Can We Talk About Claude Chabrol?

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.