One of the earliest of the French New Wave of films in the late 1950s/early 60s, Le
Beau Serge has a rough and ready feel to it that gives it an edge of authenticity
and emphasises the sadness without dipping into sentimentalism... [More...]
Claude Chabrol’s third film shows a marked departure from his two earlier films,
Le Beau Serge and Les Cousins. For one thing, it is his first film
to be made in colour... [More...]
Les Cousins is definitively part of the French New Wave of the late 1950s.
Whilst slightly more polished than the films of his contemporaries (notably Godard and
Truffaut)... [More...]
Although it is now widely regarded as one of the most important and representative films
of the French New Wave, Les Bonnes femmes faced a barrage of negative criticism
when it was first released in 1960... [More...]
One of Claude Chabrol’s most bizarre films, Landru is an extraordinary
off-the-wall black comedy which allows the director to combine his flair for comedy and
thriller to create something which is both original... [More...]
By the mid-1960s, there were signs that the French New Wave had all but
run its course. Its leading lights – François Truffaut,
Jean-Luc Godard... [More...]
More a divertissement than a bon cru, La Route de Corinthe is one of
Claude Chabrol’s less successful attempts at a parody of the spy
thriller... [More...]
After the commercial failure of his early films – notably L’oeil
du malin (1963) and Landru
(1963) – director Claude Chabrol found himself straitjacketed into making
commercial films that would attract... [More...]
Les Biches is one of Claude Chabrol’s most intense and aesthetically pleasing
films, a riveting melange of traditional love triangle and subtly dark thriller... [More...]
Few films exemplify Chabrol’s cinema better and more fully than La Femme infidèle
. The bourgeois setting, the dangerously repressed characters... [More...]
This compelling study of revenge and hate is easily one of Chabrol’s better films.
Throughout, Chabrol is in perfect control of the drama and suspense... [More...]
Judging by the end result, hallucinogenic drugs probably had a part to
play with the conception and realisation of La Rupture, one of Claude Chabrol’s
weirder films... [More...]
Le boucher is an early and splendid example of the kind of gentle but engrossing
thriller which would become the mainstay of Claude Chabrol’s film work... [More...]
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... [More...]
