The Claude Chabrol Collection (Volume 2)

Star Review

Claude Chabrol has always been underrated. He was never as strident a critic at Cahiers du cinéma as Truffaut or Godard. Yet he and Eric Rohmer published a seminal study of Alfred Hitchcock. He was the first of the auteur cabal to release a feature, Le Beau Serge (1958), and he has easily been the most prolific and consistently commercial of his peers ever since. Perhaps this combination of fecundity and popularity has prompted his devaluation? But even when he's not on top form, Chabrol can still produce pictures to enthrall, unnerve and entertain. And just below the surface of them all, there's a layer of corrosive satire that's occasionally worthy of Buñuel.

The films in this second DVD selection encapsulate Chabrol's jaundiced
attitude towards the French bourgeoisie. La Rupture (1970) forms part of the ‘Hélène cycle' that he made with second wife Stéphane Audran. Inspired by Charlotte Armstrong's pulp novel, The Balloon Man, it centres on the abuse suffered by a former stripper at the hands of drug-addicted husband Jean-Claude Drouot and father-in-law Michel Bouquet, as they try to discredit her divorce suit. Chabrol's regular screenwriting buddy, Paul Gégauff, plays an equally monstrous spouse (with perhaps even more relish) in Une Partie de Plaisir (1974), which disconcertingly co-stars his ex-wife Danielle as the target of his murderous rage after a demand for an open marriage backfires.

The best laid plans of a treacherous partner also go awry in Les Innocents
aux Mains Sales (1975), as no sooner have Romy Schneider and St Tropez lover Paolo Giusti bumped off her rich and boorish husband (Rod Steiger) than he keeps coming back to haunt them. A hybrid of The Postman Always Rings Twice and Les Diaboliques, this nasty chiller finds echo in the policier Poulet au Vinaigre (aka Cop au Vin, 1984) and the savage exposé of middle-class morality and France's guilty past, La Fleur du Mal (2003). But there's a lighter tone to the espionage caper, La Route de Corinthe (1967), in which Jean Seberg has to find the black boxes that will prove she didn't kill spy husband, Christian Marquand.

David Parkinson on 12th July 2007

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Film Description

Claude Chabrol is considered a master in the mystery genre – so much so that he is affectionately known as the “French Hitchcock” - and is credited with starting the "nouvelle vague" French film movement that spawned Jean-Luc Godard, Eric Rohmer and Francois Truffaut.

This set stars some of France’s greatest ever actors including his long-time muse Stephane Audran, Michel

Bouquet and Francois Perrot, plus Academy Award

winner Rod Steiger.

Comprises:

1. Les innocents aux main sales (1975);

2. La route de corinthe (1967);

3. Une partie de plasir (1975);

4. Poulet au vinaigre (1985);

5. La fleur du mal (2003);

6. La rupture (1970).

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DVD Extras

• 6 discs

Film Details

Cast

Rod Steiger, Stephane Audran, Michel Bouquet, Francois Perrot

Technical Details