Beginning January 28, LACMA begins a new weekend film series, Le Beau Claude: Eight Thrillers by Chabrol, which showcases eight Claude Chabrol films made throughout his 51 years of filmmaking. In addition to his first film, Le beau Serge (screening January 29), are such classics as Les cousins (February 4), Les bonnes femmes (February 4), and This Man Must Die (February 5). As a special event, actress Jacqueline Bisset will attend a Q&A after the screening of Chabrol's 1995 La ceremonie on January 29.
Claude Chabrol (1930 – 2010) was instrumental in bringing the French New Wave to the world cinema, along with Francois Truffaut, Eric Rohmer and Jean-Luc Godard. In the 1950’s all four wrote for the French film journal, Cahiers du Cinema (Notebooks on Cinema) and were champions of Hollywood film and its directors – Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, Robert Aldrich, Nicholas Ray, Fritz Lang to name a few.
Enamored with the works of Alfred Hitchcock, Chabrol co-wrote with Rohmer the book, Hitchcock, published in 1957. Naturally influenced by his muse, Chabrol quickly became known as the French Hitchcock since most of his films were psychological thrillers that explored the themes of irony, guilt and sex through his struggling upper and middle class characters.
Chabrol’s first film 1957, Le beau Serge (Handsome Serge) was financed with money he received from his wife’s inheritance and is often sited as ushering in the French New Wave along with his second film, Les cousins (The Cousins, 1958). Soon after, Truffaut followed with his film, The 400 Blows (1959) and then Godard with Breathless (1960).
In a New York Times article, from an interview in 2003, Chabrol discussed his work with thrillers, “I like using the thriller genre because when people go see a thriller – unless it’s really worthless – they never say, We’ve wasted our time."
Check out these classics of French cinema directed by the great auteur, Claude Chabrol. It definitely won’t be a waste of time.
LACMA’s film series, Le Beau Claude: Eight Thrillers by Chabrol runs Friday and Saturday evenings from January 28 through February 5 at the Bing Theatre.
January 28
7:30 PM La femme infidèle
January 28
9:20 PM The Bridesmaid
January 29
5:00 PM Le beau Serge
January 29
7:30 PM La cérémonie
February 4
7:30 PM Les cousins
February 4
9:35 PM Les bonnes femmes
February 5
5:00 PM Merci pour le chocolat
February 5
7:30 PM This Man Must Die
Comments
Kool. I'm looking forward to this series.
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