Claude Chabrol

It’s tricky enough to pay tribute to a man who used to claim he had no ego and who, as a consequence, was suspicious of tributes. “For me, one thing is paramount in a work of art, and that thing is humility”, he would say. Which is probably why about two-thirds of his films are detective stories. “Any thriller involves two dimensions”, he would add. “First of all a metaphysical willingness of some sort, then a form of humility. These two things almost make up a definition of what an artist is”.

It was the thriller genre that first got us together, back in May 1982. We talked about Georges Simenon, Ellery Queen, Charlotte Armstrong, Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang and a few others besides. Anyway, we talked about “thrillers”, for a periodical entitled Polar, before we were to meet anew on the shooting of the film Polar by Jacques Bral. Then the Cognac years came, around the Thriller Film Festival, which was transferred to Beaune in 2009, with a jury whose Chairman was none other than …. Claude Chabrol himself.

Needless to say, our conversations about his career didn’t solely revolve around thrillers. He chose to entitle his book A Garden of My Own and used those lines by poet Andrew Marvell as an epigraph : “I have a garden of my own, but so with roses overgrown, and lilies, that you would guess it to be a little wilderness”. At any rate, that garden belonged to a demanding artist, who was at a remove from his image as a public jester. This was a man who would vomit on the “sacralization of cash”, who would also say that “kindness is as robust as strength is, you can smash ice walls with it”, a man who distrusted “the dehumanisation of films whose scripts are based on computer-made story-boards, and whose heroes are robots”, a man who defined himself as “a maker of art films, which means that cinema is my field and this is where I express myself”. This was a man who explained that he often came back to the thriller genre “simply because it’s about death and morality”, a man who when asked about how to make a film, answered “What we should first ask ourselves is why we make films…”

André S. Labarthe thought that there was in Chabrol “the simple though dire necessity to take a gaze”. We get some idea of the nature of this gaze by pondering over the admirable definition of film-directing he bequeathed upon us : “There are several elements. There’s a space element, an element of rhythm as well as a human element. What you have to do is to weave these together : have people move through space, along a specific rhythm and in such a way as to enhance their humanity”.
 

François Guérif

FILMOGRAPHY

• 1958 LE BEAU SERGE
• 1958 LES COUSINS
• 1959 À DOUBLE TOUR
• 1959 LES BONNES FEMMES
• 1960 LES GODELUREAUX
• 1961 OPHÉLIA
• 1961 LES SEPT PÊCHÉS CAPITAUX
• 1962 LANDRU
• 1963 LES PLUS BELLES ESCROQUERIES DU SIÈCLE
• 1964 LE TIGRE AIME LA CHAIR FRAÎCHE
• 1965 LE TIGRE SE PARFUME À LA DYNAMITE
• 1965 MARIE-CHANTAL CONTRE LE DOCTEUR K
• 1965 PARIS VU PAR
• 1966 LE SCANDALE
• 1966 LA LIGNE DE DÉMARCATION
• 1967 LES BICHES
• 1967 LA ROUTE DE CORINTHE
• 1968 LA FEMME INFIDÈLE
• 1969 LE BOUCHER
• 1969 QUE LA BÊTE MEURE
• 1970 JUSTE AVANT LA NUIT
• 1970 LA RUPTURE
• 1971 LA DÉCADE PRODIGIEUSE
• 1972 LES NOCES ROUGES
• 1972 DOCTEUR POPAUL
• 1973 NADA
• 1974 LES INNOCENTS AUX MAINS SALES
• 1974 UNE PARTIE DE PLAISIR
• 1975 FOLIES BOURGEOISES
• 1975 LES MAGICIENS
• 1976 ALICE OU LA DERNIERE FUGUE
• 1977 VIOLETTE NOZIÈRE
• 1978 LES LIENS DE SANG
• 1980 LE CHEVAL D’ORGUEIL
• 1982 LES FANTÔMES DU CHAPELIER
• 1983 LE SANG DES AUTRES
• 1984 POULET AU VINAIGRE
• 1985 L’INSPECTEUR LAVARDIN
• 1986 MASQUES
• 1987 LE CRI DU HIBOU
• 1988 UNE AFFAIRE DE FEMMES
• 1990 DOCTEUR M
• 1990 JOURS TRANQUILLES À CLICHY
• 1991 MADAME BOVARY
• 1992 BETTY
• 1993 L’OEIL DE VICHY
• 1994 L’ENFER
• 1995 LA CÉRÉMONIE
• 1996 RIEN NE VA PLUS
• 1998 AU COEUR DU MENSONGE
• 1999 MERCI POUR LE CHOCOLAT
• 2003 LA FLEUR DU MAL
• 2004 LA DEMOISELLE D’HONNEUR
• 2006 L’IVRESSE DU POUVOIR
• 2006 LA FILLE COUPÉE EN DEUX
• 2009 BELLAMY