A figure whose deserved place in the European canon never came, Portuguese filmmaker Paulo Rocha is getting a second look. This August, Grasshopper Film will make available his first two features, The Green Years and Change of Life, debuting 4K restorations overseen by the Portuguese Cinematheque and Pedro Costa. We’re proud to debut a trailer for The Green Years that shows the fruit of these labors—a vivid, enticing window into the early days of a new wave.
A colleague of Jean Renoir and Manoel de Oliveira—the latter quoted here—Rocha began his career with a thorny love story not at all unlike another new wave kickstarter, Le Beau Serge, photographing Lisbon in both its modernity and old-world habitat. Watching The Green Years recalls the early days of one’s cinephilia, when entire worlds opened with a new name, a new country, and the incessant desire to see more.
A colleague of Jean Renoir and Manoel de Oliveira—the latter quoted here—Rocha began his career with a thorny love story not at all unlike another new wave kickstarter, Le Beau Serge, photographing Lisbon in both its modernity and old-world habitat. Watching The Green Years recalls the early days of one’s cinephilia, when entire worlds opened with a new name, a new country, and the incessant desire to see more.
- 7/30/2020
- by Leonard Pearce
- The Film Stage
A prominent member of the French New Wave, often credited as the French Hitchcock, director Claude Chabrol’s first few features were internationally renowned, seminal works of the movement. Taking home the top prize out of Locarno for Le Beau Serge (1958) and then Berlin with The Cousins (1959), his 1960 Les Bonnes Femmes is a cornerstone alongside the likes of Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (1959) and Godard’s Breathless (1960). But much of Chabrol’s output until the late 1960s, when Les Biches (1968) became a notorious hit, has languished in obscurity.
Revisiting his 1962 title The Third Lover (L’Oeil Du Malin) finds Chabrol navigating similar territories and themes he would eventually be renowned for—jealous lovers, infidelity and murder.…...
Revisiting his 1962 title The Third Lover (L’Oeil Du Malin) finds Chabrol navigating similar territories and themes he would eventually be renowned for—jealous lovers, infidelity and murder.…...
- 3/17/2020
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
Welcome to a pair of vintage mysteries with George Simenon’s popular Inspector Jules Maigret, a gumshoe who gets the tough cases. Top kick French actor Jean Gabin is the cop who keeps cool, until it’s time to rattle a recalcitrant suspect. In two separate cases, he tracks a serial killer in the heart of Paris, and travels to his hometown to unearth a murder conspiracy.
Maigret Sets a Trap
and
Maigret and the St. Fiacre Case
Blu-ray (separate releases)
Kino Classics
1958, 1959 / B&W /1:37 flat; 1:66 widescreen / 118, 101 min. / Street Date December 5, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber: Trap, St. Fiacre / 29.95 ea.
Starring: Jean Gabin, Annie Girardot, Jean Desailly, Olivier Hussenot, Lucienne Bogaert, Paulette Dubost, Lino Ventura, Dominique Page / Jean Gabin, Michel Auclair, Valentine Tessier, Michel Vitold, Camille Guérini, Gabrielle Fontan, Micheline Luccioni, Jacques Marin, Paul Frankeur, Robert Hirsch.
Cinematography: Louis Page
Film Editor: Henri Taverna
Original Music: Paul Misraki...
Maigret Sets a Trap
and
Maigret and the St. Fiacre Case
Blu-ray (separate releases)
Kino Classics
1958, 1959 / B&W /1:37 flat; 1:66 widescreen / 118, 101 min. / Street Date December 5, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber: Trap, St. Fiacre / 29.95 ea.
Starring: Jean Gabin, Annie Girardot, Jean Desailly, Olivier Hussenot, Lucienne Bogaert, Paulette Dubost, Lino Ventura, Dominique Page / Jean Gabin, Michel Auclair, Valentine Tessier, Michel Vitold, Camille Guérini, Gabrielle Fontan, Micheline Luccioni, Jacques Marin, Paul Frankeur, Robert Hirsch.
Cinematography: Louis Page
Film Editor: Henri Taverna
Original Music: Paul Misraki...
- 12/9/2017
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Editor’s Note: This article is presented in partnership with FilmStruck. The exclusive streaming home for The Criterion Collection, FilmStruck features the largest streaming library of contemporary and classic arthouse, indie, foreign and cult films as well as extensive bonus content, filmmaker interviews and rare footage. Learn more here.
Throughout its 70 year history, the Cannes Film Festival has been at the forefront of game-changing cinema. New directorial voices and international film movements have all used the festival as a launch pad to global recognition. If a film or artist has shaped cinema over the last seven decades, chances are they’ve been the toast of Cannes at least once. Many of these historic Cannes titles are streaming exclusively on FilmStruck, and we gathered up 10 of our favorites you need to watch below.
“Rome, Open City”
The first Cannes Film Festival was originally set for September 1939, but World War II caused a seven-year delay.
Throughout its 70 year history, the Cannes Film Festival has been at the forefront of game-changing cinema. New directorial voices and international film movements have all used the festival as a launch pad to global recognition. If a film or artist has shaped cinema over the last seven decades, chances are they’ve been the toast of Cannes at least once. Many of these historic Cannes titles are streaming exclusively on FilmStruck, and we gathered up 10 of our favorites you need to watch below.
“Rome, Open City”
The first Cannes Film Festival was originally set for September 1939, but World War II caused a seven-year delay.
- 5/16/2017
- by Zack Sharf
- Indiewire
New Wave director Claude Chabrol goes off in an odd direction with this Francophone adaptation of Hamlet. Convinced that his father was murdered, the heir to an estate behaves like a madman as he sets out to unmask the killers. The ‘castle’ is a country manse guarded by thugs as a precaution against the signeur’s striking union workers. Special added attraction: the stars to see are Alida Valli and Juliette Mayniel of Eyes without a Face.
Ophélia
Blu-ray
Olive Films
1963 / B&W / 1:66 widescreen / 104 min. / Street Date April 25, 2017 / available through the Olive Films website / 29.95
Starring: Alida Valli, Juliette Mayniel, Claude Cerval, André Jocelyn, Robert Burnier, Jean-Louis Maury, Sacha Briquet, Liliane Dreyfus (David), Pierre Vernier.
Cinematography: Jacques Rabier, Jean Rabier
Film Editor: Jacques Gaillard
Original Music: Pierre Jansen
Written by Claude Chabrol, Paul Gégauff, Martial Matthieu from a play by William Shakespeare
Produced and Directed by Claude Chabrol
I suppose...
Ophélia
Blu-ray
Olive Films
1963 / B&W / 1:66 widescreen / 104 min. / Street Date April 25, 2017 / available through the Olive Films website / 29.95
Starring: Alida Valli, Juliette Mayniel, Claude Cerval, André Jocelyn, Robert Burnier, Jean-Louis Maury, Sacha Briquet, Liliane Dreyfus (David), Pierre Vernier.
Cinematography: Jacques Rabier, Jean Rabier
Film Editor: Jacques Gaillard
Original Music: Pierre Jansen
Written by Claude Chabrol, Paul Gégauff, Martial Matthieu from a play by William Shakespeare
Produced and Directed by Claude Chabrol
I suppose...
- 4/25/2017
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Taking a look at the French director’s fascinating filmography.
One of the biggest films of 2016, La La Land, owes a thing or two to French director Jacques Demy. The bright, colorful musical visually mirrors Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967), and director Damien Chazelle was able to capture something of the melancholic sweetness of Demy’s musicals. Demy is not one of the most famous French directors, however his films have a specific charm and intelligence that no other filmmaker could match. The way he blended Hollywood style with French culture was unlike any other filmmaker at the time.
Demy began his career in 1960s France, during the time of the “Nouvelle Vague” or French New Wave. This was the time of films such as Breathless, Jules and Jim, The 400 Blows, and Le Beau Serge. However, Demy lies a little bit outside of this group of filmmakers, and...
One of the biggest films of 2016, La La Land, owes a thing or two to French director Jacques Demy. The bright, colorful musical visually mirrors Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967), and director Damien Chazelle was able to capture something of the melancholic sweetness of Demy’s musicals. Demy is not one of the most famous French directors, however his films have a specific charm and intelligence that no other filmmaker could match. The way he blended Hollywood style with French culture was unlike any other filmmaker at the time.
Demy began his career in 1960s France, during the time of the “Nouvelle Vague” or French New Wave. This was the time of films such as Breathless, Jules and Jim, The 400 Blows, and Le Beau Serge. However, Demy lies a little bit outside of this group of filmmakers, and...
- 3/20/2017
- by Angela Morrison
- FilmSchoolRejects.com
Being called the French Hitchcock does Claude Chabrol a disservice, as his dark thrillers approach mystery and suspense almost completely through character, not cinematics. These three very good 1990s productions are completely different in tone and approach, and each showcases a stunning French actress.
Betty, Torment (L’enfer), The Swindle (Rien ne vas plus)
Blu-ray
3 Classic Films by Claude Chabrol
Cohen Film Collection
1992,1994,1997 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 103, 102, 105 min. / Street Date February 21, 2017 / 49.99
Starring Marie Trintignant, Stéphane Audran, Jean-François Garreaud, Yves Lambrecht; Emmanuelle Béart, François Cluzet, Nathalie Cardone, Dora Doll; Isabelle Huppert, Michel Serrault, François Cluzet, Jean-François Balmer.
Cinematography: Bernard Zitermann; Bernard Zitermann, Eduardo Serra
Film Editor: Monique Fardoulis (x3)
Original Music: Matthieu Chabrol (x3)
Written by Claude Chabrol from a novel by Georges Simenon; Claude Chabrol from a script by Henri-Georges Clouzot; Claude Chabrol
Produced by Marin Karmitz (x3)
Directed by Claude Chabrol (x3)
Not all Claude Chabrol films are equal, but...
Betty, Torment (L’enfer), The Swindle (Rien ne vas plus)
Blu-ray
3 Classic Films by Claude Chabrol
Cohen Film Collection
1992,1994,1997 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 103, 102, 105 min. / Street Date February 21, 2017 / 49.99
Starring Marie Trintignant, Stéphane Audran, Jean-François Garreaud, Yves Lambrecht; Emmanuelle Béart, François Cluzet, Nathalie Cardone, Dora Doll; Isabelle Huppert, Michel Serrault, François Cluzet, Jean-François Balmer.
Cinematography: Bernard Zitermann; Bernard Zitermann, Eduardo Serra
Film Editor: Monique Fardoulis (x3)
Original Music: Matthieu Chabrol (x3)
Written by Claude Chabrol from a novel by Georges Simenon; Claude Chabrol from a script by Henri-Georges Clouzot; Claude Chabrol
Produced by Marin Karmitz (x3)
Directed by Claude Chabrol (x3)
Not all Claude Chabrol films are equal, but...
- 2/21/2017
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Aux quatre coinsOrigins in art are forever in doubt. Popular culture seems to imagine that what we now call the French New Wave emerged from thin air with François Truffaut's The 400 Blows (1959) and Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless (1960), but that blinkered narrative ignores features ranging from Agnès Varda’s Le pointe courte (1955) and Claude Chabrol’s Le beau Serge (1958) to Alain Resnais and Marguerite Duras’s Hiroshima, mon amour (1959). Even before these, the filmmakers we associate—through later fame, scandal, obscurity, venerability, and legend—with the New Wave made short films, a medium encouraged by the theatrical practice, now long gone in France, of regularly exhibiting dramatic and documentary short films in cinemas. Early shorts by Jacques Demy, Chris Marker, Truffaut, Godard, and others reach back into the mid-50s, but only two of the New Wave’s anointed truly began their filmmaking at the halfway point of the 20th century: Eric Rohmer,...
- 10/17/2016
- MUBI
Dailies is a round-up of essential film writing, news bits, videos, and other highlights from across the Internet. If you’d like to submit a piece for consideration, get in touch with us in the comments below or on Twitter at @TheFilmStage.
All The President’s Men will opens the 2016 TCM Classic Film Festival. See more films here.
Watch Yorgos Lanthimos and Ariane Labed discuss the making of The Lobster:
Little White Lies‘ Katherine McLaughlin on how Anomalisa echoes the existential blues of Chantal Akerman’s Je, Tu, Il, Elle:
What is it be human? What is it to ache? What is it to be alive?” asks customer service expert Michael Stone in Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson’s stop-motion masterpiece Anomalisa. These are the same questions that the late Belgium filmmaker Chantal Akerman posed over 30 years ago in her black-and-white debut feature Je, Tu, Il, Elle.
Watch a...
All The President’s Men will opens the 2016 TCM Classic Film Festival. See more films here.
Watch Yorgos Lanthimos and Ariane Labed discuss the making of The Lobster:
Little White Lies‘ Katherine McLaughlin on how Anomalisa echoes the existential blues of Chantal Akerman’s Je, Tu, Il, Elle:
What is it be human? What is it to ache? What is it to be alive?” asks customer service expert Michael Stone in Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson’s stop-motion masterpiece Anomalisa. These are the same questions that the late Belgium filmmaker Chantal Akerman posed over 30 years ago in her black-and-white debut feature Je, Tu, Il, Elle.
Watch a...
- 3/14/2016
- by TFS Staff
- The Film Stage
The Eighth Annual Robert Classic French Film Festival — co-produced by Cinema St. Louis and the Webster University Film Series — celebrates St. Louis’ Gallic heritage and France’s cinematic legacy. The featured films span the decades from the 1920s through the early 1990s, offering a comprehensive overview of French cinema.
The fest is annually highlighted by significant restorations, and we’re especially pleased to present Jacques Rivette’s long-unavailable epic Out 1: Spectre Additional restoration highlights include Jean-Luc Godard’s A Married Woman and Max Ophüls’ too-little-seen From Mayerling To Sarajevo. Both Ophüls’ film and Louis Malle’s Elevator To The Gallows – with a jazz score by St. Louis-area native Miles Davis — screen from 35mm prints. All films will screen at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium (47- E. Lockwood)
Music fans will further delight in the Rats & People Motion Picture Orchestra’s accompaniment and original score for Carl Th. Dreyer’s...
The fest is annually highlighted by significant restorations, and we’re especially pleased to present Jacques Rivette’s long-unavailable epic Out 1: Spectre Additional restoration highlights include Jean-Luc Godard’s A Married Woman and Max Ophüls’ too-little-seen From Mayerling To Sarajevo. Both Ophüls’ film and Louis Malle’s Elevator To The Gallows – with a jazz score by St. Louis-area native Miles Davis — screen from 35mm prints. All films will screen at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium (47- E. Lockwood)
Music fans will further delight in the Rats & People Motion Picture Orchestra’s accompaniment and original score for Carl Th. Dreyer’s...
- 2/16/2016
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Jacques Rivette, the Cahiers du Cinema critic and director of "The Nun" (1966), "L'amour fou" (1969), "Celine and Julie Go Boating" (1974), Cannes Grand Prix winner "La belle noiseuse" (1991), and other classics of the French cinema — more than 20 features in all — died Friday morning at home in Paris. He had Alzheimer's disease, the New York Times reported his producer Martine Marignac as saying, while the French culture minister, on Twitter, called today one of "profound sadness." He was 87. Along with Cahiers colleagues Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, and Eric Rohmer, Rivette reinvented both film and film criticism in the 1950s, 1960s, and beyond. Truffaut may have been correct that the French New Wave began "thanks to Rivette" — his 1961 film "Paris Belongs to Us," inspired by Italian neorealist Roberto Rossellini, was shot in 1958, after Chabrol's "Le Beau Serge" but...
- 1/29/2016
- by Matt Brennan
- Thompson on Hollywood
Locarno's announced that Otar Iosseliani’s Chant d’hiver has been added to the lineup of its upcoming 68th edition. And Bertrand Tavernier will not only receive a Golden Lion in Venice for his lifetime achievement, he'll also be the Guest Director of Venice Classics, which has announced a first round of 21 restorations including Akira Kurosawa's Red Beard, Sergei Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky, Federico Fellini's Amarcord, Claude Chabrol's Le beau Serge, Ernst Lubitsch's Heaven Can Wait, Hou Hsiao-hsien's The Boys from Feng-kuei, Pier Paolo Pasolini's Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom. » - David Hudson...
- 7/20/2015
- Fandor: Keyframe
Locarno's announced that Otar Iosseliani’s Chant d’hiver has been added to the lineup of its upcoming 68th edition. And Bertrand Tavernier will not only receive a Golden Lion in Venice for his lifetime achievement, he'll also be the Guest Director of Venice Classics, which has announced a first round of 21 restorations including Akira Kurosawa's Red Beard, Sergei Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky, Federico Fellini's Amarcord, Claude Chabrol's Le beau Serge, Ernst Lubitsch's Heaven Can Wait, Hou Hsiao-hsien's The Boys from Feng-kuei, Pier Paolo Pasolini's Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom. » - David Hudson...
- 7/20/2015
- Keyframe
Akahige, Amarcord, Aleksandr Nevskij among Venice Classics titles; Bertrand Tavernier selects four films.
Akahige, Amarcord, Aleksandr Nevskij and A Matter of Life and Death are among 21 titles announced today to screen in Venice’s (September 2-12) Classics section, which will reveal further titles later this month.
Director Bertrand Tavernier, who is to receive the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement award, has selected and will present four films for the Classics strand: Pattes Blances (White Paws) by Jean Grémillion, La Lupa (The Vixen) by Alberto Lattuada, Sonnenstrahl (Ray of Sunshine) by Pál Fejös and A Matter of Life and Death by Michael Powell and Eric Pressburger.
The 21 restorations:
Akahige (Red Beard) by Akira Kurosawa (Japan, 1965, 185’, B&W), restoration by Tōhō Co., Ltd.
Aleksandr Nevskij (Alexander Nevsky) by Sergej Michajlovič Ėjzenštejn (Ussr, 1938, 108’, B&W), restoration by Mosfilm
Amarcord by Federico Fellini (Italy, 1973, 123’, Color) restoration by Cineteca di Bologna with the support of yoox.com and the...
Akahige, Amarcord, Aleksandr Nevskij and A Matter of Life and Death are among 21 titles announced today to screen in Venice’s (September 2-12) Classics section, which will reveal further titles later this month.
Director Bertrand Tavernier, who is to receive the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement award, has selected and will present four films for the Classics strand: Pattes Blances (White Paws) by Jean Grémillion, La Lupa (The Vixen) by Alberto Lattuada, Sonnenstrahl (Ray of Sunshine) by Pál Fejös and A Matter of Life and Death by Michael Powell and Eric Pressburger.
The 21 restorations:
Akahige (Red Beard) by Akira Kurosawa (Japan, 1965, 185’, B&W), restoration by Tōhō Co., Ltd.
Aleksandr Nevskij (Alexander Nevsky) by Sergej Michajlovič Ėjzenštejn (Ussr, 1938, 108’, B&W), restoration by Mosfilm
Amarcord by Federico Fellini (Italy, 1973, 123’, Color) restoration by Cineteca di Bologna with the support of yoox.com and the...
- 7/20/2015
- by mantus@masonlive.gmu.edu (Madison Antus)
- ScreenDaily
Le silence de la mer
Written and directed by Jean-Pierre Melville
France, 1949
Nearly every mention of Jean-Pierre Melville’s cinema inevitably alludes to his crime films, and for good reason. Of his 13 features, nine fall under this general heading, and for the most part, they are his best and most admired. Amongst the rest of his filmography, slightly varying and further distinguishing his career, are his occasional forays into the war film—or, more precisely, the wartime film, for typical battleground scenarios are negligible. This is the case with Léon Morin, Priest (1961), with The Army of Shadows (1969), his extraordinary ode to the French resistance, of which he was a member, and this is the case with his debut, Le silence de la mer. (His 1950 feature, Les Enfants Terribles, defies generic categorization.)
“The war years were the best years of my life.” Such comments from Melville often got a rise out of those around him,...
Written and directed by Jean-Pierre Melville
France, 1949
Nearly every mention of Jean-Pierre Melville’s cinema inevitably alludes to his crime films, and for good reason. Of his 13 features, nine fall under this general heading, and for the most part, they are his best and most admired. Amongst the rest of his filmography, slightly varying and further distinguishing his career, are his occasional forays into the war film—or, more precisely, the wartime film, for typical battleground scenarios are negligible. This is the case with Léon Morin, Priest (1961), with The Army of Shadows (1969), his extraordinary ode to the French resistance, of which he was a member, and this is the case with his debut, Le silence de la mer. (His 1950 feature, Les Enfants Terribles, defies generic categorization.)
“The war years were the best years of my life.” Such comments from Melville often got a rise out of those around him,...
- 5/13/2015
- by Jeremy Carr
- SoundOnSight
Louis Malle's classic contains many of the innovations that would become associated with the New Wave and demonstrates a kinship with Claude Chabrol
Is there any movie that's more perfectly French, more perfectly Parisian, and more perfectly 1950s than Louis Malle's debut Lift To The Scaffold? Melville's Bob Le Flambeur, perhaps, or Cocteau's Orphée, but there is also in Malle's movie a strong indication of the new directions French cinema would soon take. Although Malle was never officially a part of La Nouvelle Vague, Lift To The Scaffold contains many of the innovations that would later become more closely associated with the Cahiers du Cinéma generation.
This movie made Jeanne Moreau, whose iconic beauty was newly revealed here after Malle got her to ditch the makeup she'd hitherto relied on. She went on to become one of the banner faces of the New Wave, most famously for Truffaut in Jules Et Jim,...
Is there any movie that's more perfectly French, more perfectly Parisian, and more perfectly 1950s than Louis Malle's debut Lift To The Scaffold? Melville's Bob Le Flambeur, perhaps, or Cocteau's Orphée, but there is also in Malle's movie a strong indication of the new directions French cinema would soon take. Although Malle was never officially a part of La Nouvelle Vague, Lift To The Scaffold contains many of the innovations that would later become more closely associated with the Cahiers du Cinéma generation.
This movie made Jeanne Moreau, whose iconic beauty was newly revealed here after Malle got her to ditch the makeup she'd hitherto relied on. She went on to become one of the banner faces of the New Wave, most famously for Truffaut in Jules Et Jim,...
- 2/3/2014
- by John Patterson
- The Guardian - Film News
Festival’s music documentaries include Revenge of the Mekons [pictured] and Harlem Street Singer.
The 27th Leeds International Film Festival (Nov 6-21) will open with Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity.
The festival programme includes 163 films in 250 screenings at four main venues: Leeds Town Hall, Hyde Park Picture House, Vue Leeds at the Light and the Everyman.
The official selection includes festival hit such as Blue is the Warmest Colour, Child’s Pose, Nebraska and Stranger By The Lake; plus discovery titles including Harmony Lessons, The Strange Little Cat and the UK premiere of Finnish veteran Pirjo Honkasalo’s Concrete Night.
Leeds’ cult cinema section Fanomenon will include the UK premiere of Korea’s Cold Eyes, a Batman offering with a new documentary about Frank Miller, and the Night of the Dead and Day of the Dead series with films such as 100 Bloody Acres and Big Bad Wolves. Cult classics to screen include Deadlock, Wake in Fright, and Ikarie...
The 27th Leeds International Film Festival (Nov 6-21) will open with Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity.
The festival programme includes 163 films in 250 screenings at four main venues: Leeds Town Hall, Hyde Park Picture House, Vue Leeds at the Light and the Everyman.
The official selection includes festival hit such as Blue is the Warmest Colour, Child’s Pose, Nebraska and Stranger By The Lake; plus discovery titles including Harmony Lessons, The Strange Little Cat and the UK premiere of Finnish veteran Pirjo Honkasalo’s Concrete Night.
Leeds’ cult cinema section Fanomenon will include the UK premiere of Korea’s Cold Eyes, a Batman offering with a new documentary about Frank Miller, and the Night of the Dead and Day of the Dead series with films such as 100 Bloody Acres and Big Bad Wolves. Cult classics to screen include Deadlock, Wake in Fright, and Ikarie...
- 10/8/2013
- by wendy.mitchell@screendaily.com (Wendy Mitchell)
- ScreenDaily
The French actress Bernadette Lafont has died, at 74. Fresh-faced and with an energetic spontaneity that could make her seem a barely containable force on screen, Lafont was one of a handful of performers who helped shape the face of the French New Wave in the late 1950s and 1960s. She was still a teenager when she made her debut, alongside her then-husband Gerard Blain, in Francois Truffaut’s debut short, Les Mistons (1957). A year later, she and Blain co-starred in Claude Chabrol’s first film, Le Beau Serge. She subsequently appeared in Chabrol’s A Double Tour (1959 ...
- 8/1/2013
- avclub.com
Actor with a natural and rebellious style, she helped to launch the French New Wave
Bernadette Lafont, who has died aged 74, could have claimed to be the first female star of the Nouvelle Vague. François Truffaut chose the sensual, dark-haired, 18-year-old Lafont and her new husband, Gérard Blain, to play lovers in the director's first professional film, Les Mistons (The Mischief-Makers, 1957). In this charming short, shot in Nîmes one summer, a group of pubescent boys spy on Lafont and Blain's lovemaking in the fields. Blain and Lafont were also picked to appear in arguably the first French New Wave feature, Claude Chabrol's Le Beau Serge (1958). In this film, about a young man returning to his childhood home, Lafont played the "village vamp".
Lafont's fresh look and performance style crystallised the movement's ideological and cinematic ambitions. Truffaut and his colleagues found mainstream stars inadequate to their needs, using instead unknown and non-professional actors,...
Bernadette Lafont, who has died aged 74, could have claimed to be the first female star of the Nouvelle Vague. François Truffaut chose the sensual, dark-haired, 18-year-old Lafont and her new husband, Gérard Blain, to play lovers in the director's first professional film, Les Mistons (The Mischief-Makers, 1957). In this charming short, shot in Nîmes one summer, a group of pubescent boys spy on Lafont and Blain's lovemaking in the fields. Blain and Lafont were also picked to appear in arguably the first French New Wave feature, Claude Chabrol's Le Beau Serge (1958). In this film, about a young man returning to his childhood home, Lafont played the "village vamp".
Lafont's fresh look and performance style crystallised the movement's ideological and cinematic ambitions. Truffaut and his colleagues found mainstream stars inadequate to their needs, using instead unknown and non-professional actors,...
- 7/26/2013
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
(Claude Chabrol, 1958/59, Eureka!, 12)
Coined in 1957 by the French journalist François Giroud to describe a rebellious generation of young French people polled by L'Express, the term "nouvelle vague" was rapidly applied to an amorphous group of innovative film‑makers, the most vociferously self-publicising of whom were the critics working for Cahiers du Cinéma, who embraced "la politique des auteurs".
The first of them to direct a feature film was Claude Chabrol, co-author in 1957 of the first book on the Cahiers hero Alfred Hitchcock. Chabrol used his wife's windfall inheritance to make what has been called the first new wave movie, Le beau Serge, followed immediately by a companion piece, Les cousins. Both were shot in a naturalistic manner by key nouvelle vague cameraman Henri Decaë, and star Jean-Claude Brialy and Gérard Blain.
In Le beau Serge, Brialy plays a Parisian who goes back to his home village to save the life...
Coined in 1957 by the French journalist François Giroud to describe a rebellious generation of young French people polled by L'Express, the term "nouvelle vague" was rapidly applied to an amorphous group of innovative film‑makers, the most vociferously self-publicising of whom were the critics working for Cahiers du Cinéma, who embraced "la politique des auteurs".
The first of them to direct a feature film was Claude Chabrol, co-author in 1957 of the first book on the Cahiers hero Alfred Hitchcock. Chabrol used his wife's windfall inheritance to make what has been called the first new wave movie, Le beau Serge, followed immediately by a companion piece, Les cousins. Both were shot in a naturalistic manner by key nouvelle vague cameraman Henri Decaë, and star Jean-Claude Brialy and Gérard Blain.
In Le beau Serge, Brialy plays a Parisian who goes back to his home village to save the life...
- 4/13/2013
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
Welcome to a new regular feature looking at the new releases from Eureka Entertainment's Masters of Cinema series. It will publish on release day, whenever a new title (or titles) hits the shelves, taking in the film(s) in question and the package as a whole.For many, Jean Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut are widely held to be the pioneers of the French New Wave (or Nouvelle Vague) movement. It was Claude Chabrol, however, who is credited with kick-starting this ambitious and groundbreaking filmmaking coup, with his 1958 debut Le beau Serge paving the way for such classics as Le Quatre Cent Coups, A Bout de Souffle and his own follow-up, Les Cousins. Chabrol started out, as was the case for Godard, Truffaut, Jacques Rivette and almost...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
- 4/8/2013
- Screen Anarchy
Eureka Entertainment's connoisseur label, Masters of Cinema, has just announced a new batch of titles hitting UK Blu-ray and DVD in March and April of next year, including fantastic new restorations of films by New Wave auteur Claude Chabrol, Italian maestro Michaelangelo Antonioni and French supremo Henri-Georges Clouzot, as well as Japanese masters Kawashima Yuzo and Yamanaka Sadao. In March, Claude Chabrol joins the collection for the first time with releases of Le Beau Serge and Les Cousins, alongside fellow Frenchman Henri-Georges Clouzot, whose comedy thriller The Murderer Lives at 21 also makes its debut. April sees the release of Michaelangelo Antonioni's La Notte, but perhaps more exciting are the releases of Kawashima Yuzo's A Sun-Tribe Myth from the Bakumatsu Era, and the entire surviving oeuvre...
- 12/11/2012
- Screen Anarchy
★★★☆☆ French New Wave director Claude Chabrol's latter career is rarely admired and often seen as his weaker period, yet with Rien Ne Va Plus (The Swindle, 1997) all the tell-tell signs of what made the late director great, are present. As an auteur he was always indebted to Hitchcock (his first feature, 1957's Le Beau Serge, was inspired by Hitch's film1943's Shadow of a Doubt) and in this crime-thriller that heritage is present in both the themes and style.
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- 9/25/2012
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
The shadow of cinematographer Charles L. Bitsch and his camera, briefly visible during a dolly shot in Jacques Rivette's Paris Belongs to Us (1961). Hardly a "material object," you'd say, but Rivette's plots are often about the blurred line between the non-existent and the totally tangible, and, like one of his barely-there conspiracies (such as, well, the one in Paris Belongs to Us), the shadow cast by Bitsch beckons to be interpreted in paranoid, metaphorical terms.
Jonathan Rosenabum once described Paris Belongs to Us as the most mature of the Nouvelle Vague debuts, and the most amateurish. It's certainly a film of impoverished means. Though it's hard to find details on how much—or rather how little—it cost to make, the Cahiers du cinéma group's debuts were all cheapies (adjusted for inflation, the most expensive was probably the half-million-dollar Le beau Serge, with Breathless costing the modern equivalent of...
Jonathan Rosenabum once described Paris Belongs to Us as the most mature of the Nouvelle Vague debuts, and the most amateurish. It's certainly a film of impoverished means. Though it's hard to find details on how much—or rather how little—it cost to make, the Cahiers du cinéma group's debuts were all cheapies (adjusted for inflation, the most expensive was probably the half-million-dollar Le beau Serge, with Breathless costing the modern equivalent of...
- 2/27/2012
- MUBI
Things don’t always turn out the way you expect. Claude Chabrol’s Le Beau Serge pounds home that message in many different ways as a man revisits his childhood home only to discover his oldest friend Serge has had his life run into the ground. Here was a man with the potential for scholarly pursuits and a rewarding career as an architect, but an unexpected pregnancy and the death of the newborn drove him into a spiral of depression and booze. Le Beau Serge reveals just how complicated human relationships can be, setting up the protagonist’s very simplistic notion that he can arrive on the scene and set things right just by pointing out where they went wrong. In so doing, he gets his own bitter pill; one that cures him of his illusions about the way things should be and lets him finally see how things are.
- 10/20/2011
- by Lex Walker
- JustPressPlay.net
Le beau Serge
"The story of Les cousins could be straight out of one of the Balzac novels that the film's lead character Charles peruses at a second-hand bookshop," suggests Andrew Schenker in Slant: "Ambitious provincial comes to Paris and receives his moral education in the hotbed of corruption and/or decadence that characterizes life in the capital. In Claude Chabrol's film, his second directorial effort following his 1958 debut, Le beau Serge, the milieu in question is the debauched world of students, young women, and older hangers-on that the director delineates with superb specificity of detail and a virtuoso display of sickening verve." Criteron's presentation, he adds, "is a fitting testament to the late director's brilliance."
Criterion's also releasing Le beau Serge today and the essays by Terrence Rafferty that accompany each have been posted in Current. When Le beau Serge premiered out of competition in Cannes, notes Rafferty,...
"The story of Les cousins could be straight out of one of the Balzac novels that the film's lead character Charles peruses at a second-hand bookshop," suggests Andrew Schenker in Slant: "Ambitious provincial comes to Paris and receives his moral education in the hotbed of corruption and/or decadence that characterizes life in the capital. In Claude Chabrol's film, his second directorial effort following his 1958 debut, Le beau Serge, the milieu in question is the debauched world of students, young women, and older hangers-on that the director delineates with superb specificity of detail and a virtuoso display of sickening verve." Criteron's presentation, he adds, "is a fitting testament to the late director's brilliance."
Criterion's also releasing Le beau Serge today and the essays by Terrence Rafferty that accompany each have been posted in Current. When Le beau Serge premiered out of competition in Cannes, notes Rafferty,...
- 9/22/2011
- MUBI
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Bridesmaids Watching this on Blu-ray it was my second time seeing this film so watching the unrated version I really didn't notice any major differences outside of some scenes seeming to run a bit long. When I wrote my theatrical review I ended it saying "I'm not sure I want to see it again," and after seeing it again I still feel that way.
I was watching it with my girlfriend and the longer and longer the film wore on she was getting frustrated with how many bad things happen with Kristen Wiig's character rather than how many funny things were happening. It was an interesting complaint and I'm not sure if it was a reaction to the additional six minutes on the unrated cut, but I also got the impression she wouldn't even be interested in giving the theatrical cut a spin.
Bridesmaids Watching this on Blu-ray it was my second time seeing this film so watching the unrated version I really didn't notice any major differences outside of some scenes seeming to run a bit long. When I wrote my theatrical review I ended it saying "I'm not sure I want to see it again," and after seeing it again I still feel that way.
I was watching it with my girlfriend and the longer and longer the film wore on she was getting frustrated with how many bad things happen with Kristen Wiig's character rather than how many funny things were happening. It was an interesting complaint and I'm not sure if it was a reaction to the additional six minutes on the unrated cut, but I also got the impression she wouldn't even be interested in giving the theatrical cut a spin.
- 9/20/2011
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
Your Weekly Source for the Newest Releases to Blu-Ray Tuesday, September 20th, 2011
Boccaccio ’70 (1962)
Synopsis: Four legendary filmmakers direct some of Europe’s biggest stars in Boccaccio ’70, a landmark anthology film. Mario Monicelli (Big Deal on Madonna Street), Federico Fellini (8½), Luchino Visconti (The Leopard) and Vittorio De Sica (Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow) direct Sophia Loren, Anita Ekberg, Romy Schneider and more through four stories of unashamed eros. Modeled on Boccaccio’s Decameron, they are comic moral tales about the hypocrisies surrounding sex in 1960s Italy. Monicelli’s “Renzo e Luciana” (cut out of the original American release) is a frothy tale of young love and office politics in the big city. Fellini’s notorious “Le tentazioni del dottor Antonio” features Ekberg as a busty model in a milk advertisement whose image begins to haunt an aging prude. Visconti’s “Il Lavoro” stars Romy Schneider as a trophy wife enduring her husband’s very public affairs,...
Boccaccio ’70 (1962)
Synopsis: Four legendary filmmakers direct some of Europe’s biggest stars in Boccaccio ’70, a landmark anthology film. Mario Monicelli (Big Deal on Madonna Street), Federico Fellini (8½), Luchino Visconti (The Leopard) and Vittorio De Sica (Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow) direct Sophia Loren, Anita Ekberg, Romy Schneider and more through four stories of unashamed eros. Modeled on Boccaccio’s Decameron, they are comic moral tales about the hypocrisies surrounding sex in 1960s Italy. Monicelli’s “Renzo e Luciana” (cut out of the original American release) is a frothy tale of young love and office politics in the big city. Fellini’s notorious “Le tentazioni del dottor Antonio” features Ekberg as a busty model in a milk advertisement whose image begins to haunt an aging prude. Visconti’s “Il Lavoro” stars Romy Schneider as a trophy wife enduring her husband’s very public affairs,...
- 9/19/2011
- by Travis Keune
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
DVD Playhouse—September 2011
By Allen Gardner
In A Better World (Sony) Winner of last year’s Best Foreign Film Oscar, this Danish export looks at two fractured families and the effect that the adult world dysfunction has on their two sons, who form an immediate and potentially deadly bond. Director Susanne Bier delivers another powerful work that maintains its drive during the films’ first 2/3, then falters somewhat during the last act. Still, well-worth seeing, and beautifully made. Also available on Blu-ray disc. Bonuses: Deleted scenes; Commentary by Bier and editor Pernille Bech Christensen; Interview with Bier. Widescreen. Dolby and DTS-hd 5.1 surround.
X-men First Class (20th Century Fox) “Origins” film set in the early 1960s, traces the beginnings of Magento and Professor X (played ably here by Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy), and how the once-close friends and colleagues became bitter enemies. First half is slam-bang entertainment at its stylish best,...
By Allen Gardner
In A Better World (Sony) Winner of last year’s Best Foreign Film Oscar, this Danish export looks at two fractured families and the effect that the adult world dysfunction has on their two sons, who form an immediate and potentially deadly bond. Director Susanne Bier delivers another powerful work that maintains its drive during the films’ first 2/3, then falters somewhat during the last act. Still, well-worth seeing, and beautifully made. Also available on Blu-ray disc. Bonuses: Deleted scenes; Commentary by Bier and editor Pernille Bech Christensen; Interview with Bier. Widescreen. Dolby and DTS-hd 5.1 surround.
X-men First Class (20th Century Fox) “Origins” film set in the early 1960s, traces the beginnings of Magento and Professor X (played ably here by Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy), and how the once-close friends and colleagues became bitter enemies. First half is slam-bang entertainment at its stylish best,...
- 9/11/2011
- by The Hollywood Interview.com
- The Hollywood Interview
Criterion will issue two long-unavailable early films by the late, great French New Waver Claude Chabrol (Inspector Bellamy) on Sept. 20.
Le beau Serge (1958), writer/director Chabrol’s first feature, will be released on Blu-ray and DVD for the suggested retail prices of $39.95 and $29.95. Les cousins (1959) on Blu-ray and DVD will carry the same prices.
The drama Le beau Serge, Chabrol’s first film, follows a successful yet sickly young man (Jean‑Claude Brialy) who returns home to the small village where he grew up only to find himself at odds with his former close friend (Gérard Blain)—now unhappily married and a wretched alcoholic—and the provincial life he represents.
In Les cousins, Chabrol crafts a sly moral fable about a provincial boy who comes to live with his sophisticated bohemian cousin in Paris. Through these seeming opposites, Chabrol conjures a darkly comic character study that questions notions of good and evil,...
Le beau Serge (1958), writer/director Chabrol’s first feature, will be released on Blu-ray and DVD for the suggested retail prices of $39.95 and $29.95. Les cousins (1959) on Blu-ray and DVD will carry the same prices.
The drama Le beau Serge, Chabrol’s first film, follows a successful yet sickly young man (Jean‑Claude Brialy) who returns home to the small village where he grew up only to find himself at odds with his former close friend (Gérard Blain)—now unhappily married and a wretched alcoholic—and the provincial life he represents.
In Les cousins, Chabrol crafts a sly moral fable about a provincial boy who comes to live with his sophisticated bohemian cousin in Paris. Through these seeming opposites, Chabrol conjures a darkly comic character study that questions notions of good and evil,...
- 7/5/2011
- by Laurence
- Disc Dish
A licensing poster for The Dark Knight Rises uses an image indicating he's using the same batsuit from the last film while the film's logo has an indigo coloring.
A new photo of Rachel Weisz in The Deep Blue Sea, set photos from American Reunion, and set photos of Sacha Baron Cohen in his Saddam Hussein-based The Dictator character turning up with a gun at a track and field meet.
The second season of AMC's "The Walking Dead" has set a premiere date of October 21st.
The new trailer for "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2" is scheduled to hit trailers.apple.com at 4pm Us-pst tomorrow.
"Looks like Martin Scorsese is out and Sean Penn is in as the potential director of "The Comedian" starring Robert De Niro as an aging, bitterly funny stand-up comic which shoots in New York next year…" (full details)
"Quentin Tarantino...
A new photo of Rachel Weisz in The Deep Blue Sea, set photos from American Reunion, and set photos of Sacha Baron Cohen in his Saddam Hussein-based The Dictator character turning up with a gun at a track and field meet.
The second season of AMC's "The Walking Dead" has set a premiere date of October 21st.
The new trailer for "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2" is scheduled to hit trailers.apple.com at 4pm Us-pst tomorrow.
"Looks like Martin Scorsese is out and Sean Penn is in as the potential director of "The Comedian" starring Robert De Niro as an aging, bitterly funny stand-up comic which shoots in New York next year…" (full details)
"Quentin Tarantino...
- 6/15/2011
- by Garth Franklin
- Dark Horizons
With 2010 only a week over, it already feels like best-of and top-ten lists have been pouring in for months, and we’re already tired of them: the ranking, the exclusions (and inclusions), the rules and the qualifiers. Some people got to see films at festivals, others only catch movies on video; and the ability for us, or any publication, to come up with a system to fairly determine who saw what when and what they thought was the best seems an impossible feat. That doesn’t stop most people from doing it, but we liked the fantasy double features we did last year and for our 3rd Writers Poll we thought we'd do it again.
I asked our contributors to pick a single new film they saw in 2010—in theaters or at a festival—and creatively pair it with an old film they saw in 2010 to create a unique double feature.
I asked our contributors to pick a single new film they saw in 2010—in theaters or at a festival—and creatively pair it with an old film they saw in 2010 to create a unique double feature.
- 1/10/2011
- MUBI
Prolific French director of films with murder at their heart
The film director Claude Chabrol, who has died aged 80, created the first ripple of the French new wave with his first feature, Le Beau Serge (1958). Unlike some of his other critic colleagues on the influential journal Cahiers du Cinéma, who also became film-makers, Chabrol was perfectly happy in the mainstream. Along with Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette, he paid serious attention to Hollywood studio contract directors who retained their artistic personalities through good and bad films, thus formulating what came to be known as the "auteur theory".
In 1957, he and Rohmer wrote a short book on Alfred Hitchcock, whom they saw as a Catholic moralist. Hitchcock's black humour and fascination with guilt pervades the majority of Chabrol's films, most of which have murder at their heart. However, although Chabrol's thematic allegiance to Hitchcock remained intact, his...
The film director Claude Chabrol, who has died aged 80, created the first ripple of the French new wave with his first feature, Le Beau Serge (1958). Unlike some of his other critic colleagues on the influential journal Cahiers du Cinéma, who also became film-makers, Chabrol was perfectly happy in the mainstream. Along with Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette, he paid serious attention to Hollywood studio contract directors who retained their artistic personalities through good and bad films, thus formulating what came to be known as the "auteur theory".
In 1957, he and Rohmer wrote a short book on Alfred Hitchcock, whom they saw as a Catholic moralist. Hitchcock's black humour and fascination with guilt pervades the majority of Chabrol's films, most of which have murder at their heart. However, although Chabrol's thematic allegiance to Hitchcock remained intact, his...
- 9/14/2010
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
It’s always sad to write about anybody who dies in the film business, but today’s loss is a big one. Claude Chabrol, a fellow critic and one of the founders of the French New Wave, which is a very big part of the Criterion Collection, has died at the age of 80. And like most filmmakers, he was working right until the end which is what all artists do when they love the medium as much as they do. So I wanted to take a few minutes out of your time to showcase a top 10 of his films. Sadly he isn’t featured within the Collection, but he is one of many directors that deserves a place within its walls. So without further adieu, let’s get into the wonders of Claude Chabrol.
10. Le Beau Serge (1958)
Why not start this list with Chabrol’s first film? It was an...
10. Le Beau Serge (1958)
Why not start this list with Chabrol’s first film? It was an...
- 9/13/2010
- by James McCormick
- CriterionCast
French filmmaker Claude Chabrol, who helped start the New Wave movement in the 1950s, died Sunday at age 80.
Born in Paris on June 24, 1930, Chabrol became famous for his sombre portrayals of French provincial bourgeois life.
Along with Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, he was an icon of French New Wave cinema, with all three writing for the renowned Cahiers du Cinema.
Chabrol authored dozens of films over more than 50 years, from his first work, "Le Beau Serge," made in 1958, to his last film, "Bellamy," starring Gerard Depardieu, which was released last year.
...
Born in Paris on June 24, 1930, Chabrol became famous for his sombre portrayals of French provincial bourgeois life.
Along with Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, he was an icon of French New Wave cinema, with all three writing for the renowned Cahiers du Cinema.
Chabrol authored dozens of films over more than 50 years, from his first work, "Le Beau Serge," made in 1958, to his last film, "Bellamy," starring Gerard Depardieu, which was released last year.
...
- 9/13/2010
- Moving Pictures Magazine
By Ali Naderzad - September 12, 2010
The man with the pipe is dead. Claude Chabrol, the director of "Violette" and "Le beau Serge" and the author of noirish tightly-wrapped thrillers that had movie-goers on the edge of their seat, has passed on. One of the founding fathers of New Wave Chabrol was, like his contemporaries of that time, a film critic for the Cahiers du Cinéma in the 1970s and frequented the Cinémathèque Française. He first became involved in cinema as a boy, however, operating a movie projector in the village he grew up in. Like his hero Alfred Hitchcock, about whom he wrote a book, Chabrol often made cameo appearances in his films. The themes he drew on throughout his fifty-year career were repetitive, but subtly so. He'd cast an amused glance at provincial bourgeois, decipher women with an ironic empathy, meddle with small-time crime and market prodigiously well the ever-recurring theme of inanity,...
The man with the pipe is dead. Claude Chabrol, the director of "Violette" and "Le beau Serge" and the author of noirish tightly-wrapped thrillers that had movie-goers on the edge of their seat, has passed on. One of the founding fathers of New Wave Chabrol was, like his contemporaries of that time, a film critic for the Cahiers du Cinéma in the 1970s and frequented the Cinémathèque Française. He first became involved in cinema as a boy, however, operating a movie projector in the village he grew up in. Like his hero Alfred Hitchcock, about whom he wrote a book, Chabrol often made cameo appearances in his films. The themes he drew on throughout his fifty-year career were repetitive, but subtly so. He'd cast an amused glance at provincial bourgeois, decipher women with an ironic empathy, meddle with small-time crime and market prodigiously well the ever-recurring theme of inanity,...
- 9/13/2010
- by Screen Comment
- Screen Comment
The French New Wave veteran has died aged 80. We look back over his career with a selection of clips from his films
Along with François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol ushered in the New Wave that washed over French cinema at the end of the 1950s. Like them a critic turned filmmaker, Chabrol shared their appreciation of classical genre form – to some, he appreciated it too much, exploring rather than subverting its strictures. But his prodigious output and technical mastery assure his place as one of the great figures of cinema's first century.
Born in 1930 to a middle-class family, Chabrol studied law before joining Godard, Truffaut, Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette in making Cahiers du Cinema, the epicentre of auteurist celebration of 'low' Hollywood. In 1957, he and Rohmer published their influential study of Hitchcock – a director who would have an enduring influence on Chabrol's work behind the camera – and,...
Along with François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol ushered in the New Wave that washed over French cinema at the end of the 1950s. Like them a critic turned filmmaker, Chabrol shared their appreciation of classical genre form – to some, he appreciated it too much, exploring rather than subverting its strictures. But his prodigious output and technical mastery assure his place as one of the great figures of cinema's first century.
Born in 1930 to a middle-class family, Chabrol studied law before joining Godard, Truffaut, Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette in making Cahiers du Cinema, the epicentre of auteurist celebration of 'low' Hollywood. In 1957, he and Rohmer published their influential study of Hitchcock – a director who would have an enduring influence on Chabrol's work behind the camera – and,...
- 9/13/2010
- by Ben Walters
- The Guardian - Film News
Legendary French director Claude Chabrol has died at the age of 80.
The filmmaker passed away on Sunday.
Chabrol made his mark as one of the founders of French cinema's New Wave movement and went on to enjoy more than half a century behind the camera, making more than 70 films and TV productions.
He first gained attention with his directorial debut Le Beau Serge in 1958. His film credits include Les Biches, The Butcher and the 2000 mystery Merci pour le chocolat, which featured one of his many muses, actress Isabelle Huppert.
France's Prime Minister Francois Fillon has paid tribute to Chabrol, calling him a "great director, producer and screenwriter (who) was one of the grand figures of the Nouvelle vague (New Wave), which revolutionised the style and techniques of cinema by looking at real experience, true life, that which is indiscreet and subtle."...
The filmmaker passed away on Sunday.
Chabrol made his mark as one of the founders of French cinema's New Wave movement and went on to enjoy more than half a century behind the camera, making more than 70 films and TV productions.
He first gained attention with his directorial debut Le Beau Serge in 1958. His film credits include Les Biches, The Butcher and the 2000 mystery Merci pour le chocolat, which featured one of his many muses, actress Isabelle Huppert.
France's Prime Minister Francois Fillon has paid tribute to Chabrol, calling him a "great director, producer and screenwriter (who) was one of the grand figures of the Nouvelle vague (New Wave), which revolutionised the style and techniques of cinema by looking at real experience, true life, that which is indiscreet and subtle."...
- 9/12/2010
- WENN
Claude Chabrol, who died Sunday, Sept. 12 at 80, was a founder of the New Wave and a giant of French cinema. This interview, which took place during the 1970 New York Film Festival, shows him at midpoint in his life, just as he had emerged from a period of neglect and was making some of his best films.
Claude Chabrol's "This Man Must Die" is advertised as a thriller, but I found it more of a macabre study of human behavior. There's no doubt as to the villain's identity, and little doubt that he will die (although how he dies is left deliciously ambiguous).
Unlike previous masters of thrillers like Hitchcock, Chabrol goes for mood and tone more than for plot. You get the notion that his killings and revenges are choreographed for a terribly observant camera and an ear that hears the slightest change in human speech.
For this reason,...
Claude Chabrol's "This Man Must Die" is advertised as a thriller, but I found it more of a macabre study of human behavior. There's no doubt as to the villain's identity, and little doubt that he will die (although how he dies is left deliciously ambiguous).
Unlike previous masters of thrillers like Hitchcock, Chabrol goes for mood and tone more than for plot. You get the notion that his killings and revenges are choreographed for a terribly observant camera and an ear that hears the slightest change in human speech.
For this reason,...
- 9/12/2010
- by Roger Ebert
- blogs.suntimes.com/ebert
As you've undoubtedly heard, the French auteur Claude Chabrol passed away at 80. Both The Telegraph and Glenn Kenny have fine obits for your reading pleasure and if you can read French, Le Monde collects testimonials from many cinematic luminaries to honor him. I didn't know his career as well as I should but I quite liked both L'Enfer (1994) and the recent Ludivine Sagnier love/murder triangle A Girl Cut in Two. (The two of them are pictured to your left.) The prolific director's Le Beau Serge was the first French New Wave offering and we should all probably program ourselves mini-fests to catch up on his best work. Any suggestions? I'm reading these titles a lot: The Cry of the Owl, Les Biches and Le Boucher. I suppose it wouldn't hurt to catch up with any of his Isabelle Huppert collaborations either. Here's his available filmography from Netflix, LOVEFilm or GreenCine,...
- 9/12/2010
- by NATHANIEL R
- FilmExperience
This is a sad day indeed. French New Wave pioneer, Claude Chabrol, has died today aged 80. Always my personal favourite of the Cahiers du Cinema gang Chabrol’s 1958 movie Le Beau Serge and Les Cousins (1959) helped kick-start the movement.
Mayor of Paris Bertrand Delanoe described the film-maker as:
“Claude Chabrol produced an immense and particularly inspired body or work that stands today as a monument of French cinema.”
Before venturing into the film-making world, he worked alongside Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, Jacques Rivette and Eric Rohmer at the famous Cahiers du Cinema magazine in the 1950s.
In the late ’60s he produced a string of classic thriller pictures including the masterpiece Le Boucher and Les Biches (1968), La Femme infidèle (1969), Que la bête meure (1969), Le Boucher (1970)
and La Rupture (1970).
In the 1980s and ’90s he returned to acclaim with Isabelle Huppert at his side in a string of classy films such as Madame Bovary,...
Mayor of Paris Bertrand Delanoe described the film-maker as:
“Claude Chabrol produced an immense and particularly inspired body or work that stands today as a monument of French cinema.”
Before venturing into the film-making world, he worked alongside Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, Jacques Rivette and Eric Rohmer at the famous Cahiers du Cinema magazine in the 1950s.
In the late ’60s he produced a string of classic thriller pictures including the masterpiece Le Boucher and Les Biches (1968), La Femme infidèle (1969), Que la bête meure (1969), Le Boucher (1970)
and La Rupture (1970).
In the 1980s and ’90s he returned to acclaim with Isabelle Huppert at his side in a string of classy films such as Madame Bovary,...
- 9/12/2010
- by Martyn Conterio
- FilmShaft.com
Paris – French filmmaker Claude Chabrol, father of the New Wave movement, has died at age 80, Paris deputy mayor Christophe Girard confirmed on Sunday.
Chabrol began his career as a critic for prestigious Gallic film magazine Les Cahiers du Cinema then went on to become a prominent director with more than 50 films under his belt. He helped to launch the New Wave movement in the 1950s and hasn’t stopped working since.
Chabrol is known as a more mainstream director who has managed to make auteur cinema accessible to audiences both in France and abroad.
From “Le Beau Serge” in 1959 to his more recent titles including 2009's "Bellamy," 2007's "A Girl Cut in Two" and 2006 film "A Comedy of Power," Chabrol's career has had an uncommonly long and successful run through his more than half-century career.
His "Story of Women" about abortion under the Vichy regime sparked controversy and violent protest...
Chabrol began his career as a critic for prestigious Gallic film magazine Les Cahiers du Cinema then went on to become a prominent director with more than 50 films under his belt. He helped to launch the New Wave movement in the 1950s and hasn’t stopped working since.
Chabrol is known as a more mainstream director who has managed to make auteur cinema accessible to audiences both in France and abroad.
From “Le Beau Serge” in 1959 to his more recent titles including 2009's "Bellamy," 2007's "A Girl Cut in Two" and 2006 film "A Comedy of Power," Chabrol's career has had an uncommonly long and successful run through his more than half-century career.
His "Story of Women" about abortion under the Vichy regime sparked controversy and violent protest...
- 9/12/2010
- by By Rebecca Leffler
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
The Guardian is reporting that the founding father of the Nouvelle Vague movement who turned out more than 80 films for the cinema and television has died.
Claude Chabrol, the celebrated French film director and a founding father of the Nouvelle Vague movement, has died aged 80.
Christophe Girard, the deputy mayor of Paris, announced the filmmaker’s death this morning, saying: “[Chabrol] was a colossal French director: free-minded, impertinent, political and loquacious. Thank you, Claude Chabrol, thank you for the cinema.”
A compatriot of greats such as François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, Chabrol rose to acclaim in the late 1950s after the release of Le Beau Serge, which was widely considered to have triggered the New Wave of innovative French cinema.
He went on to become one of Europe’s most prolific directors, turning out more than 80 films for the cinema and television. In the late 1960s and 70s he established himself...
Claude Chabrol, the celebrated French film director and a founding father of the Nouvelle Vague movement, has died aged 80.
Christophe Girard, the deputy mayor of Paris, announced the filmmaker’s death this morning, saying: “[Chabrol] was a colossal French director: free-minded, impertinent, political and loquacious. Thank you, Claude Chabrol, thank you for the cinema.”
A compatriot of greats such as François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, Chabrol rose to acclaim in the late 1950s after the release of Le Beau Serge, which was widely considered to have triggered the New Wave of innovative French cinema.
He went on to become one of Europe’s most prolific directors, turning out more than 80 films for the cinema and television. In the late 1960s and 70s he established himself...
- 9/12/2010
- by Michelle McCue
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Claude Chabrol, the celebrated French film director and a founding father of the Nouvelle Vague movement, has died aged 80.
Christophe Girard, the deputy mayor of Paris, announced the filmmaker's death this morning, saying: "[Chabrol] was a colossal French director: free-minded, impertinent, political and loquacious. Thank you, Claude Chabrol, thank you for the cinema."
A compatriot of greats such as François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, Chabrol rose to acclaim in the late 1950s after the release of Le Beau Serge, which was widely considered to have triggered the New Wave of innovative French cinema.
He went on to become one of Europe's most prolific directors, turning out more than 80 films for the cinema and television. In the late 1960s and 70s he established himself as a master of the psychologically explosive suspense thriller with works...
Christophe Girard, the deputy mayor of Paris, announced the filmmaker's death this morning, saying: "[Chabrol] was a colossal French director: free-minded, impertinent, political and loquacious. Thank you, Claude Chabrol, thank you for the cinema."
A compatriot of greats such as François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, Chabrol rose to acclaim in the late 1950s after the release of Le Beau Serge, which was widely considered to have triggered the New Wave of innovative French cinema.
He went on to become one of Europe's most prolific directors, turning out more than 80 films for the cinema and television. In the late 1960s and 70s he established himself as a master of the psychologically explosive suspense thriller with works...
- 9/12/2010
- by Lizzy Davies
- The Guardian - Film News
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