Behind the Scenes With My Favorite Actors: Sandrine Bonnaire in Claude Chabrol's La Cérémonie

"I don't know...I mean yes, it's fine."

Coming Of Age Together: Jean-Claude Brialy and Bernadette Lafont

When Claude Chabrol was casting his first film, LE BEAU SERGE, one wonders if he had any idea that he would help launch the careers of two of the brightest and best of all the French New Wave stars.
The irrepressible Bernadette Lafont was only 19 years old when Chabrol cast her in his iconic first film. Her only other previous film experience had been in Truffaut's fantastic short LES MISTONS that previous year. Her role as the object of the young boys obsessions in LES MISTONS had been noticed by nearly everyone and LE BEAU SERGE offered her a perfect first feature film.
Brialy always credited Chabrol for making his career and while he had appeared in several films before LE BEAU SERGE, it was really the one that placed him among the great actors of the day.

Brialy and Lafont would share a great onscreen chemistry and would continue to work together throughout their impressive careers. They would make a total of seven features together that would span the fifties, sixties, seventies and even eighties. Brialy would direct one of the features while Chabrol directed three. While the Chabrol features, LE BEAU SERGE, LES GODELUREAUX and INSPECTEUR LAVARDIN are the obvious highlights of their collaborations, I have a special fondness for Claude Miller's 1985 feature L'EFFRONTEE mostly due to being able to watch Brialy and Lafont acting with a young Charlotte Gainsbourg.

L'EFFRONTEE and INSPECTEUR LAVARDIN are both available on dvd while copies of LE BEAU SERGE can still be found on VHS. Unfortunately their other collaborations, including that second Chabrol, are currently unavailable commercially in the United States.

Chabrol's Le Boucher (1970)

I recently caught back up with Claude Chabrol’s 1970 feature Le Boucher (The Butcher), a film often considered among the great directors finest but one that has never been one of my favorites. While I still wouldn’t rank the film among my desert island Chabrol flics, it is still very obviously the work of a master in his prime and I find that my appreciation for it has grown since my first viewing about a decade ago.
Le Boucher is a remarkably stark and cold film that is less a murder mystery and more of a celebration of Chabrol’s unbelievably composed and skilled camerawork. The plot, from a screenplay and story by Chabrol, is a relatively simple one. A teacher named Helene, played by the wonderful Stephane Audran, meets and begins to get involved with a local butcher named Popaul, Jean Yanne in an absolutely chilling performance, in the midst of a series of murders being committed in their small French community.
The identity of the murderer is more than easy to figure out so the film doesn’t really work as a murder mystery, but I don’t think Chabrol was aiming for that. Instead he is more interested in a compelling and rather obsessive character study of two people who have in very distinct ways lost themselves.



As played by the unnerving Audren, there is something wrong with Helene that isn’t immediately apparent. She lives alone in a small flat surrounded by her favorite paintings and little gifts from her children at school. When we first meet her she is composed and laughing but something is damaged in her. Halfway through the film we find that she was hurt in a relationship years before and has placed herself in self contained exile essentially cut off from the world.
Similarly the butcher Popaul has also been damaged, first by a cold and abusive father and then by many years in the war. As inhabited by Yanne, our title character is a haunted and angry soul who is going through life looking in from the outside (something Chabrol shows wonderfully by placing him looking through windows and glass doors throughout the film). One feels that Popaul was once a good man but, unlike Helene, he has given up completely on the world and has slipped too far into his own isolated existence.



Chabrol’s film is possibly one of the loneliest I have ever seen. With the exception of a party sequence at the beginning and the scenes with the children, the film is made up entirely of characters alone in the frame or separated by some sort of invisible barrier. Even when Helene and Popaul do begin to get close there is always a distance between them. One remarkable moment has Popaul attempting to break the barrier by asking what Helene would do if he kissed her. She responds, “Nothing…but I would prefer you didn’t.”
The film’s strongest moments come in the several long, and rather astonishing, long one shots with Audran and Yanne talking together. At times tender but always with a slight sinister edge, these scenes typify everything that makes Chabrol one of the most intelligent and well organized directors on the planet. I was particularly floored this time by an early conversation that takes place in one shot as the two are walking through the town. Centered in the frame, with the town’s rustic and quant state surrounding them, the sequence is a model on how to do a long and meditative take. It also doesn’t hurt that Chabrol has two absolute masters at the art of body language at his disposal, with both Audran and Yanne seemingly able to communicate the most serious of matters without saying a word.



Chabrol was at the top of his game in 1970. He had just wrapped up three of his finest films, Les Biches (1968), This Man Must Die (1969) and La Femme Infidele (1969), and Le Boucher is looked upon by many as one of if not his greatest production. While I prefer both Les Biches and its follow-up, La Rupture (1970) I must say that this recent reviewing finally showed me what all the fuss was about. I focused away from then rather slight mystery and honed into Chabrol’s directorial choices and was continually surprised and at times quite blown away.
Le Boucher is one of the most economical productions Chabrol has ever delivered, and I don’t necessarily mean in cost. His shots are so meticulously chosen and composed that I would find it hard to believe much was left on the cutting room floor. I, of course, could be wrong but there is almost something mathematical feeling about the precision that Chabrol displays here, as if a mistaken close up or wrong move by one of the actors would throw the whole film off. Pauline Kael called it a perfect film in her original 1970 review and I don’t think she was far off.
Along with Audran, Chabrol fans will recognize several names that often pop up in his films. The creepy minimalist score is courtesy of Pierre Jansen and his music is so identifiable with many of Chabrol’s greatest films that I sometimes have trouble imagining them apart. The master director is also joined by his frequent cinematographer Jean Rabier, who gives this film a wonderfully sun drenched but iced over look, and editor Jacques Gaillard. Nearly all of the small cast had worked and would continue to work with the great director after, or not at all.
Le Boucher is still not among my favorite Chabrol films. I find it’s coldness nearly overwhelming and have felt almost relief when it ends each time I have watched it. It is an absolutely brilliant film, but one of the most oppressive Chabrol ever shot. I suspect my admiration will continue to grow for it, although I think it will have to be awhile before I visit with it again.
The film is out her on DVD from Pathfinder as a stand alone disc or as part of their Claude Chabrol Collection. The disc is disappointing with an overly digitized picture and rather drab and jittery transfer. Extras include the trailer and a disappointing commentary track from two screenwriters not connected to the film or period. It plays widescreen on my player but I have read the disc is authored incorrectly and will only play fullscreen on others. I have heard the Region 2 disc offers a superior transfer but I don’t have it, so can’t say for sure.

A New Chabrol Collection is Out Today

Out today from First Run Features is a new Claude Chabrol collection containing the films La Demoiselle d'Honneur (The Bridesmaid) and Merci Pour le Chocolat (Thank You for the Chocolate). This double-disc special edition also contains interviews with Chabrol and a documentary on the making of The Bridesmaid. I believe this is essentially a repackaging of First Run's former releases of these films but, at under twenty-bucks, its a steal and a no-brainer for folks who might not already have them. I hope we continue seeing more Chabrol sets like this in the near future.

Overlooked Classics: Claude Chabrol's Alice (1977)

Before I say a few words on Claude Chabrol’s Alice (a.k.a. Alice and the Last Escapade) (1977) I should note that the copy I saw was a German dubbed print with no English subtitles. Not the ideal way to see it but the obscurity that has unjustly fallen on this lovely and strange film makes this version sadly the only game in town right now.

I have wanted to see Alice for around fifteen years, so it was with a lot of excitement that I finally got to view it last night. Despite the lack of subtitles and the fact that I can’t speak a word of German, I found Chabrol’s mystifying film to be a completely engrossing and memorable experience and I am not at all disappointed even though I had built the film up to near impossible heights in my mind.

Chabrol is so closely connected to the thriller film these days that it is easy to forget that the man has worked in nearly every conceivable genre. This is after all a director who has made more than seventy films with only a portion of those made up of the nail-biters so many think of when his name is muttered. That said, Alice plays out like no other Cabrol film I have ever seen. Dedicated to Fritz Lang and more than a little inspired by the literary works Lewis Carrol and Jorge Luis Borges, Chabrol’s film made me think of any number of Jean Rollin films while watching it as well as Robbe-Grillet’s L’Immortal and Malle’s Black Moon. At times it seemed like Chabrol was channeling all of the above while still amazingly enough making this very much a Claude Chabrol film, with his camera movements and framing being totally recognizable and not all that far removed from the long and languid takes in Le Boucher that I wrote on a few weeks ago.



Alice, centering on an unhappy wife who leaves her husband only to find herself trapped in some sort of weird and unending maze, was made right after Chabrol’s 1976’s The Twist, an odd entry in his filmography that would see him working with an international cast including Ann-Margret and Bruce Dern. Alice would return his cinema to a much more rural European feel and would team him with one of France’s biggest box-office stars of the seventies, my much beloved Sylvia Kristel who delivers her best performance here, with her work in Borowczyk’s La Marge excepted.

Kristel was on an amazing role in 1977, a she had just finished up working with Vadim, Robbe-Grillet and Borowczyk when she came into Chabrol’s world. It’s hard to think of an actor working for so many of Europe’s top directors near simultaneously who was granted so little respect at the time or since. It is easy to see why though as the French distributors always marketed these films, even Alice, centering on Sylvia’s past role as Emmanuelle. Ironically her most legendary role is the one that stopped her from the career that she should have had and one that, in 1977 at least, it looked like she was going to have.



Alice is very much Chabrol’s not so thinly veiled take on Carrol’s Alice In Wonderland. Kristel’s character is even named Alice Carol so it’s not like anyone on the production was hiding from the fact. Even not understanding any of the dialogue (which really hurts the opening and closing of the film) it is fun to pick out the many references to Carrol’s literary world in this loving and economical take on it where a busted windshield stands in for a looking glass and instead of a white rabbit we get a deceptively charming older French gentleman serving up a nightcap instead of a magic pill.



Alice worked best for me in the remarkable middle section where we are treated to scene after scene of Sylvia lost outside on a seemingly never-ending French countryside and then inside some beautifully strange and distorted older manors. Almost dialogue free in these sections, Chabrol’s camera follows Kristel’s Alice through an unending world of dead-ins in often wide open spaces that leads to a predictable but no less than thrilling conclusion that harkens back to Carnival Of Souls as much as the works of Robbe-Grillet, Rollin and Malle previously mentioned.



The film is simply gorgeous to look at, thankfully my copy was widescreen and fairly sharp, thanks to Chabrol’s usual cinematographer Jean Rabier. In fact, the same recognizable names that you see on many of Chabrol’s films are present for this rare foray into fantasy for him, including composer Pierre Jansen (whose music here has a wonderful nightmarish quality about it) to editor Monique Fardoulis. Special note has to go to Maurice Sergent’s production design, which is really spectacular here. Alice would prove one of the final films for the talented Sergent, who had done such memorable work for Ferreri and Buneul in the late sixties and early seventies.

The cast that surrounds Kristel is full of surprises and features legendary Silent film actor Charles Vanel, award-winning Andre Dussollier, veteran Fernand Ledoux and Chabrol’s own 13-year-old son Thomas, who gives one of the films most memorable performances.



I found Kristel herself to be as heartbreakingly good here as everything I have seen her in during this period. I am always amazed to see her described as a poor actress as I find her work to always be so subtle, vulnerable and downright moving. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the film’s one nude scene when she is seen staring sadly into a bathroom mirror. It’s one of the most empathetic moments of Chabrol’s career as he has her seated in a wicker chair (that is of course an allusion to her most famous role) but this time the eroticism has a bruising and sad quality…like his camera was sensing that she wouldn’t ever be able to overcome that famous role from Just Jaeckin’s film. The scene is totally silent and then there is a sudden noise that alerts her that she might be being watched. Instead of searching the house though, she stands totally nude and stares directly into Chabrol’s camera, aware that no one else is there and that is just the gaze of an out of reach audience who she, and her body, can’t ever totally escape from.



The film is filled with moments like that, although none perhaps quite so devastating. Chabrol loads the film with shots of Kristel’s own point of view and then direct shots of her. He’s aware that the connection Sylvia had to her audience was a strange and powerful one and he plays up to it over and over again…Alice plays like a poignant ode to a slipping icon as much as anything else and, in all of the film’s I have seen by Chabrol, I have never found his camera quite so sympathetic as here and it gives the film an added layer of resonance that is missing from most of his other lesser work.



I can’t even begin to fathom why Alice is so hard to come by. To my knowledge it has never been granted an official home video release anywhere. The fact that it is a Chabrol film alone makes its unavailability an incredible oversight, but add on that it is a truly powerful and haunting experience, makes its current missing in action status near criminal. Alice is, along with a handful of other titles, one of the great-lost European art films of the seventies.



I can only imagine what my opinion will be of the film once I do get to see an English sub-titled or dubbed version of it, since several key sequences are extremely dialogue heavy. The fact that I was so taken with this film even with the language barrier I think speaks heavily to the power of it. I can only hope that some enterprising company has the good sense to release it someday.



I will be posting more screenshots from this production in the next few days at Harry Moseby Confidential as well as Sylvia Kristel Fans.

Jean-Claude Brialy (The Director)

Throughout the next day or so I will be paying tribute to the late Jean-Claude Brialy with a series of posts consisting of both pictures and text. I want to celebrate this man's incredible career which consisted of almost 200 films and spanned over fifty years.
A true icon and and a shining light in the films of the French New Wave, the man appeared in so many of my favorite films it is hard to know where to begin. So I thought I would start with a nod to Brialy behind the camera. Starting with 1971's EGLANTINE Brialy directed six feature films as well as an additional 6 television productions. I haven't seen the majority of these so the following details are sketchy at best. I was always blown away by the fact that Brialy, who was so prolific with his acting career, had time for anything else.
Here are some brief notes and images for some of Brialy's work as a director.

EGLANTINE won the Silver Seashell Award at the San Sebastian International Film Festival and starred the aging French actress Valentine Tessier as a Grandmother who is being visited by her two young grandchildren. This period film garnered some acclaim upon release and signaled Brialy has a talent to watch behind the camera. It was unfortunately never released in Britain or the United States and appears to be out of circulation even in France.

His next film as director, LES VOLETS CLOS (CLOSED SHUTTERS) did apparently receive a brief US theatrical release. The only information that I could find on this film comes from the all movie guide and it states, "Thomas (Jacques Charrier) is a sailor who has deserted from the Navy in this gentle French drama. He has found refuge in a seaside bordello. Romantic difficulties blossom as he and Flora (Catherine Rouvert), one of the house's prostitutes, fall in love with each other. When he hurts her, however, the denizens of the house agree that he must leave."

Brialy was the writer as well as an actor in his next film, the comedy L'OISEAU RARE (A RARE BIRD). This film also featured a young Anny Duperey and focuses on a chauffeur attempting to find suitable employment. The film was well received in Europe upon initial release but has since, unfortunately, follow under the radar.

His next film as director would be his most famous and the one I have seen, although it has been awhile. UN AMOUR DE PLUIE (LOVING IN THE RAIN), which he would also help write and act in is mostly remembered for the great performannce of the lovely Romy Schneider. Brialy and Romy had worked together before and had of course known each other for years. This striking film features Romy at her most stunning and remains the best film Brialy directed as well as the easiest to find. I hope to revisit it soon and will hopefully have more thoughts on it in the future.

After a 1979 television film Brialy the director returned with LES MALHEURS DE SOPHIE, a film that like EGLANTINE would focus on children. This 1981 feature was adapted from a classic French tale and received mixed reviews upon opening but a home video release in France is apparently not hard to find.

A handful of television films would follow but Brialy would return to the big screen just one more time with 1983's UN BON PETIT DIABLE which reunited him with the talented Bernadette Lafont. Lafont and Brialy had both came to fame starring together in Chabrol's classic 1958 film LE BEAU SERGE so this film must have been a nice reunion for them. Brialy again co-wrote the screen adaption of a classic French tale of children and again the film received mixed notices.

While not as awe inspiring as his work in front of the camera, I thought paying a small tribute to Jean-Claude Brialy's work behind the camera would be a different but worthwhile place to start. I would like to have the opportunity to see these someday and hopefully they will eventually become more available. Highly recommended is the Romy Schneider film LOVING IN THE RAIN which showed Brialy as a talented director with a great eye for beauty and composition.

My tribute to the late Jean-Claude Brialy will continue tomorrow.

Images From My All Time Favorite Films: Claude Chabrol's Les Biches (1968)

I was hoping to get together a solid post for Flickhead's wonderful Chabrol Bog-A-Thon that is currently running, but some prior commitments as well as this lingering bloody back injury have kept me from it. So, as an excuse to link to it at least and pay tribute to one of my favorite films, this weeks tribute in stills is to the mighty Les Biches. Enjoy and please check Flickhead's terrific running tribute to one of cinema's greatest masters.