Claude Chabrol
| Claude Chabrol | |
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 Claude Chabrol in 2008 |
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| Born | 24 June 1930 Paris |
| Died | 12 September 2010 (aged 80) Paris |
| Occupation | director, actor, producer, screenwriter |
| Years active | 1956–2010 |
| Spouse | Agnès Goute (1956–62) (div.) Stéphane Audran (1964–80) (div.) Aurore Paquiss (1983–2010) (his death) |
Claude Chabrol (French: [klod ʃaˈbʁɔl]; 1930–2010) was a French film director, a member of the French New Wave (nouvelle vague) group of filmmakers who first came to prominence at the end of the 1950s. Like his colleagues and contemporaries Godard, Truffaut, Rohmer and Rivette, Chabrol was a critic for the influential film magazine Cahiers du cinéma before beginning his career as a film maker.
Chabrol's career began with Le Beau Serge (1958), inspired by Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (1943). Thrillers became something of a trademark for Chabrol, with an approach characterized by a distanced objectivity. This is especially apparent in Les Biches (1968), La Femme Infidèle (1969) and Le Boucher (1970) — all featuring his then-wife, Stéphane Audran.
Sometimes characterized as a "mainstream" New Wave director, Chabrol remained prolific and popular throughout his half-century career.[1] In 1978, he cast Isabelle Huppert as the lead in Violette Nozière. On the strength of that effort, the pair went on to others including the successful Madame Bovary (1991) and La Ceremonie (1996).
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[edit] Biography
After spending World War II in the village of Sardent, where he and a friend constructed a makeshift movie theater,[1] Chabrol returned to Paris to study pharmacology[2] at the University of Paris. There Chabrol became involved with the postwar cine club culture and met Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Éric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette and others with whom he would write for Cahiers du cinéma throughout the 1950s. In 1957, Chabrol co-wrote with Éric Rohmer Hitchcock (Paris: Éditions Universitaires, 1957), a study of the films made by director Alfred Hitchcock through the film The Wrong Man (1957). Chabrol had interviewed Hitchcock with Francois Truffaut in 1955 on the set of To Catch a Thief, where the two famously walked into a fountain after being starstruck by Hitchcock. Years later, when Chabrol and Truffaut had both become successful directors themselves, Hitchcock told Truffaut that he always thought of them when he saw "two ice cubes floating in his drink."
In 1958, Chabrol made his feature directorial debut with Le Beau Serge (1958), a Hitchcock-influenced[2] drama starring Jean-Claude Brialy partly funded by his wife's inheritance[1] and among the first films of the French New Wave. A critical success, it won Chabrol the Prix Jean Vigo and was followed the next year by Les Cousins, one of the New Wave's first commercial successes, and Chabrol's first color film, À double tour, starring Jean-Paul Belmondo. The most prolific of the major New Wave directors, Chabrol averaged almost one film a year from 1958 until his death. His early films (roughly 1958–1963) are usually categorized as part of the New Wave and generally have the experimental qualities associated with the movement. Beginning with his "Golden Era" films (1967–1974) he established what would be his signature "Chabrolesque" style, usually suspense thrillers in the tradition of Alfred Hitchcock. His 1987 film Masques was entered into the 37th Berlin International Film Festival.[3] In 1995 he was awarded the Prix René Clair from the Académie française for his body of work.
His first marriage to Agnès Goute (1956–1962) produced a son, Matthieu Chabrol, a French composer who scored most of his father's films from the early 1980s. He divorced Agnès to marry the actress Stéphane Audran, with whom he had a son, actor Thomas Chabrol. They remained married from 1964 to 1978. His third wife was Aurore Paquiss, who has been a script supervisor since the 1950s. He had four children.[4]
Chabrol died on 12 September 2010.[5]
[edit] Filmography
[edit] TV work
- Histoires insolites (1974), 5 episodes
- Nouvelles de Henry James (1974), 2 episodes
- Il était un musicien (1978), 3 episodes
- Madame le juge (1978), 1 episode
- "Jeunesse et Spiritualité" Cyprien Katsaris (1979) Official site
- Fantômas (1980), 2 episodes
- Le système du docteur Goudron et du professeur Plume (1981)
- Les affinités électives (1982)
- M. le maudit (1982)
- La danse de mort (1982)
- Les dossiers secrets de l'inspecteur Lavardin (1988), 2 episodes
- Les redoutables (2001), 1 episode
- Chez Maupassant (2007), 2 episodes
- Au siècle de Maupassant: Contes et nouvelles du XIXème siècle (2010), 2 episodes
[edit] Actor
- 1960: Les Jeux de l'amour by Philippe de Broca
- 1972: The Other Side of the Wind by Orson Welles
- 1976: La Bonne Nouvelle by André Weinfeld
- 1987: L'été en pente douce by Gérard Krawczyk
- 1986: Je hais les acteurs by Gérard Krawczyk
- 2010: Gainsbourg, vie héroïque by Joann Sfar
[edit] References
- ^ a b c Great Directors Critical Database: Claude Charbol at Senses of Cinema
- ^ a b "Allmovie Biography". Allmovie.com. 2011-08-04. http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=2:84594~T1. Retrieved 2011-08-25.
- ^ "Berlinale: 1987 Programme". berlinale.de. http://www.berlinale.de/en/archiv/jahresarchive/1987/02_programm_1987/02_Programm_1987.html. Retrieved 2011-02-28.
- ^ "Claude Chabrol". The Daily Telegraph. 12 September 2010. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/film-obituaries/7997567/Claude-Chabrol.html. Retrieved 12 September 2010.
- ^ Thursby, Keith (13 September 2010), "Claude Chabrol, 1930 – 2010: Filmmaker was a founder of New Wave movement", Los Angeles Times: AA5
[edit] External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Claude Chabrol |
- Claude Chabrol at the Internet Movie Database
- Biography on newwavefilm.com
- Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database
- Interview with Chabrol on La Cérémonie
- Roger Ebert interviews Chabrol in 1971
- Surfer on the New Wave - Interview with Chabrol from 2001
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