Misplaced Pages

#856143

94-457: Claude Henri Jean Chabrol ( French: [klod ʃabʁɔl] ; 24 June 1930 – 12 September 2010) was a French film director and a member of the French New Wave ( nouvelle vague ) group of filmmakers who first came to prominence at the end of the 1950s. Like his colleagues and contemporaries Jean-Luc Godard , François Truffaut , Éric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette , Chabrol was a critic for

188-669: A publicity man at the French offices of 20th Century Fox , but was told that he was "the worst press officer they'd ever seen" and was replaced by Jean-Luc Godard, who they said was even worse. In 1956 he helped finance Jacques Rivette's short film Le coup du berger , and later helped finance Rohmer's short Véronique et son cancre in 1958. Unlike all of his future New Wave contemporaries, Chabrol never made short film nor did he work as an assistant on other directors' work before making his feature film debut. In 1957 Chabrol and Eric Rohmer co-wrote Hitchcock (Paris: Éditions Universitaires, 1957),

282-509: A quality " and in December 1962 published a list of 162 film directors who had made their feature film debut since 1959. Many of these directors, such as Edmond Agabra and Henri Zaphiratos, were not as successful or enduring as the well-known members of the New Wave and today would not be considered part of it. Shortly after Truffaut's published list appeared, Godard publicly declared that the New Wave

376-458: A Variety headline read "Vital To Keep Making Pictures, and What Sort Not Relevant; Chabrol No 'Doctrinaire' Type." In 1965 Chabrol also contributed to the New Wave portmanteau film Six in Paris with the segment "La Muette". Chabrol co-starred with Stéphane Audran as a middle aged couple dealing with their rebellious teenage daughter. In 1964 Chabrol also directed a stage production of MacBeth for

470-586: A child, Chabrol was "seized by the demon of cinema" and ran a film club in a barn in Sardent between the ages of 12 and 14. It was at this time that he developed his passion for the thriller genre, detective stories and other forms of popular fiction . After World War II , Chabrol moved to Paris to study pharmacology and literature at the Sorbonne , where he received a licence en lettres . Some biographies also state that he briefly studied law and political science at

564-472: A commercial release until 2008. Truffaut, with The 400 Blows (1959), and Godard, with Breathless (1960) had unexpected international successes, both critical and financial, that turned the world's attention to the activities of the New Wave and enabled the movement to flourish. Part of their technique was to portray characters not readily labeled as protagonists in the classic sense of audience identification. The auteurs of this era owe their popularity to

658-442: A dictatorial plot-line . They were especially against the French "cinema of quality", the type of high-minded, literary period films held in esteem at French film festivals, often regarded as "untouchable" by criticism. New Wave critics and directors studied the work of Western classics and applied new avant-garde stylistic direction. The low-budget approach helped filmmakers get at the essential art form and find what was, to them,

752-411: A documentary style. The films exhibited direct sounds on film stock that required less light. Filming techniques included fragmented, discontinuous editing, and long takes. The combination of realism, subjectivity, and authorial commentary created a narrative ambiguity in the sense that questions that arise in a film are not answered in the end. Although naturally associated with Francophone countries,

846-482: A female named Hélène. More so than his first film, Les Cousins features many characteristics that would be seen as "Chabrolian", including the Hitchcock influence, a depiction of the French bourgeoisie , characters with ambiguous motives and a murder. It was also Chabrol's first film co-written with his longtime collaborator Paul Gégauff , of whom Chabrol once said "when I want cruelty, I go off and look for Gégauff. Paul

940-521: A fresh look to the cinema with improvised dialogue, rapid changes of scene, and shots that broke the common 180° axis of camera movement . In many films of the French New Wave, the camera was used not to mesmerize the audience with elaborate narrative and illusory images, but rather to play with audience expectations. Godard was arguably the movement's most influential figure; his method of filmmaking, often used to shock and awe audiences out of passivity,

1034-434: A group of young anarchists kidnap an American ambassador. It was Chabrol's first film to not center on the bourgeois since Le Beau Serge . Chabrol returned to more familiar ground in 1975 with A piece of pleasure ( Une partie de plaisir ). In this film screenwriter Paul Gégauff plays a writer with a troubled marriage that ends in tragedy. (In 1983, Gégauff was stabbed to death in real life by his second wife.) Gégauff's wife

SECTION 10

#1732899018857

1128-401: A husband named Charles murders the lover of his cheating wife. It was later remade in 2002 by director Adrian Lyne . Chabrol finished the decade with This Man Must Die ( Que la bête meure ) in 1969. Based on an original story by Cecil Day-Lewis , in the film Charles ( Michel Duchaussoy ) plots to kill Paul ( Jean Yanne ) after Paul killed Charles' son in a hit and run car accident. However

1222-401: A large sum of money from relatives. In December of that year Chabrol used the money to make his feature directorial debut with Le Beau Serge . Chabrol spent three months shooting in his hometown of Sardent using a small crew and little known actors. The film's budget was $ 85,000. The film starred Jean-Claude Brialy as François and Gérard Blain as Serge, two childhood friends reunited when

1316-532: A loose adaptation of Hamlet that was another box office disappointment. Later that year he had a minor hit film with Landru , written by Françoise Sagan and starring Charles Denner , Michèle Morgan , Danielle Darrieux and Hildegard Knef . The film depicts the famous French serial killer Henri Désiré Landru , a story that had previously inspired Charlie Chaplin 's film Monsieur Verdoux . From 1964 to 1967 Chabrol made six films and one short that were critically and commercially disastrous, and this period

1410-400: A much more comfortable and contemporary form of production. Charlie Chaplin , Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Howard Hawks , John Ford, Sam Fuller and Don Siegel were held up in admiration. French New Wave is influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema . In a 1961 interview, Truffaut said that "the 'New Wave' is neither a movement, nor a school, nor a group, it's

1504-522: A new means of expression on the same level as painting and the novel ... a form in which and by which an artist can express his thoughts, however abstract they may be, or translate his obsessions exactly as he does in the contemporary essay or novel. This is why I would like to call this new age of cinema the age of the caméra-stylo. " Some of the most prominent pioneers among the group, including François Truffaut , Jean-Luc Godard , Éric Rohmer , Claude Chabrol , and Jacques Rivette , began as critics for

1598-467: A number of writers for Cahiers du cinéma became leading New Wave filmmakers, including Jean-Luc Godard , Éric Rohmer , Jacques Rivette , and Claude Chabrol . The associated Left Bank film community included directors such as Alain Resnais , Agnès Varda , Jacques Demy and Chris Marker . Using portable equipment and requiring little or no set up time, the New Wave way of filmmaking often presented

1692-449: A post-World War II France, filmmakers sought low-budget alternatives to the usual production methods, and were inspired by the generation of Italian Neorealists before them. Half necessity and half vision, New Wave directors used all that they had available to channel their artistic visions directly to the theatre. Finally, the French New Wave, as the European modern Cinema , is focused on

1786-465: A row, Chabrol was given a big budget to make his first color film , À double tour ( Léda ) in the spring of 1959. The film stars Jean-Paul Belmondo as Laszlo and Antonella Lualdi as Léda, two outsiders of a bourgeois family who experience different results when attempting to enter that family. Chabrol adapted the script with Paul Gégauff from a novel by Stanley Ellin , and the film is known for its oedipal sex triangle and murder scenario. The film

1880-437: A spirit of iconoclasm . New Wave filmmakers explored new approaches to editing , visual style, and narrative, as well as engagement with the social and political upheavals of the era, often making use of irony or exploring existential themes. The New Wave is often considered one of the most influential movements in the history of cinema . The term was first used by a group of French film critics and cinephiles associated with

1974-415: A study of the films made by director Alfred Hitchcock through the film The Wrong Man . Chabrol had said that Rohmer deserves the majority of the credit for the book, while he mainly worked on the sections pertaining to Hitchcock's early American films, Rebecca , Notorious , and Stage Fright . Chabrol had interviewed Hitchcock with François Truffaut in 1954 on the set of To Catch a Thief , where

SECTION 20

#1732899018857

2068-476: A young Isabelle Huppert as a real life Parisian girl from a respectable petit-bourgeois family in the 1930s. At night Violette sneaks out to pick up men and eventually contracts syphilis, which she convinces her parents must be hereditary before she kills them. The film was controversial in France but praised in other countries. In the 1980s and 1990s Chabrol engaged himself with many different projects for both TV and

2162-448: A young protege in the bisexual Why ( Jacqueline Sassard ), until they both become the lover of a young architect named Paul ( Jean-Louis Trintignant ). Why ends up killing Frédérique, but it is unclear whether she murdered her cheating lover or the person that her lover was cheating with. The film received critical praise and was a box office hit. Chabrol followed this with a similar film The Unfaithful Wife ( La Femme infidèle ), in which

2256-585: Is a companion piece and a reversal to Le Beau Serge in many ways, such as having the responsible student Brialy now play the decadent and insensitive Paul while the reckless Blain now plays the hard-working law student Charles. In this film, the country cousin Charles arrives in the big city of Paris to live with his corrupt cousin Paul while attending school. This was the first of many Chabrol films to include characters named Paul and Charles, and later films would often include

2350-442: Is an art geared toward popular culture, a film's immediate influence, the director, is viewed as the artist, whereas an earlier contributor, like the screenwriter, is viewed as an apprentice. James Agee , a leading film critic of the 1940s, said that "the best films are personal ones, made by forceful directors". Meanwhile, the French film critics André Bazin and Roger Leenhardt described that directors, vitalizing films, depict

2444-472: Is buried in Pere Lachaise Cemetery in north-eastern Paris . French New Wave The New Wave ( French : Nouvelle Vague , French pronunciation: [nuvɛl vaɡ] ), also called the French New Wave , is a French art film movement that emerged in the late 1950s. The movement was characterized by its rejection of traditional filmmaking conventions in favor of experimentation and

2538-490: Is considered a low point of his career. Four of these films were in the then-popular genre of spy spoof films, including Le Tigre aime la chair fraiche and Le Tigre se parfume à la dynamite . Chabrol had said that "I like to get to the absolute limit of principles...In drivel like the Tiger series I really wanted to get the full extent of the drivel. They were drivel, so OK, let's get into it up to our necks." During this period

2632-571: Is considered by many critics as his best early film, Les Bonnes Femmes . The film stars Bernadette Lafont , Clotilde Joano, Stéphane Audran and Lucile Saint-Simon as four Parisian appliance store employees who all dream of an escape from their mediocre lives, and the different outcomes for each girl. Most critics praised the film, such as Robin Wood and James Monaco . However some left-wing critics disliked Chabrol's depiction of working-class people and accused him of making fun of their lifestyles. The film

2726-621: Is perhaps his most acclaimed film from this period, as it was nominated for numerous César Awards and was entered into the 52nd Venice International Film Festival among other. His 1999 film The Color of Lies was entered into the 49th Berlin International Film Festival . In 1995 Chabrol was awarded the Prix René Clair from the Académie française for his body of work. Chabrol continued directing films and TV series well into

2820-414: Is played by his real-life first wife Danièle Gégauff (already divorced when this film was made) and his daughter is played by real life daughter Clemence Gégauff. The film received poor critical reviews, with Richard Roud calling it "rather interestingly loathsome." Chabrol ended his Golden Period with one of his most admired and his most controversial films Violette Nozière in 1978. The film starred

2914-505: Is the corrupt gaullist mayor of their town. To their surprise the President of France orders that no investigation be made of the mayor's death, leading the murdering couple to suspect political interest in their crime. In the spring of 1973 the French government banned the film for one month, allegedly so that it would not influence members of the jury of a controversial criminal trial. Chabrol followed this political theme with Nada , in which

Claude Chabrol - Misplaced Pages Continue

3008-403: Is treated as artwork while the auteur, as its creator, is the original copyright holder. Under European Union law , largely by influence of auteur theory, a film director is considered the film's author or one of its authors. The references of auteur theory are occasionally applied to musicians, musical performers, and music producers. From the 1960s, record producer Phil Spector is considered

3102-481: Is very good at gingering things up...He can make a character look absolutely ridiculous and hateful in two seconds flat." Les Cousins was another box office success in France and won the Golden Bear at the 9th Berlin International Film Festival . Chabrol formed his own production company AJYM Productions (acronym based on the initials of his wife's and children's names) at the time of making Le Beau Serge . After

3196-551: The Cinémathèque Française , were the dual father figures of the movement. These men of cinema valued the expression of the director's personal vision in both the film's style and script. Truffaut also credits the American film Little Fugitive (1953) by Ruth Orkin , Ray Ashley and Morris Engel with helping to start the French New Wave, when he said: "Our New Wave would never have come into being, if it hadn't been for

3290-472: The Théâtre Récamier . In 1968 Chabrol began working with film producer André Génovès and started to make more critically acclaimed films that would later be considered his "Golden Era". Most of these films revolved around themes of bourgeois characters and a murder is almost always part of the plot. Unlike his earlier films, most of these films centered around middle aged people. Chabrol often worked with

3384-573: The École Libre des Sciences Politiques . While living in Paris Chabrol became involved with the postwar cine club culture and frequented Henri Langlois 's Cinémathèque Française and the Ciné-Club du Quartier Latin, where he first met Éric Rohmer , Jacques Rivette , Jean-Luc Godard , François Truffaut and other future Cahiers du Cinéma journalists and French New Wave filmmakers. After graduating, Chabrol served his mandatory military service in

3478-468: The " new sincerity " subculture within the U.S. that involve deliberately defying certain critical expectations in filmmaking. Alexandre Astruc 's manifesto "The Birth of a New Avant-Garde: The Camera-Stylo", published in L'Écran on 30 March 1948, outlined some of the ideas that were later expanded upon by François Truffaut and the Cahiers du cinéma . It argues that "cinema was in the process of becoming

3572-431: The 2000s. Chabrol's first marriage to Agnès Goute (1956–1962) produced a son, Matthieu Chabrol, a composer who scored most of his father's films from the early 1980s. He divorced Agnès to marry the actress Stéphane Audran , with whom he had a son, actor Thomas Chabrol . They remained married from 1964 to 1978. His third wife was Aurore Paquiss, who has been a script supervisor since the 1950s. He had four children. Chabrol

3666-458: The 21st century. The movies featured unprecedented methods of expression, such as long tracking shots (like the famous traffic jam sequence in Godard's 1967 film Weekend ). Also, these movies featured existential themes, often stressing the individual and the acceptance of the absurdity of human existence. Filled with irony and sarcasm, the films also tend to reference other films. Many of

3760-545: The English term. Via auteur theory, critical and public scrutiny of films shifted from their stars to the overall creation. In the 1960s and the 1970s, a new generation of directors, revitalizing filmmaking by wielding greater control, manifested the New Hollywood era, when studios granted directors more leeway to take risks. Yet in the 1980s, upon high-profile failures like Heaven's Gate , studios reasserted control, muting

3854-620: The French Medical Corps, serving in Germany and reaching the rank of sergeant. Chabrol has said that while in the army he worked as a film projectionist. After he was discharged from the army, he joined his friends as a staff writer for Cahiers du Cinéma , who were challenging then-contemporary French films and championing the concept of Auteur theory . As a film critic, Chabrol advocated realism both morally and aesthetically, mise-en-scene , and deep focus cinematography, which he wrote "brings

Claude Chabrol - Misplaced Pages Continue

3948-681: The French New Wave Film movement that would peak between 1959 and 1962. Chabrol was the first of his friends to complete a feature film (although Jacques Rivette had already begun filming his first feature Paris nous appartient ), and it immediately received critical praise and was a box office success. It won the Grand Prix at the Locarno Film Festival and the Prix Jean Vigo . Critics noticed similarities to Hitchcock's films, such as

4042-525: The French New Wave films were produced on tight budgets, often shot in a friend's apartment or yard, using the director's friends as the cast and crew. Directors were also forced to improvise with equipment (for example, using a shopping cart for tracking shots. ) The cost of film was also a major concern; thus, efforts to save film turned into stylistic innovations. For example, in Jean-Luc Godard 's Breathless ( À bout de souffle ), after being told

4136-662: The Hollywood studio system, directed his own 1960 film The Bellboy . Lewis's influence on it spanned business and creative roles, including writing, directing, lighting, editing, and art direction. French film critics, publishing in Cahiers du Cinéma and in Positif , praised Lewis's results. For his mise-en-scene and camerawork, Lewis was likened to Howard Hawks , Alfred Hitchcock , and Satyajit Ray . In particular, Jean-Luc Godard credited Lewis's "personal genius" for making him "the only one in Hollywood doing something different,

4230-644: The Left Bank filmmakers). Roud described a distinctive "fondness for a kind of Bohemian life and an impatience with the conformity of the Right Bank, a high degree of involvement in literature and the plastic arts , and a consequent interest in experimental filmmaking ", as well as an identification with the political left . The filmmakers tended to collaborate with one another. Jean-Pierre Melville , Alain Robbe-Grillet , and Marguerite Duras are also associated with

4324-464: The New Wave and generally have the experimental qualities associated with the movement; while his later early films are usually categorized as being intentionally commercial and far less experimental. In the mid-sixties it was difficult for Chabrol to obtain financing for films so he made a series of commercial "potboilers" and spy spoofs, which none of the other New Wave filmmakers did. Chabrol had married Agnès Goute in 1952 and in 1957 his wife inherited

4418-406: The New Wave directors in that they practiced cinematic modernism . Their emergence also came in the 1950s and they also benefited from the youthful audience. The two groups, however, were not in opposition; Cahiers du cinéma advocated for Left Bank cinema. Left Bank directors include Chris Marker , Alain Resnais , and Agnès Varda (Varda's husband, Jacques Demy , is sometimes grouped with

4512-469: The New Wave was to some extent an exercise by the Cahiers writers in applying this philosophy to the world by directing movies themselves. Apart from the role that films by Jean Rouch have played in the movement, Chabrol's Le Beau Serge (1958) is traditionally (but debatably) credited as the first New Wave feature. Agnès Varda 's La Pointe Courte (1955) was chronologically the first, but did not have

4606-565: The United States. Giese argues women in the US are rarely allowed to direct unless they are already celebrities, and that they are rarely afforded proper budgets. She cites women as making up less than 5% of American feature film directors , while the Hollywood Reporter stated that only about 7% of directors were women among the 250 highest-grossing films in 2016. In some law references, a film

4700-431: The audience directly , were radically innovative at the time. Classic French cinema adhered to the principles of strong narrative, creating what Godard described as an oppressive and deterministic aesthetic of plot. In contrast, New Wave filmmakers made no attempts to suspend the viewer's disbelief; in fact, they took steps to constantly remind the viewer that a film is just a sequence of moving images, no matter how clever

4794-457: The auteur theory. Pauline Kael , an early critic of auteur theory, debated Andrew Sarris in magazines. Defending a film as a collaboration, her 1971 essay " Raising Kane ", examining Orson Welles 's 1941 film Citizen Kane , finds extensive reliance on co-writer Herman J. Mankiewicz and on cinematographer Gregg Toland . Richard Corliss and David Kipen argued that a film's success relies more on screenwriting. In 2006, to depict

SECTION 50

#1732899018857

4888-454: The characters look at in their Périgord community. The French newspaper Le Figaro called it "the best French film since the liberation." After another examination of bourgeois life in The Breach ( La Rupture ) in 1970, Chabrol made Just Before Nightfall ( Juste avant la nuit ) in 1971. The film stars Michel Bouquet as an ad executive named Charles who kills his mistress but cannot handle

4982-412: The directors' own worldviews and impressions of the subject matter, as by varying lighting, camerawork, staging, editing, and so on. As the French New Wave in cinema began, French magazine Cahiers du cinéma , founded in 1951, became a hub of discourse about directors' roles in cinema. In a 1954 essay, François Truffaut criticized the prevailing "Cinema of Quality" whereby directors, faithful to

5076-620: The equally disliked Dr. Popaul , starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Mia Farrow . Critics compared the film unfavorably with Chabrol's earlier film that centered on a "Landru-like" theme. Critic Jacques Siclier said that "the novelty of Docteur Popaul comes from the offhandedness with which the criminal history is treated." Chabrol took a slight change of pace with his 1973 film Wedding in Blood ( Les Noces rouges ) by making his first film with political themes. The film stars Audran and Michel Piccoli as lovers who plot to murder Audran's husband, who

5170-495: The famous film magazine Cahiers du cinéma . Cahiers co-founder and theorist André Bazin was a prominent source of influence for the movement. By means of criticism and editorialization, they laid the groundwork for a set of concepts, revolutionary at the time, which the American film critic Andrew Sarris called auteur theory . (The original French La politique des auteurs , translated literally as "The policy of authors".) Bazin and Henri Langlois , founder and curator of

5264-409: The film was too long and he must cut it down to one hour and a half he decided (on the suggestion of Jean-Pierre Melville ) to remove several scenes from the feature using jump cuts , as they were filmed in one long take. Parts that did not work were simply cut from the middle of the take, a practical decision, and also a purposeful stylistic one. The cinematic stylings of the French New Wave brought

5358-420: The film's ending is left intentionally ambiguous, and Chabrol has stated that "you'll never see a Charles kill a Paul. Never." The film was especially praised for its landscape cinematography. In 1970 Chabrol made The Butcher ( Le boucher ) starring Jean Yanne and Stéphane Audran. Yanne plays Popaul, a former war hero known for his violent behavior, much like that depicted in the prehistoric cave drawings that

5452-506: The film-maker passes "the essay attitude, thinking – in a novelist way – on his own way to do essays." The corresponding "right bank" group is constituted of the more famous and financially successful New Wave directors associated with Cahiers du cinéma ( Claude Chabrol , François Truffaut , and Jean-Luc Godard ). Unlike the Cahiers group, Left Bank directors were older and less movie-crazed. They tended to see cinema akin to other arts, such as literature. However, they were similar to

5546-487: The films that Chabrol wrote without Paul Gégauff were much more compassionate and realistic than the ones with Gégauff. It was shot on location in Munich. Although she had appeared in supporting roles in several Chabrol films before, The Third Lover was the first Chabrol film in which Stéphane Audran appeared as the female lead. They later married in 1964 and worked together until the late 1970s. In 1962 Chabrol made Ophelia ,

5640-437: The first auteur among producers of popular music. Author Matthew Bannister named him the first "star" producer. Journalist Richard Williams wrote: Spector created a new concept: the producer as overall director of the creative process, from beginning to end. He took control of everything, he picked the artists, wrote or chose the material, supervised the arrangements, told the singers how to phrase, masterminded all phases of

5734-439: The group. The nouveau roman movement in literature was also a strong element of the Left Bank style, with authors contributing to many of the films. Left Bank films include La Pointe Courte , Hiroshima mon amour , La jetée , Last Year at Marienbad , and Trans-Europ-Express . Source: Auteur theory American actor Jerry Lewis directed his own 1960 film The Bellboy via sweeping control, and

SECTION 60

#1732899018857

5828-536: The guilt, so he confesses his crime to her husband ( François Périer ) and his wife (Stéphane Audran), expecting their condemnation. To his surprise they are only compassionate and forgiving to his crime and Charles cannot find relief from the guilt of what he has done. Later in 1971 Chabrol made Ten Days' Wonder ( La Décade prodigieuse ), based on a novel by Ellery Queen . The film was shot in English and starred Michel Piccoli , Anthony Perkins and Orson Welles . It received poor critical reviews. He followed this with

5922-522: The influential film magazine Cahiers du cinéma before beginning his career as a film maker. Chabrol's career began with Le Beau Serge (1958), inspired by Hitchcock 's Shadow of a Doubt (1943). Thrillers became something of a trademark for Chabrol, with an approach characterized by a distanced objectivity. This is especially apparent in Les Biches (1968), La Femme infidèle (1969), and Le Boucher (1970) – all featuring Stéphane Audran , who

6016-452: The late 1960s, performers typically had little input on their own records. Wilson, however, employed the studio like an instrument, as well as a high level of studio control that other artists soon sought. According to The Atlantic ' s Jason Guriel, the Beach Boys' 1966 album Pet Sounds , produced by Wilson, anticipated later auteurs such as Kanye West , as well as "the rise of

6110-526: The magazine Cahiers du cinéma in the late 1950s and 1960s. These critics rejected the Tradition de qualité ("Tradition of Quality") of mainstream French cinema, which emphasized craft over innovation and old works over experimentation. This was apparent in a manifesto-like 1954 essay by François Truffaut , Une certaine tendance du cinéma français , where he denounced the adaptation of safe literary works into unimaginative films. Along with Truffaut,

6204-416: The motifs of doubling and re-occurrences and the "Catholic guilt transference" that Chabrol had also written about extensively in his and Rohmer's book the year earlier. Chabrol stated that he made the film as a "farewell to Catholicism", and many critics have called his first film vastly different from any of his subsequent films. Chabrol quickly followed this success up with Les Cousins in 1958. The film

6298-468: The movement has had a continual influence within various other cinephile cultures over the past several decades inside of many other nations. The United Kingdom and the United States , both of them being primarily English-speaking , are of note. " Kitchen sink realism " as an artistic approach intellectually challenging social conventions and traditions in the U.K. is an example, as are some elements of

6392-421: The movement. Politically and financially drained, France tended to fall back on the old popular pre-war traditions. One such tradition was straight narrative cinema, specifically classical French film. The movement has its roots in rebellion against the reliance on past forms (often adapted from traditional novelistic structures), criticizing, in particular, the way these forms could force the audience to submit to

6486-566: The only one who isn't falling in with the established categories, the norms, the principles", "the only one today who's making courageous films". As early as his 1962 essay "Notes on the auteur theory", published in the journal Film Culture , American film critic Andrew Sarris translated the French term la politique des auteurs , by François Truffaut in 1955, into Sarris's term auteur theory . Sarris applied it to Hollywood films, and elaborated in his 1968 book, The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929–1968 , which helped popularize

6580-461: The overall effect turns on Chabrol's sheer hedonistic relish for the medium...Some of his films become almost private jokes, made to amuse himself." James Monaco has called Chabrol "the craftsman par excellence of the New Wave, and his variations upon a theme give us an understanding of the explicitness and precision of the language of the film that we don't get from the more varied experiments in genre of Truffaut or Godard." Claude Henri Jean Chabrol

6674-532: The reality of the studio system ". In 2013, Maria Giese critiqued the lack of American women who are considered to be within the pantheon of auteur directors. She argues that there is no shortage of non-American women directors that could be considered auteurs, and lists Andrea Arnold , Jane Campion , Liliana Cavani , Claire Denis , Marleen Gorris , Agnieszka Holland , Lynne Ramsay , Agnes Varda, and Lina Wertmuller as being among them, but goes on to say that women are rarely afforded financing for films in

6768-419: The recent medical school graduate François returns to Sardent and discovers that Serge has become an alcoholic after the stillbirth of his physically retarded first child. Despite suffering from tuberculosis , François drags Serge through a snowstorm to witness the birth of his second child, thus giving Serge a reason to live while killing himself in the process. Le Beau Serge is considered the inaugural film of

6862-419: The recording process with the most painful attention to detail, and released the result on his own label. Another early pop music auteur was Brian Wilson , mentored by Spector. In 1962, Wilson's band, the Beach Boys , signed to Capitol Records and swiftly became a commercial success, whereby Wilson was an early recording artist who was also an entrepreneurial producer. Before the " progressive pop " of

6956-432: The same people during this period including actors Audran and Michel Bouquet , cinematographer Jean Rabier , editor Jacques Gaillard, sound technician Guy Chichignoud, composer Pierre Jansen , set designer Guy Littaye, as well as producer Génovés and co-writer Paul Gégauff. In 1968 Chabrol made Les Biches , one of his most acclaimed works. The film stars Stéphane Audran as the dominant and bisexual Frédérique, who finds

7050-473: The screenwriter as indeed the main author is termed Schreiber theory . In the 1980s, large failures prompted studios to reassert control. The auteur concept has also been applied to non-film directors, such as record producers and video game designers , such as Hideo Kojima . Even before auteur theory, the director was considered the most important influence on a film. In Germany, an early film theorist, Walter Julius Bloem , explained that since filmmaking

7144-401: The screenwriter as the film's principal author, Kipen coined the term Schreiber theory . To film historian Georges Sadoul , a film's main "author" can also be an actor, screenwriter, producer, or novel's author, although a film is a collective's work. Film historian Aljean Harmetz , citing classical Hollywood's input by producers and executives, held that auteur theory "collapses against

7238-576: The script, merely adapt a literary novel. Truffaut described such a director as a metteur en scene , a mere "stager" who adds the performers and pictures. To represent the view that directors who express their personality in their work make better films, Truffaut coined the phrase "la politique des auteurs", or "the policy of the authors". He named eight writer-directors, Jean Renoir , Robert Bresson , Jean Cocteau , Jacques Becker , Abel Gance , Max Ophüls , Jacques Tati , and Roger Leenhardt , as examples of these "authors". Jerry Lewis , an actor from

7332-554: The silver screen. His films Poulet au vinaigre (1985) and Masques (1987) were entered into the 38th Cannes Film Festival and 37th Berlin International Film Festival respectively. Madame Bovary (1991) was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film and for the Academy Award for Best Costume Design . It was also entered into the 17th Moscow International Film Festival . La Cérémonie (1995)

7426-411: The spectator in closer with the image" and encourages "both a more active mental attitude on the part of the spectator and a more positive contribution on his part to the action in progress." He also wrote for Arts magazine during this period. Among Chabrol's most famous articles were "Little Themes", a study of genre films, and "The Evolution of Detective Films". In 1955 Chabrol was briefly employed as

7520-412: The success of Le Beau Serge and Les Cousins , Chabrol began funding many of the films of his friends. AJYM helped fund Eric Rohmer's feature debut The Sign of Leo , partially funded Rivette's Paris nous appartient , and Philippe de Broca 's films Les Jeux de l'amour and Le farceur . He also donated excess film stock from Les Cousins to Rivette to complete Paris nous appartient . Chabrol

7614-474: The support they received from their youthful audience. Most of these directors were born in the 1930s and grew up in Paris, relating to how their viewers might be experiencing life. With a high concentration on fashion, urban professional life, and all-night parties, the life of France's youth was exquisitely captured. The French New Wave was popular roughly between 1958 and 1962. The socio-economic forces at play shortly after World War II strongly influenced

7708-412: The technique as style itself. A French New Wave film-maker is first of all an author who shows in its film their own eye on the world. On the other hand, the film as the object of knowledge challenges the usual transitivity on which all the other cinema was based, "undoing its cornerstones: space and time continuity, narrative and grammatical logics, the self-evidence of the represented worlds." In this way

7802-459: The two famously walked into a water tank after being starstruck by Hitchcock. Years later, when Chabrol and Truffaut had both become successful directors themselves, Hitchcock told Truffaut that he always thought of them when he saw "ice cubes in a glass of whiskey." The most prolific of the major New Wave directors, Chabrol averaged almost one film a year from 1958 until his death. His early films (roughly 1958–1963) are usually categorized as part of

7896-429: The use of light and shadow. The result is a set of oddly disjointed scenes without an attempt at unity; or an actor whose character changes from one scene to the next; or sets in which onlookers accidentally make their way onto camera along with extras, who in fact were hired to do just the same. At the heart of New Wave technique is the issue of money and production value. In the context of social and economic troubles of

7990-485: The young American Morris Engel who showed us the way to independent production with [this] fine movie." The auteur theory holds that the director is the "author" of their movies, with a personal signature visible from film to film. They praised movies by Jean Renoir and Jean Vigo , and made then-radical cases for the artistic distinction and greatness of Hollywood studio directors such as Orson Welles , John Ford , Alfred Hitchcock and Nicholas Ray . The beginning of

8084-455: Was a known gourmet chef and shot 10 Days Wonder in Alsace only because he wanted to visit its restaurants. Although he acknowledges the influence of Alfred Hitchcock in his work, Chabrol has stated that "others have influenced me more. My three greatest influences were Murnau , the great silent film director... Ernst Lubitsch and Fritz Lang ." Chabrol died on 12 September 2010 of leukemia . He

8178-407: Was abnormally bold and direct. Godard's stylistic approach can be seen as a desperate struggle against the mainstream cinema of the time, or a degrading attack on the viewer's supposed naivety. Either way, the challenging awareness represented by this movement remains in cinema today. Effects that now seem either trite or commonplace, such as a character stepping out of their role in order to address

8272-415: Was also a technical advisor on Jean-Luc Godard's feature debut Breathless and acted in small parts in many of his friends' and his own early films. For his support to the early careers of so many of his friends, Chabrol has been referred to as "the godfather of the French New Wave", although many film histories tend to overlook this contribution and dismiss Chabrol altogether. After two box office hits in

8366-400: Was another box office disappointment for Chabrol. It was followed with two films that were also financially unsuccessful and which Chabrol has admitted to making purely for "commercial reasons". Les Godelureaux was made in 1960 and hated by Chabrol. The Third Lover ( L'Œil du Malin ), released in 1961, received better reviews than Chabrol's previous films, with critics pointing out that

8460-503: Was born on 24 June 1930 to Yves Chabrol and Madeleine Delarbre in Paris and grew up in Sardent , France , a village in the region of Creuse 400 km (240 miles) south of Paris. Chabrol said that he always thought of himself as a country person, and never as a Parisian. Both Chabrol's father and grandfather had been pharmacists , and Chabrol was expected to follow in the family business. But as

8554-593: Was his wife at the time. Sometimes characterized as a "mainstream" New Wave director, Chabrol remained prolific and popular throughout his half-century career. In 1978, he cast Isabelle Huppert as the lead in Violette Nozière . On the strength of that effort, the pair went on to others including the successful Madame Bovary (1991) and La Cérémonie (1995). Film critic John Russell Taylor has stated that "there are few directors whose films are more difficult to explain or evoke on paper, if only because so much of

8648-427: Was more exclusive and included only Truffaut, Chabrol, Rivette, Rohmer, and himself, stating that " Cahiers was the nucleus" of the movement. Godard also acknowledged filmmakers such as Resnais, Astruc, Varda, and Demy as esteemed contemporaries, but said that they represented "their own fund of culture" and were separate from the New Wave. Many of the directors associated with the New Wave continued to make films into

8742-438: Was praised for "personal genius". By 1970, the New Hollywood era had emerged with studios granting directors broad leeway. Pauline Kael argued, however, that "auteurs" rely on creativity of others, like cinematographers. Georges Sadoul deemed a film's putative "author" could potentially even be an actor, but a film is indeed collaborative. Aljean Harmetz cited major control even by film executives. David Kipen 's view of

8836-481: Was shot on location in Aix-en-Provence with cinematographer Henri Decaë and includes choppy, hand-held camera footage that is atypical of a Chabrol film despite being present in many of the New Wave films made at the same time. The film was both a box office and critical disappointment, and critic Roy Armes criticized "Chabrol's lack of feeling for his characters and love of overacting." In 1960 Chabrol made what

#856143