Claude Chabrol (1930-)

Claude Chabrol (1930-)
Le Beau Serge 1958, Les Cousins 1959
Long considered “lazy and prolific”
1997 Cahiers du Cinéma
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“Perhaps the greatest French filmmaker”
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Special issue devoted to his work
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Rien ne va plus
 His 50th film
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La Fille coupée en deux 2007
Contradictions
Rejects “auteur” cinema
Works within the confines of established
genres
Yet
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Wants to “give a very personal vision”
Sometimes indulges in auteurist gestures
A very full life
A Catholic family man
Yet
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Married three times
Friendship with Paul Gégauff 1950-1983
 A drinker and womanizer
 Racist and anti-Semitic
 Collaboration on screenplays incl. Les Bonnes
Femmes
Political leanings
Left-wing humanist with Marxist
leanings
 La Cérémonie 1995
Interest in women’s problems
 Une affaire de femmes 1988
Yet sometimes ambiguous position
Crime thrillers
Chabrol’s favourite genre

“least boring”
Leads to exploration of society
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Interest in the “fait-divers”
Disruption of the norm
No psychological explanations for crime
Chabrol’s thrillers
Literary adaptations
Ruth Rendell’s Judgement in stone
La Cérémonie 1995
Adaptations of fait divers:
Landru 1963
Violette Nozière 1978
Une affaire de femmes 1988
Chabrol’s thrillers
Les Bonnes Femmes 1960
Le Boucher 1960
Les Noces rouges 1973
Influences
Fritz Lang (1890-1976)

German Expressionism
 Use of objective camera work to evoke theme of fate
 Manipulation of objects to convey atmosphere and
meaning
Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980)
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Master of suspense
Hitchcock by Claude Chabrol and Eric Rohmer,
1957, transl as Hitchcock: the First Forty-four
Films, 1988.
Les Bonnes Femmes 1960
“Bonnes femmes”: “Women”, “girls”
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Slightly derogatory
“Ah, les bonnes femmes!”
Not a critical success at the time
Chabrol

“The one I like best of all my films”
Themes
A depiction of the lives of Paris shop
girls in the 1950s
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“Four girls, but in fact one”
For Gégauff a film about stupid, vulgar
characters
For Chabrol girls are simple, brutalized
A crime thriller
Neorealism
Cinematographic movement which
began in Italy after the 2d WW

Luchino Visconti, Roberto Rossellini
Reveals the everyday life of common
people
Portrays the individual as part of society
Neorealism and
Les Bonnes femmes
Picture of alienation of four shop
assistants

Prisoners like the animals in the zoo
Girls shown as social cases not
individuals
Neorealism and
Les Bonnes femmes
Attempts to change their lives lead to
encounters with
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Sexual exploitation
Class prejudice
Jealousy within the group
A murderer
Main means of escape: men
A shop in the fifties
Overstaffing
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A cashier
Four shop assistants
Economic exploitation
Long hours

Boredom, waiting in real time
Paris in the fifties
A documentary
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
The streets
The Metro, the swimming-pool, the night
club, a restaurant, the Jardin des Plantes
Bleakness accentuated by black and
white pictures
Bleak encounters
Men as predators
Escalating violence

The night clubs
 Sexual exploitation
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The
The
The
The
pick-up scene
boss
pool
murder
Unsavory male characters
The shop owner
Albert and Marcel
Henri
André
Albert and Marcel
The evening out

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Fun?
The stripper
Jane ends up “afraid”

Of what?
Contraception and Abortion
in XXth c. France
1946-1967 Abortion and female
contraception illegal
1967 Contraception legalized
1971 Manifesto signed by 343 women
declaring they had an abortion
1974 Abortion legalized: Veil Law
The pool scene
Girl watching
A brutal game
Jacqueline “saved”?
Henri
A bourgeois

Illusion: “distinguished”, “from a good family”
He is going to introduce Rita to his parents

A big step
His advice
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Pretend to know about high culture
Order the father’s favorite dessert
 Mystère
Illusion vs reality
Henri’s family
Not cultured

Only bookish knowledge
Not upper class
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Family money made in trade
Narrow mindedness
The music-hall scene
Ginette’s act as the Italian singer
Angela Torrini

Similarity with Dalida (1933-1987)
 Egyptian singer of Italian origin
 Bambino 1956
She fears discovery

Why?
Building of suspense
Music

Carmen
André’s unexplained presence
Unsettling elements
Unsettling elements
The Jardin des Plantes
Madame Louise’s fetish
Afternoon in the country
The Jardin des Plantes
Equation of André with the tiger
Jacqueline
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“An adorable pussycat”
He growls at her
Foreshadowing
Madame Louise’s fetish
A handkerchief soaked in blood
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Sadistic serial killer Weidemann
Guillotined at Versailles in 1939
Equation of death and love
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Element of danger
Afternoon in the country
Clues
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Coarse behavior in restaurant
Attraction
 “Perhaps something other than love”
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Praise of Jacqueline’s neck
Gloomy landscape
Identification with the victim
Romantic expectations
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Lunch in country restaurant
Walk in the woods
Fear that something will happen
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Jacqueline’s fragility and naïveté
Silence, then birdlike sounds
Climax
Surprise effect
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Expectation of love scene
Instead sexual violation, murder
Conclusion
Uncertainty of André’s fate
A fifth girl dancing at a night club or
“thé dansant”
She has no identity
Man’s face unseen
Lark mirror: a snare, a delusion