Can We Talk About Claude Chabrol?

RIP

Private trivia: The Swindle & Le beau serge were the first movies I watched after Hurricane Ike.

I saw The Ceremony tonight. I think it's only my second Chabrol film. I said to my friend afterwards that, if it'd been a Roger Corman film, it would've been called Homicidal Lesbians, with more blood, some gratuitious nudity, and no subtitles. She's very serious about French films--I don't think she saw quite as much overlap as I did.

My favorites are Les Bonnes Femmes, La Rupture and Les Biches.

Le Rupture wavers when Jean-Pierre Cassel and his airhead girlfriend aim for farce in a movie of their own; and I'm not sure Stephane Audran can play "sensitive." Bunuel confirmed his casting genius by arranging them as husband and wife in The Discreet Charm...

is The Cry of the Owl any good?

watched a girl cut in two last wkend. tbf i would watch ludivine sagnier knit for 2 hrs but this was not v compelling imo. the stanford white scandal its at least loosely based on seems pretty lurid & interesting so im not exactly sure why its so dull. can only assume thats an intentional choice. its the only chabrol ive seen

I'm amazed I'd seen six by the time I'd started this thread. I joined netflix in late 2006 and had to have done a Chabrol a month.

The Criterion discs drop today.

Seeing Les Bonnes Femmes tomorrow! So psyched.

'les bonnes femmes' is really good

Le Rupture wavers when Jean-Pierre Cassel and his airhead girlfriend aim for farce in a movie of their own; and I'm not sure Stephane Audran can play "sensitive."

― Anakin Ska Walker (AKA Skarth Vader) (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, September 19, 2011 7:07 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is def fair but i liked that bumbling/odd element & it all didnt feel out of place to me; it makes sense that cassels character would resort to some bizarre scheme and ultimately screw it up, partly just cuz it was a p bad plan

the bridesmaid (04) is p good -- is best not to say too much but it def does nothing to detract from comparisons 2 hitchcock, hes even p playful w/ the genre here; plus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Smet is gorg + her perf is spot on

watched http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleasure_Party

it's p insidiously ugly & tough to watch idk imo it doesn't work standing on its own, the backstory of gegauff own lifestory is necessary to know; supposedly gegauff thought by making this, owning up to his flaws, etc hed be able to win back his 1st wife irl O_O

the dvd has a great commentary w/ ric manello & dan yakir, who sez a certain scene (you'll know what it is if you've seen it) is the most disturbing he's maybe ever watched, and ric agrees

I guess i shd go to 35mm screening of La Rupture tonight? r1 DVD impossible to watch w/out buying.

It was a pleasure to rewatch Les Biches, The Color of Lies and The Unfaithful Wife in June.

I know I watched La Rupture on DVD in 2011 on a so-so print (Netflix).

'French archival print' was per b.o. sign a 16mm with "noisy soundtrack," so i reluctantly passed.

young chabrol briefly pops up in footage in the hitch/Truffaut doc, kindof a trip to see him

gonna prob watch 'story of women' sometime soon

The domestic DVDs of the late '60s/early '70s Chabrols from Pathfinder are pretty iffy transfer-wise.

RIP Stephane Audran

This "odd, off-putting" whatzit is screening in NYC tonight. Perkins, Piccoli, and Welles are quite a trio.

https://www.cinepassion.org/Reviews/t/TenDaysWonder.html

yea i read in passing somewhere itll be avail somewhere streaming too but couldnt find more deets

can we do a proper S & D for Chabrol?

I've seen

Les Cousins
Le Boucher
Le Beau Serge

La Ceremonie with Huppert and Bonnaire is a tasty late one.

The Perkins-Welles film mentioned above is a weirs one worth seeing if you can track it down.

La Femme Infidele is certainly better than Adrian Lyne's remake. I think I liked Les Bonnes Femmes too.

i have never seen a bad chabrol. the last one i saw and enjoyed was this man must die.

Wait til you get to the '80s. He's one of my Nouvelle Vague faves but he made some clunkers.

BETTY: yes?

YES!

yes indeed

Wait til you get to the '80s. He's one of my Nouvelle Vague faves but he made some clunkers.

― Carly Jae Vespen (Capitaine Jay Vee), Sunday, September 15, 2019 2:59 AM (three weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

how much of the 80s? The Cry of the Owl, from 87, is great

Less affaires des femmes is great, made some great ones with Isabelle huppert in the '80s and '90s. La ceremonie is my favourite.

Not all the huppert ones are gold, I think he takes after Hitchcock in a another key way: he doesn't have a key period, he makes clunkers and gems all the way through.

I also love les biches and I can never understand why it isn't more famous as a camp classic.

'80s clunkers from memory: Le Sang des autres, Le cri du hibou, Jours Tranquilles à Clichy, maybe one of the Inspecteur Lavardin flicks...

The Champagne Murders?

Just Before Nightfall is hilarious

how about A Double Tour / Web of Lies / Leda? whatever it's called. his third movie (for some reason I thought LBF was his third)

Double Tour is fun. Great cast. Belmondo right before Breathless.

Bizarre coincidence with this Lazlo Kovacs thing... his alias in Breathless, and his name in A Double Tour... 10 years before a real Lazlo Kovacs shot Easy Rider.

I used to think that, until I learned that Laszlo Kovács is the Hungarian equivalent of John Smith.

ah that makes sense

Pleasure Party is INCREDIBLE... it's as if Fassbinder's Martha were autobiographical. the best Chabrol film I've seen by a mile.

The Twist is the first one I've seen that's just fucking annoying. À double tour is unremarkable, but I'm dying to find out what happened to Andre Jocelyn, the guy that co-starred in that and starred in Chabrol's incredible Ophelia in 1963. IMDb page, that's his last credit, can't find any info on him. Great performances in both. Dead or retired.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073001/trivia?ref_=tt_ql_2

Claude Chabrol himself often defined this title as "the worst film" of his career, stating he was fully aware at the time that the whole project was doomed from the very beginning

Ah

Anybody seen Masques? Released in 1987.

It's okay, kind of tedious though. This Man Must Die is a better version of the Trojan horse murderer sorta thing

I was gonna say Masques is too long but it's only 100 minutes. oh my...

how encouraging!

lol is it on the criterion channel? they need to put up La Rupture and La Ceremonie, ya know, his GOOD movies...

I'm receiving La Ceremonie, which I haven't watched since 1997, from the library tomorrow.

I saw masques recently and thought it was one of his better films (that don't feature huppert) no ceremonie on obviously but he's done much much worse

He has, like the two films he made just before Masques: Chicken with Vinegar and Inspector Lavardin. both perfect examples of Chabrol at his plodding worst, uninteresting visually, too many characters, and just inert for long stretches. Inspector Lavardin is a notch better than Chicken with Vinegar; despite Jean Rabier shooting both, Inspector Lavardin actually has some interesting camera work and inserts that elevate the typically dull proceedings. Better cast, too (Jean-Claude Brialy, Bernadette Lafont, Jean Poiret as IL). Although Chicken with Vinegar does have Stephane Audran and Michel Boquet, but they are woefully underused. Inspector Lavardin doesn't even show up in CWV until 45 minutes or so. The second film is just tighter, and it reminded me of Chabrol's second to last film, A Girl Cut in Two, and parts of it clearly presage Masques, which, again, is a much better film.

I look forward to being able to go through Chabrol's films again, I've seen 35 in the last year and the most acclaimed stretch, 68-72, is mostly a blur since I started with it.

Rewatched L’enfer tonight for the umpteenth time. Fantastic editing. It is a great horror film.

The little homage to Buñuel’s “El” - Paul’s wobbly walk as his insanity goes full on - is a wonderful touch I’d never noticed before.

Yes. You guys should watch the doc about the unfinished original.

Have seen it. It’s great but I really love Chabrol’s approach to that material. He supposedly truly disliked what he’d seen of Clouzot’s preproduction experiments.

Right. The Clouzot stuff is best seen at one step removed, through the doc.

L'Enfer is horrifying. the English title, TORMENT, isn't nearly as good as its literal translation, Hell

I mean this in a good way of course.