Claude Chabrol

In a filmmaking career which spanned more than fifty years and around seventy films for cinema and television, Claude Chabrol was one of the most highly regarded and prolific of French film directors.  A leading figure in the French New Wave, he tackled a wide variety of subjects, including literary adaptations, character studies, crime dramas and spy thrillers, but is best-known for his psychological thrillers.

Born on 24th June 1930, the son of a pharmacist, Claude Chabrol enjoyed a comfortable middle-class upbringing.  He studied law before discovering a passion for cinema which brought him into contact with François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard and Eric Rohmer.  These were a group of dedicated cinephiles who, along with Chabrol, would initiate a radical shift in filmmaking technique in the late 1950s, each becoming a major player in the French New Wave.  All four young men began by writing critiques in the influential journal Les Cahiers du cinéma, in which they vehemently condemned the current trend of quality French cinema and praised independent directors who embodied the principle of the auteur.

One director whom Chabrol admired greatly was Alfred Hitchcock, the British filmmaker who had found great success in Hollywood with his suspense thrillers.  It was Chabrol and Rohmer who first claimed Hitchcock as a shining example of the auteur, in an essay they published in 1957.  Hitchcock would have a profound and lasting influence on Chabrol when he came to make his own films.

With money inherited by his wealthy wife, Chabrol was able to start making his own films.  His first film, Le Beau Serge (1958), heralded not just the start of Chabrol’s long career as a director but also the beginning of the French New Wave, which would see an insurgence of talent and a radically new approach to filmmaking in French cinema.  Chabrol’s use of inexperienced, unknown actors, crude editing, extensive location filming and a feeling of spontaneity are emblematic of the films of the French New Wave, although these characteristics were less a stylistic choice and more down to inexperience and lack of resources.

In the early stage of his career, Claude Chabrol was far less successful than his contemporaries, particularly Truffaut and Godard, in drawing audiences and attracting criticism (good and bad).   Although something of an eccentric, he was probably one of the most conventional of the New Wave film directors, avoiding the extreme subjectivity of Godard, the languid lyricism of Rohmer and the emotional intensity of Truffaut.  However, from early on, Chabrol’s films displayed a distinctive style which showed a keen understanding of human nature and a natural flair for storytelling.  It was the content of his early films, more than style, which shocked cinema audiences.  Both Les Bonnes femmes (1960) and L’Oeil du malin (1962) were condemned as being irresponsible and immoral, although today they are considered two of Chabrol’s finest achievements.

The majority of Claude Chabrol’s films are psychological thrillers in an apparently idyllic bourgeois setting, and it is here that the Hitchcock influence can be seen most readily.  Each of these films features a victim and a predator, and it is usually the latter with whom the audience is led to sympathise.  The predator is often presented as a victim of circumstances and, no matter how bad the crime, his or her actions can always be vindicated.  This can be seen most clearly in Chabrol’s best films of this genre, L’Oeil du malin, Le Boucher (1970), Que la bête meure (1969) and La Ceremonie.

Even in those films which are not classifiable as thrillers, Chabrol’s style, ironic, sombre and somewhat twisted, brings a dark thriller-like feel to his subject.   His powerful historic drama, Une affaire de femmes (1988) is as compelling and disturbing as the director’s most intentionally shocking thrillers, as is his version of Madame Bovary (1991), and also Betty (1992), his chilling analysis of a woman in mid-life crisis.

Chabrol’s cinema is also characterised by some exemplary performances from immensely talented actors, showing that, just like his own idols, John Ford and Alfred Hitchcock, he is able to get the absolute best from his actors.   Many actors reappear again and again in Chabrol’s films, particularly Stéphane Audran (Chabrol’s wife for many years), Jean Yanne and Isabelle Huppert, something which helped to define that distinctive Chabrol brand of cinema.

Towards the end of his career, Claude Chabrol showed a late flourishing, returning to themes that are characteristic of his oeuvre: the insidious venality of the bourgeois milieu and the perversity of human nature.  His best films from this era include the trilogy that comprised La Cérémonie (1995), Merci pour le chocolat (2000) and La Fleur du mal (2003).  His last film was Bellamy (2009), a thriller featuring Gérard Depardieu.  During this period, Chabrol continued working for French television, his last work being episodes in the anthology series Au siècle de Maupassant.  On 12th September 2010, Claude Chabrol died, aged 80.  His legacy is an impressive body of work that has justly earned him the reputation of one of France’s finest and best-known filmmakers.

© filmsdefrance.com 2010


“A woman confronting men is a proper subject, it is inexhaustible.”

“A woman is subject matter enough.”

“As far as I was concerned, either I was a homosexual or I wasn’t, so making films would change nothing.”

“I brought the film like a flower to the world.”

“I like making black and white films in natural surroundings, but I much prefer shooting a color film inside a studio where the colors are easier to control.”

“I love mirrors.  They let one pass through the surface of things.”

“I wanted to make a film about stupid people that was very vulgar and deeply stupid.  From that moment on I can hardly be reproached for making a film that is about stupid people.”

“I’m not wild about hand-held shots.”

“It’s often wrong to write for specific actors because one ends up using what is least interesting about them, their mannerisms and habits.  I prefer not to write for specific people.”

“Scriptwriting is like cooking.  Shooting, the part I enjoy most, is like eating.  Editing, therefore, is - well, the washing up.”

“Some colors are very difficult to render, and you must compensate to get the color you want on the screen.”

“There’s one thing which I hate about color films...  people who use up a lot of their despairing producer’s money by working in the laboratory to bring out the dominant hues, or to make color films where there isn’t any color.”

“First I went to the Sorbonne to do my licence en lettres, but I also started to study law.”

“I’m not pessimistic about people in general, but only about the way they live.”

“My father wanted me to be a pharmacist like himself.  He had been a doctor, but he no longer believed in medicine; so he became a pharmacist, but he believed in that hardly more.”

“I remember an article, I can’t recall who by, it was after the fall of the Berlin Wall, which said that now the Wall was down, there could be no more class war.  Only someone with money could ever say such a thing.”

“Laying tracks gives you freedom without being too obvious.”