One of he founding fathers of the French New Wave, Claude Chabrol, passed away today at age 80. Along with Francois Truffaut, Jean Luc Goddard and Fereidoune Hoveyda he founded the prestigious film magazine “Les Cahiers Du Cinema”. Chabrol was best known for his incisive and vitriolic portraits of the French rural bourgeoisie.
French President Sarkozy salute the “grand auteur” C. Chabrol:
French Critic speaks about Chabrol’s Style:
Two films by Claude Chabrol – analysis by Dan Sallitt (English):
Que la Bete Meurt:
Le Beau Serge starring Gerard Blain,Jean Claude Brialy and Bernadette Laffont:
Another Scene:
The Bridesmaid – A film by Claude Chabrol – Trailer:
L’Ivresse du Pouvoir – Bande Annonce:
The Frenchies in Hollywood:
Bio:
After spending World War II in the village of Sardent, where he and a friend constructed a makeshift movie theater,[1] Chabrol returned to Paris to study pharmacology at the University of Paris. There Chabrol became involved with the postwar cine club culture and met Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Éric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette and others with whom he would write for Cahiers du cinéma throughout the 1950s. In 1957, Chabrol co-wrote with Éric Rohmer Hitchcock (Paris: Éditions Universitaires, 1957), a study of the films made by director Alfred Hitchcock through the film The Wrong Man (1957). Chabrol had interviewed Hitchcock with Francois Truffaut in 1955 on the set of To Catch a Thief, where the two famously walked into a fountain after being starstuck by Hitchcock. Years later, when Chabrol and Truffaut had both become successful directors themselves, Hitchcock told Truffaut that he always thought of them when he saw “two ice cubes floating in his drink.”
In 1958, Chabrol made his feature directorial debut with Le Beau Serge (1958), a Hitchcock-influenced [2] drama starring Jean-Claude Brialy partly funded by his wife’s inheritance and among the first films of the French New Wave. A critical success, it won Chabrol the Prix Jean Vigo and was followed the next year by Les Cousins, one of the New Wave’s first commercial successes, and Chabrol’s first color film, À double tour, starring Jean-Paul Belmondo. The most prolific of the major New Wave directors, Chabrol averaged almost one film a year from 1958 until his death. His early films (roughly 1958-1963) are usually categorized as part of the New Wave and generally have the experimental qualities associated with the movement. Beginning with his “Golden Era” films (1967- 1974) he established what would be his signature “Chabrol-esque” style, usually suspense thrillers in the tradition of Alfred Hitchcock.
His first marriage to Agnès produced a son, Matthieu Chabrol, a French composer who scored most of his father’s films starting in the early 80’s. He divorced Agnès to marry the actress Stéphane Audran, with whom he had a son, actor Thomas Chabrol. His third wife was Aurore Paquiss, who has been a script supervisor since the 1950’s. In 1995 he was awarded the Prix René Clair from the Académie française for his body of work.
Chabrol died on September 12, 2010. Chabrol was married three times: to Agnès Goute from 1956 to 1962, Colette Dacheville (the real name of actress Audran) from 1964 to 1978, and Aurore Pajot. He had four children.
More on Claude Chabrol and the New Wave Cinema Here
Related Blog:
by Darius KADIVAR
CINEMA BLUES: Motion Pictures Don’t Do It For Me Anymore … by Darius KADIVAR
MISTER “Z”: Meeting Costa Gavras For “Une Journée à Tehran” By Darius KADIVAR
Recommended Readings:
Iranian Pioneers in French New Wave Cinema by Darius KADIVAR
by Darius KADIVAR
by Darius KADIVAR
