Literary critics long regarded Gustave Flaubert's iconic French novel Madame Bovary as unfilmable (despite several attempts by Vincente Minnelli and others to bring it to the screen), but Nouvelle Vague architect Claude Chabrol set out to definitively prove them wrong with this Oscar-nominated feature adaptation from 1991, starring Isabelle ...
Le Beau Serge was the first film of French critic-turned-director Claude Chabrol. Though not a murder melodrama, the film is heavily influenced by the works of Chabrol's idol Alfred Hitchcock, Shadow of a Doubt in particular. Ailing city dweller Francois (Jean-Claude Brialy) makes a therapeutic return visit to his home town in the country. Here he ...
Claude Chabrol directed this well-crafted thriller, which recalls the style and themes of his best-known work of the 1960s. Marie-Claire "Mika" Muller (Isabelle Huppert), who has inherited control of a large and successful Swiss chocolate company, remarries well-known musician André Polonski (Jacques Dutronc), to whom she was briefly wed 18 years ...
Bored, wealthy Parisian socialite Frederique (Stéphane Audran, then director Claude Chabrol's wife and the star of many of his films) picks up young sidewalk artist Why (Jacqueline Sassard), brings her home, offers her a nice hot bath and coffee, and seduces her. Then Why follows Frederique to the latter's Saint-Tropez villa, where they alter ...
Co-written by Caroline Eliacheff, Claude Chabrol's La Fleur Du Mal (The Flower of Evil) concerns three generations of the bourgeois Charpin-Vasseur family. The story opens in the present day with a murder occurring during a local election and son Francois (Benoit Magimel) returning home to Bordeaux after four years in the U.S. His father Gerard ...
Adapted from a novel by Georges Simenon, Betty stars Marie Trintignant in the title role. A drunken wastrel, Betty is adopted after a fashion by an older female alcoholic named Laure, played by director Claude Chabrol's wife at the time, Stéphane Audran. Fascinated by Betty's hard-luck tales, Laure endeavors to protect the younger woman from the ...
Claude Chabrol directs the tense psychological thriller Que la Bête Meure (This Man Must Die). When his young son is the victim of a hit-and-run car accident, writer Charles Thenier (Michel Duchaussoy) is determined to find the killer. Obsessed with avenging his son's death, he carefully records his thoughts in a diary. He travels to Paris and ...
In this ponderous French mystery-drama, based on an Ellery Queen story, blackmail would seem to be the least of the problems of Charles (Anthony Perkins). His adoptive father Theo (Orson Welles) has a madwoman for a mother, and a gorgeous woman of Charles' age (Marlene Jobert) for a wife. In fact, Charles is deeply attracted to her. In addition, ...
Claude Chabrol's Comedy of Power stars Isabelle Huppert as a French judge who attempts to bring down the very powerful but corrupt CEO of a large corporation. As she digs deeper into the case, she uncovers criminal activity that stretches into the highest levels of government, and her life is turned upside down by death threats as well as her ...
The master of French suspense joins forces with the queen of English suspense fiction for this tense tale of the treacherous love affair between a disturbed bridesmaid and an unsuspecting young man. Philippe (Benoit Magimel) lives in a quiet French town with his hairdresser mother Christine (Aurore Clément) and two younger sisters. Soon after the ...
Produced by French New Wave founder Claude Chabrol, The Eye of Vichy is an extraordinary 110-minute account of Nazi-occupied France during World War II. The film, narrated by Brian Cox, documents the pro-Nazi sentiments of Marshall Petain's Vichy regime and its efforts to spread propaganda against both the Allied Forces and the Jews. Authentic ...
In this crime drama, a philandering wife plans to ill her alcoholic husband so she can run away with her lover. It all goes according to plan, and the widow is finally happy. Her happiness is short lived, as the "dead" husband shows up alive on her doorstep. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
Sexual frustration is the focus of this Hitchcockian thriller from French director Claude Chabrol. Schoolteacher Hélène (Stéphane Audran) comes to a small Périgord village to begin a new job. She is soon romanced by the local butcher, Popaul (Jean Yanne), but is distracted by her job and memories of a previous ill-fated relationship. A series of ...
The women in this story are the customers of amateur abortionist Isabelle Huppert. The time is 1941, and the place is a Nazi-occupied French town. Struggling to survive, Huppert turns to illegally terminating unwanted pregnancies for a hefty fee. As her income increases, Huppert moves her family from their grimy surroundings to a posh apartment, ...
In this complex spy-thriller, the US radar installations in Greece are suddenly jammed and a NATO security agent is killed. The prime suspect is his own wife, who is innocent. She investigates on her own to prove it and ends up entangled in an espionage conspiracy. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
New Wave director Claude Chabrol employs an aloof perspective in this tale of murder and a dysfunctional family. The paterfamilias Henri Marcoux (Jacques Dacqmine) is having a fling with the neighbor woman Leda (Antonella Lualdi). When she turns up murdered, police suspect the milkman, a friend of the Marcoux's sultry maid Julie. But Laszlo (Jean ...
The 50th film from legendary French New Wave writer and director Claude Chabrol is a typically Hitchcockian comic thriller about a pair of con artists. Up to now, the duo of Betty (Isabelle Huppert) and Victor (Michel Serrault) have contented themselves to small scams at hotel conventions, such as spiking the drink of a gambler, then rolling him ...
Based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith, Le Cri du Hibou concerns Robert (Christophe Malavoy), a commercial artist who has moved to a quiet neighborhood in Vichy, hoping to escape a severe depression brought on by the unpleasant breakup of his marriage to Veronique (Virginie Thevenet). Robert finds himself spying on his new neighbor Juliette ...
This uncomfortably voyeuristic Claude Chabrol effort was released in France as Une Partie De Plaisir. The story, which is little more than an elongated anecdote, details the destruction of a marriage at the hands of a domineering husband. To fully appreciate the perversity of Chabrol's concept, it should be noted that the leading character, Paul ...
Docteur Popaul, or Scoundrel in White is a black comedy by Claude Chabrol. It tells of the life and proper comeuppance of Dr. Paul Simay (Jean Paul Belmondo), an unusual sort of ladies' man. At his hospital, there is a bet to see who can seduce the most ugly women. Paul is confident he can win, because he already woos ugly women exclusively. He ...
A sextet of French filmmakers collaborated on Six in Paris (originally Paris vu Par...) Jean Douchet directed the film's first episode, "Saint Germain-des-Pres," the story of the up-and-down relationship between a male model (Jean-Francois Chappey) and an American coed (Barbara Wilkin). Jean Rouch's "Gare du Nord" is a haunting twist-of-fate tale ...
In a routine murder mystery based on a novel by Dominique Roulet, a cruel, wheelchair-bound invalid (Stephane Audran) who consistently terrorizes her teen son Louis (Lucas Belvaux) into abject obedience, is threatened with the loss of her home by a conniving trio who want her property as part of a deal for a lucrative development project. The ...
This thriller from veteran director Claude Chabrol is a tense suspense drama, leavened with sly humor, about the fallout from a shocking crime in a small town. Frederique Lesage (Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi), the new chief of police in a cozy and fashionable seaside community in Brittany, soon finds her job more eventful than she expected when a ten ...
Inspecteur Lavardin is a mellow, take-your-time Claude Chabrol effort of the 1980s, partly financed by French television. Jean Poiret had previously played the role of Inspector Jean Lavardin in the 1984 Chabrol film Poulet au Vinaigre (aka Cop au Vin). This story is built completely around the Lavardin character. The good inspector travels to a ...
Roland Wolf (Robin Renucci) poses as a reporter to interview a popular television personality (Philippe Noiret) he believes is responsible for the disappearance of his sister. The struggling actress had taken a job as a companion to the star's sickly ward Catherine (Anne Brochet). Roland discovers Catherine is being drugged by her benefactor who ...
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