Word: backgrounder
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...restricts, an attitude shared still by condescending, if blind, people like Pauline Kael or Bosley Crowther. But for all the mediocre westerns churned-out which reaffirm genre as tantamount to cliche and formula, we have Hawks's Rio Bravo or Ford's The Searchers, both of which use genre background as a means of allowing their protagonists the fullest range of individual expression. For all the cheap detective thrillers, we have Lang's The Big Heat with its articulate vision of urban corruption and the need to fight evil, or Nicholas Ray's Party Girl and the fascinating conflicts between...
Chabrol describes himself as "not pessimistic about people in general, but only about the way they live." The background of his films show an avaricious and innately destructive world of monstrous and banal people. It is, for the most part, only background, and the films are more specifically about complex relationships and interaction of characters. But where Lang's or Hawks's characters will confront their directors' vision of society-gone-wrong head on, Chabrol's retreat a little from it to defensive personal eccentricities. Both Chris (Anthony Perkins) and Paul (Maurice Ronet) are warped in Chabrolian high-style: bored...
...working reality they have made for themselves comes dangerously close to cracking, filmed by Chabrol with the violent surrealism of a nightmare. Competently handling guests at party, Chris suddenly finds himself virtually assaulted by a grotesque woman who knew him as a Riviera stud. Chabrol distorts the sound, the background suddenly jumps from people in the room to a back projected screen of people in the room. The objective reality of the camera has shifted imperceptibly to the subjective perception of an unstable mind. Similarly, Paul, ambiguously scarred by the opening accident, strives to keep a control on himself...
...hints dropped conspicuously in early scenes as places where Chabrol didn't cheat. When Jacqueline the secretary types up the letter of transfor turning Paul's name over to Christine, she is shown in screen-left fore-ground in focus, with Paul and Christine out of focus in the background. Our eyes watch Paul and Christine because we think that they are more important; when we realize later that Jacqueline's seeing the deed provided the motivation for the final killing, we also remember that Chabrol did show her reactions in close-up--that our watching screen-right instead...
...because of Annal's magnificent sets, the best since Sean Kenny's for Oliver. Without much bulk, they suggest variety and expanse; without (I suspect) too much money, they suggest a show budgeted well over half a million dollars. The only unfortunate touches are a cartoon-blue ocean background in the lighthouse scene and a sickly dash of pink in the finale...