CHABROL'S NEW WAVE FILM..60.

- Manoj Kulkarni

First film of French New Wave..'Le Beau Serge' made by Claude Chabrol in 1958..now completed 60 years!

Gerard Blain, Bernadette Lafont & Jean-Claude Brialy in 

French film 'Le Beau Serge' (1958) made by Claude Chabrol.

Basically Chabrol was a film critic of film magazine 'Cahiers du cinema' which gave motivation to French New Wave movement. In 1958 he wrote & directed his first film 'Le Beau Serge' (Handsome Serge)..which was financed by his first wife Agnes Goute!

Leading pioneer of French New Wave..Claude Chabrol.

'Le Beau Serge' was inspired from Alfred Hitchcock's 'Shadow of a Doubt' (1943). This was because Chabrol chose popular genre 'thriller' to work in such kind of cinema..which was different from his contemporaries of new wave..like Francois Truffaut and Jean Luc Godard!

'Le Beau Serge' tells the story of a man who returns to hometown after many years to meet his friend and find out the reason of his alcoholic. But both entangled in affairs with beautiful girl..which makes things complicated! Gerard Blain portrayed the lead of handsome Serge and Jean-Claude Brialy played friend's role..with them beautiful Bernadette Lafont appeared as their love interest!

Jean-Claude Brialy, Bernadette Lafont & Gerard Blain in 'Le Beau Serge' (1958).

Chabrol did the shoot of this film in a village of his mother..and handled this story with non-standard style, using lighting gimmicks & more close-ups of objects. In this cinematographer Henri Decae, Editor Jacques Gaillard & music director Emile Delpierre also did good supportive work!

Isabelle Huppert in 'Madame Bovary' (1991).

Chabrol's latter films also used such genre like..'Les Biches' (1968) & 'Le Boucher' (1970) in which his another wife Stephane Audran acted! Most of his films like..'Masques' (1987) entered in international film festivals. in 1991 he too made film on popular romantic novel 'Madame Bovary' by Gustave Flaubert. In this pretty Isabelle Huppert portrayed the title role!

Great French Filmmaker Claude Chabrol with award!

Up to last 'Bellamy' (2009) every year of his long career Chabrol made film. I also saw his films in our 'International Film Festival of India'!



A decade back I published special issue of my 'Chitrasrushti' on '50 Years of New Wave Cinema' with reference to it's first film 'Le Beau Serge!

A Tribute!!

- Manoj Kulkarni
['Chitrasrushti']
  [Pune, India]