The Late Films of Claude Chabrol: Genre, Visual Expressionism and Narrational Ambiguity

Description

A member of the French New Wave group of filmmakers who first came to prominence at the end of the 1950s, Claude Chabrol has received the least amount of critical and scholarly attention, although he was the more prolific and commercially successful of them all. Jacob Leigh fills this lacuna by focusing on the last nine feature films of Chabrol's career, exploring his imagery, camerawork, use of sound and music, and performances, revealing the stylistic characteristics of his films while identifying the fundamental thematic issues that lie at the heart of his career-length exploration of the relationship between individuals and societies. Key areas of focus includes Chabrol's careful depiction of upper-class settings in films such as La Ceremonie (1995), Merci pour le chocolat (2000) and La Fille coupee en deux (2007) and on what Robin Wood and Michael Walker call 'the beast in man' (1970), the quasi-sympathetic 'id-figures' of which Le Boucher's Popaul is the most celebrated. Chabrol's 'id-figures' inherit the traits of Shadow of a Doubt's Uncle Charlie, Rope's Brandon and Strangers on a Train's Bruno, all three of whom have characteristics of the Nietzsche-quoting psychopath familiar in crime fiction. Additionally, The Late Films of Claude Chabrol considers the influence on Chabrol of a range of significant writers, including Patrick Hamilton, Patricia Highsmith, Charlotte Armstrong and Ruth Rendell.

Jacob Leigh is Lecturer in the Department of Media Arts at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. He is the author of The Cinema of Ken Loach: Art in the Service of the People (2002), Reading Rohmer, Close-Up 02 (2007), and The Cinema of Eric Rohmer: Irony, Imagination and the Social World (2012).

Delving into Claude Chabrol's last nine films with an entomologist's loop, Jacob Leigh provides close and clever readings of Chabrolian codes, contradictions and cunning as he convincingly argues for an expression of late style. * Andrea Picard, Film Programmer, Toronto International Film Festival, Canada * This book is the first in any language to take the full measure of Claude Chabrol's unique achievement as a filmmaker. Jacob Leigh brings together all the Chabrolian elements: humour and tragedy, involvement and distance, extreme stylisation and everyday detail, irony and critique. An indispensable companion to a rich body of work. * Adrian Martin, Professor of Film, Monash University, Australia * In this insightful and meticulous volume, Jacob Leigh provides an astute and authoritative account of a somewhat overlooked period in Chabrol's filmmaking career. Combining precise analysis with eloquent critical enquiry, this book will be indispensable to devotees of this director, of French film, and of contemporary cinema studies. * James Walters, Head of Film and Creative Writing, University of Birmingham, UK * This is an elegant, eloquent and vital contribution to our understanding and appreciation of Chabrol's films. It also adds to scholarship on notions of late style, and guides the reader back to the director's work through sensitive interpretations. * Steven Peacock, Professor of Film, University of Lincoln, UK * A rich appreciation of Claude Chabrol illuminating with great sensitivity and detail the careful complexities of the director's late films. Leigh articulates the intricacies of Chabrol's style with great skill, providing a meticulous understanding of his sophisticated and playful construction of fictional worlds that challenge the viewer through stylised form and uncomfortable ambivalence. Essential reading for anyone interested in Chabrol, French cinema at the turn of the 21st Century or the contemporary development of melodrama, this book further highlights the value of an aesthetic understanding for our engagement with film. * Lucy Fife Donaldson, Lecturer in Film Studies, University of St Andrews, UK *