Drips of blood from a cliff top corpse staining a child's picnic sandwich like drops of ketchup: a defining image taken from one of
Claude Chabrol's most celebrated works: the seminal 1970 shocker
Le Boucher (The Butcher). The story concerns a doomed love affair between a teacher (played by Chabrol's frequent muse and, then, wife
Stephane Audran) and a serial killer (
Jean Yanne) who stalks a small provincial town. It is a film that perfectly solidifies Chabrol's title as 'the French Hitchcock' and, to a more superficial extent, illustrates how food and the macabre mesh easily throughout the director's work. With a career spanning 52 years and 55 films Chabrol, who died last week aged 80, was one of the most consistently productive of the celebrated Nouvelle Vague filmmakers; that consisted of such rudimentary figures as
Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, Eric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette and
Alain Resnais amongst others. Significantly it was Chabrol who collaborated with Rohmer on an analytical Hitchcock book following an interview with the master of suspense on the set of his 1955 film
To Catch A Thief. And it was a similar penchant for shock and suspense that later secured Chabrol's Hitchcock label; it also helped that he worked predominantly within the thriller genre with murder stories that often hinged on marital infidelities. Like Hitchcock, Chabrol was also a director who enjoyed taunting his audience. In
La Femme Infidele (Unfaithful Wife, 1969), a passion for murder makes up for a lack of passion in bed when an impotent husband (
Michel Bouquet) confronts the secret lover of his unfaithful wife (
Stephane Audran). Chabrol spends considerable time building up the tension to the anticipated murder scene and then delivers it with a blunt unexpected blow. Later the director revels in the elaborate post murder clean up and tricky body disposal details: we monitor Bouquet in his efforts to conceal the body in the boot of his car; strategically avoiding everyday obstructions only to be involved in a fluke traffic accident which damages the boot and draws an inconvenient crowd. Then (in a scene mirroring
Psycho) the corpse stalls in the water when Bouquet attempts to dispose of it in a swamp, which increases the tension tenfold, whilst transferring the guilt to the audience in a crafty nod to Hitchcock. But
Chabrol was more than just a Hitchcock hack. He had his own unique themes to address. He often critiqued bourgeois conventions; probing into the menace lurking beneath the outwardly calm facade of bourgeois life. Chabrol was also interested in the emotional motivations behind murder and the trauma and ramifications of committing such crimes. In
Juste Avant La Nuit (Just Before Nightfall) adulterer Charles (once again played by
Bouquet) accidentally kills his lover during an S&M game. Ravaged by guilt Charles confesses to both his wife and the deceased's husband, but when they both refuse to pass judgement on the incident it makes his guilt even worse.
Fate and coincidence also pervade in the cinema of Chabrol. In the brilliantly tense thriller
Que la bete meure (The Beast Must Die, 1969) a father (played by
Michel Duchaussoy) undertakes an obsessive but seemingly fruitless hunt to find the hit and run driver who killed his child, only for a chance encounter to path an opportunity to get close to the perpetrator (
Jean Yanne). The tension throughout the film is palpably felt as our revenge-seeking protagonist bides his time in undertaking his ultimate retribution. Then when our antagonist stumbles at a cliff top, thus providing the perfect opportunity to dispose of the killer unnoticed, fait wields its ugly head again and our protagonist ends up making an unconventional decision. Chabrol's 1970 masterpiece
Le Boucher was so brilliantly realised that it even made Hitchcock blush with regret that he hadn't directed the project himself. Exploring themes of passion and guilt it's a haunting dissection of sexual repression featuring accomplished performances by both Audran and Yanne, a neatly closing in claustrophobic environment, an eerie ominous score and a narrative denouncement that is hauntingly apt. It also features arguably one of the tensest scenes in Chabrol's career: as we witness the sudden angst ridden guilt felt by Audran as she comes to realise who is responsible for the town's killings and then finds herself helplessly locked inside her school apartment with the murderer quickly closing in on her. Also witness her existential angst when she drives the wounded killer to the hospital and waits for his body to be taken up an elevator shaft - the 'occupied' red light flashing a metaphorical warning signal to her overt helplessness. The film is also appropriately ambiguous as to whether Audran's feelings for Yanne are not altogether sinister in themselves and whether these repressed feelings helped provoke a killer instinct. Chabrol was also a master at open endings and
Le Boucher features one of the most beautifully potent.
The period 1968-1971 is considered Chabrol's most accomplished and although many other films followed they didn't live up to the masterful strengths of this particularly creative cycle. There were however some notable exceptions. In 1995 he directed the pleasingly sinister
La Ceremonie (The Ceremony), which starred
Isabelle Huppert and British actress
Jacqueline Bisset, while there is merit to be found in both
The Flower of Evil (2003) and the more recent
The Girl Cut In Two (2007), which starred
Ludivine Sagnier. His final film,
Bellamy (2009) starring
Gerard Depardieu, was the first in a proposed sleuth series, a series that has now been cut short by the director's unfortunate demise. Nevertheless
Arrow Films' The Claude Chabrol Collection Vols 1 & 2 is a highly recommended and encouragingly comprehensive insight into the late director's oeuvre. This is essential viewing for anyone wishing to be acquainted to a craftsman of engagingly gripping French cinema; worthy of Hitchcock but sealed with a distinctive stamp that is all of his own making.