Word: paule
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Belonging to that unhappy second category Paul Schmidt's production screws around a lot, and most of it is pretty second-rate. Shakespeare's vicious savage, often Websterian tragedy is, for God's sake, not the lightweight collection of ideas on this stage, and when the play does assume characteristics of the darkest and most destructive comedy (as the program notes fashionably term the entire play) in the last few scenes, Schmidt reverses the entire style of his own production to heavy and symbolic drama, groping I presume for an ending via sudden spurts of electronic music and taped dialogue...
...disrupted by Audran's red dress, then by the blackness of the stocking with which Christine and the other girls are strangled. The violence of the deed is muted by the awesome lushness of the images, textures of decor which make murder a forbidden ritual of the insane. Paul's awakening to the knowledge that he is innocent of murder, and his brilliantly-edited compressed journey through the two houses, shows Chabrol repeating in quick succession the camera movements and color patterns (yellow-browns and wine colors) which have dominated the film; it is as if we are living...
...content level, the truths of The Champagne Murders derive from scrupulous honesty--a retrospective look at the film resulting not so much in our remembering 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...
...constructs, Chris reacts violently to destroy her, just as she (in Chabrolian fashion recalling The Third Lover) selfishly destroyed the tense harmony in which she was an outsider. Chris realizes spontaneously that Christine's unrequited love nonetheless was the center of his barren life; Audran screams about money; and Paul, innocent of crime but isolated from his familiar life-style for the first time, struggles half in confusion and half to prevent Chris from murdering Audran on the spot...
Finally, a camera style of slow and balanced moving shots is, successfully executed, one of the great joys of narrative film. When Chris goes to Paul to reassure him in a scene discussed earlier, Chabrol cuts together shots already in motion, joining a shot moving left in a circular are, a crane down from high angle, a forward track moving left, one moving right, and a pull back to wide-angle. The effect is again one of montage--the creation of masterful rhythm from smaller individual rhythms -- and again the illusion gives way to the truth of the image...