Juste avant la nuit (1971)

Juste avant la nuit is a French crime film first released in 1971, directed by Claude Chabrol.  The film stars Stéphane Audran, Michel Bouquet, François Périer, Henri Attal and Jean Carmet.  It has also been released under the title: Just Before Nightfall.  Our overall rating for this film is: very good.


Charles Masson, an advertising executive, is having an affair with Laura, the wife of his best friend, François.  During a violent love making session, Charles kills Laura.  He flees the scene of the crime and returns to his loving wife Hélène as if nothing had happened.  Although he appears to have got away with the murder, his guilt soon becomes too much to bear…

Juste avant la nuit is another meticulously crafted psychological drama from Claude Chabrol. It is one of his darkest, most introspective works, one which explores a recurring theme in his cinema: the all-consuming need for a criminal to expunge his guilt once he has committed a crime. The irony of this film is that a perfect crime has been committed and the perpetrator would have got way with it if his only his conscience would let him. As in Chabrol’s later film, Les Noces rouges, a murderer will remain a prisoner of his guilt until the day he is unmasked and judged for his crime. Only then, can he taste freedom again.

In many ways, this is the mirror image of Chabrol’s earlier suspense thriller La Femme infidèle : the two films appear to tell the same story from a totally different perspective.  The similarities are reinforced by Chabrol casting the same lead actors Michel Bouquet and Stéphane in effectively the same roles (again named Charles and Hélène).  As in La Femme infidèle, the plot revolves around a murder which results from marital infidelity.  But from thereon, the two films differ markedly.

In La Femme infidèle, the murder was deliberate and the murderer goes to extreme lengths to avoid capture.   In Juste avant la nuit, the murder is entirely accidental yet it provokes an intense guilt response in the murderer. The irony is that in both cases the murderer, Charles, is tortured by his crime – in the first by fear of being found out, in the second by a guilt which no one can understand.

Whilst Juste avant la nuit allows Chabrol ample scope for exploring some of his favourite themes (such as bourgeois complacency and the darker side of human nature), it is less accesible than La Femme infidèle.  It is, all the same, a compelling and stylishly filmed work, featuring some great acting performances (Michel Bouquet is extraordinary here) and the usual blend of Chabrolesque intrigue, drama and suspense.

© James Travers 2004

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