Word: chabrol
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...midst of another long, overheated summer at the multiplexes, this slightly subversive thought occurs to me; maybe we should sub-contract most of our thriller business to the French. From Claude Chabrol to Francois Truffaut (and beyond) they've shown a very entertaining respect for American crime and mystery stories. They see that the pressures crime places on otherwise peaceable citizens the opportunity to explore authentic emotions without sacrifice of suspenseful entertainment...
...CLAUDE CHABROL COLLECTION...
...year before his film debut, Chabrol co-wrote a book on Hitchcock's oeuvre (with fellow critic and budding director Eric Rohmer). Of all the new-wave auteurs, Chabrol was the one who took Hitchcock's fancy for cinematic dread most to heart, then gave it his own twist. In deadpan tragedies like Le Boucher, La Femme Infidèle and The Beast Must Die, passion leads to crimes of passion, and crime to self-lacerating punishment. These films are all the more potent because they speak their evils and ironies in a Gallic whisper...
...Chabrol also learned from Clouzot, whose bleak, brilliant melodramas--Le Corbeau, Diabolique, Quai des Orfèvres--allow for few heroes. Most of the characters are a blend of victim and villain. The Wages of Fear is a tale of four desperate men trucking a ton of nitroglycerin across bumpy South American roads. It's a brutal ride, relentlessly tense and informed by Clouzot's stop-watch timing and a tone that effortlessly juggles machismo and misanthropy...
...1960s, when foreign-language films were the intellectual rage du jour and an inspiration for smart Hollywood directors. Today, with an adventurous spirit and a full tank of gas, you might track down a small gem like Patrice Leconte's Ridicule, a period comedy with rapier wit, or Claude Chabrol's La Ceremonie, a sardonic thriller about the death of the bourgeoisie with fearless star turns by Isabelle Huppert and Sandrine Bonnaire. Those, alas, are just tokens. Few foreign-language films are released in the U.S. these days, and those that are attract fewer customers...