N e w o n D V D !
Claude Chabrol:
Les Cousins
(Cousins)
France — 1959 — 112 min.
Directed by Claude Chabrol
Starring: Gérard Blain, Jean-Claude Brialy, Juliette Mayniel, Guy
Decomble and Geneviève Cluny
Synopsis
In Les cousins, Claude Chabrol (Les bonnes femmes) crafts a sly moral fable about a provincial boy who comes to live with his sophisticated bohemian cousin in Paris. Through these seeming opposites, Chabrol conjures a piercing, darkly comic character study that questions notions of good and evil, love and jealousy, and success in the modern world. A mirror image of Le beau Serge (Chabrol’s first), Les cousins recasts that film’s stars - Jean-Claude Brialy and Gérard Blain - in startlingly reversed roles. This dagger-sharp drama won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and was an important precursor to the French New Wave.
"“Les cousins could justifiably be called Chabrol’s first genuine masterpiece." — Home Theater Forum
Le Beau Serge
(The Handsome Serge)
France — 1958 — 112 min.
Directed by Claude Chabrol
Starring: Gerard Blain, Jean-Claude Brialy, Michele Meritz,
Bernadette Lafont, Claude Cerval
In French with English subtitles
For his first feature, Claude Chabrol revisited his hometown of Sardent to film the story of a cosmopolitan city student, François (Jean-Claude Brialy), who returns home only to discover that his childhood friend Serge (Gérard Blain) has fallen into a state of destitution. Shot in a style heavily in debt to then-emerging Italian neorealism with its use of nonprofessional actors and documentary-like footage of daily village life, "The Handsome Serge" is also replete with melodrama and morality. Coming home to recover from an illness, François is immediately confronted with the spectacle of his old friend, a one-time successful architect, drunk and disorderly, severely depressed after the death of his deformed child. Intent on rescuing Serge, François’ attempts have the opposite effect, starting a chain reaction of unfortunate events culminating in tragedy. The stark realism of Henri Dacae’s sublime black-and-white cinematography mixed with Chabrol’s use of heavy Catholic symbolism produce an emotional parable of great depth as the struggle between the two friends turns into a battle for redemption.
"The film that really started it all for Chabrol was Le beau Serge, a potent drama with stylish flourishes that anticipated his more Hitchcock-flavored films to come... Shot with a stark, beautiful simplicity in Chabrol’s hometown of Sardent, this film is often cited as the first genuine French New Wave film." — Home Theater Forum
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Le Beau Serge
(The Handsome Serge)
France — 1958 — 112 min.
Directed by Claude Chabrol
Starring: Gerard Blain, Jean-Claude Brialy, Michele Meritz,
Bernadette Lafont, Claude Cerval
In French with English subtitles
For his first feature, Claude Chabrol revisited his hometown of Sardent to film the story of a cosmopolitan city student, François (Jean-Claude Brialy), who returns home only to discover that his childhood friend Serge (Gérard Blain) has fallen into a state of destitution. Shot in a style heavily in debt to then-emerging Italian neorealism with its use of nonprofessional actors and documentary-like footage of daily village life, "The Handsome Serge" is also replete with melodrama and morality. Coming home to recover from an illness, François is immediately confronted with the spectacle of his old friend, a one-time successful architect, drunk and disorderly, severely depressed after the death of his deformed child. Intent on rescuing Serge, François’ attempts have the opposite effect, starting a chain reaction of unfortunate events culminating in tragedy. The stark realism of Henri Dacae’s sublime black-and-white cinematography mixed with Chabrol’s use of heavy Catholic symbolism produce an emotional parable of great depth as the struggle between the two friends turns into a battle for redemption.
"The film that really started it all for Chabrol was Le beau Serge, a potent drama with stylish flourishes that anticipated his more Hitchcock-flavored films to come... Shot with a stark, beautiful simplicity in Chabrol’s hometown of Sardent, this film is often cited as the first genuine French New Wave film." — Home Theater Forum
Cousins
The Handsome Serge
Courtesy of The Criterion Collection
Courtesy of The Criterion Collection