparently to remove the taint of this proof of her sexuality.

World War I brings the peasants into touch with the new century, and the film ends with a parade to celebrate the end of the war.

The title comes from a Breton proverb. Those who are too poor to own a horse, like most of the people we see in the film, must ride "the horse of pride."

[kingrat]

Although BETTY (1992) isn't one of Claude Chabrol's top films, if you like the director, you'll probably find much to like, not least the performances of Marie Trintignant, so good as the likeable hooker in UNE AFFAIRE DES FEMMES, and Stephane Audran, so good in many Chabrol films. BETTY is based on a novel by Georges Simenon. Chabrol wanted to make a film where the audience isn't sure of its bearings, uncertain what's going to happen and uncertain what kind of film it's going to be, just as one doesn't know in real life.

No spoilers ahead: Betty, an attractive woman who is very drunk, is picked up in a bar by a man. We are really not sure how this situation will play out. Betty eventually meets a woman named Laure (Audran), and we are not sure of Laure's motives, either. Eventually we have flashbacks to Betty's past, and her life wasn't at all what I expected. The ending of the film was too abrupt; I would have liked more shaping here. Some viewers will definitely like Marie Trintignant's several nude scenes.

[kingrat]

Alert to all Chabrol fans: STORY OF WOMEN (UNE AFFAIRE DES FEMMES) is scheduled for Sunday night's TCM Imports. Although it doesn't feel as "Chabrolian" as some of his other films, it is quite good--if you can take the less than warm and fuzzy main characters. There's discussion of the film higher up in this thread. Isabelle Huppert stars as a woman who performs abortions during Occupied France in WWII.

If this sounds at all like something which might interest you, don't miss this unusual film.