Word: chabrol
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...Harvard Film Study--"Imitation of Life" by Douglas Sirk and "The Champagne Murders" by Claude Chabrol, Carpenter Center Lecture Hall. Admission...
...Chabrol's perception is expressed through the heightened reality of genre art. Though the content and characterization often lead to subtle truths relevant to all of us, the surface of the films often seems wildly extreme--Chabrol's characters retreating into their personal defenses and eccentricities. Chris and Paul (Champagne Murders) play practical jokes, succumb to occasional nervous ticks, and consume liquor, yachts, and television with truly warped relish. Frederique in Les Biches is introduced as a lesbian, extremely boldly characterized; but Chabrol finally considers her "as normal as anybody these days," and her seemingly docile companion Why turns...
...Chabrol has gleefully acknowledged the presence of at least one death in each of his films, and these deaths act as elaborate metaphors for forces of change and reevaluation. Christine's death in Champagne Murders brings about a violent reappraisal of the three characters' commitments, and the film ends on zoom pull-backs leaving them in Jimbo either to destroy one another or to form a new menage. Frederique's death in Les Biches also ends on a note of moral uncertainty as we wonder whether it will act as an agent of destruction or of change. If Les Biches...
...Chabrol's camera creates and defines characters, theme, and content, able to articulate everything his characters cannot. His ability to do exactly what he wants is shown in the brutal climax of The Champagne Murders, a one-and-one-half minute montage of all the camera movements and color schemes that have previously dominated the film, which arrives at a shocking (Marnie-like) shot of unearthly colors and images foreign to it. In Les Biches, the soft lighting of the night scenes is as magnificant as any in film history, as are the time-compression montages of Frederique...
...sure it amounts to very much, and prefer the romantic perception of Soft Skin, Truffaut's best film to date. But you have to give him points: the scenes between Julie (Jeanne Moreau) and the artist (Charles Denner) blend exposition and characterization as cinematically as anything this side of Chabrol. Also Truffaut's obsession with Hitchcock has finally left the realm of shot-copying, resulting in some interesting notions about audience identification, point-of-view cutting, and flashback structure...