R.I.P. Claude Chabrol

Film lovers are saddened today at the news of the passing of Claude Chabrol, aged 80, the legendary, prolific director who played a key part in the French New Wave.

An active participant in the Paris ciné-club scene following the Second World War, Chabrol first made a name for himself writing for French film journal Cahiers du cinema, where he worked alongside peers Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut and Eric Rohmer. Together, they would eventually graduate from criticism to filmmaking, becoming central members of the nouvelle vague movement.

But whereas his colleagues (particularly Godard) used radical stylistic techniques - jump cuts, freeze frames, cut-up narratives - to breathe new life into a stagnant French national cinema, Chabrol was much more classical in his approach. He drew inspiration from suspense directors Fritz Lang and particularly Alfred Hitchcock, two masters he had written about during his Cahiers years.

These influences can be felt in Chabrol's extensive body of stylish, cool thrillers, in which he examined the hypocrisy (and often violence) lurking beneath the polished façade of the bourgeoisie. This theme would persist throughout Chabrol's lengthy, 70+ film career, which included early hits Le beau Serge (1958) and Les cousins (1959), and later triumphs like Merci pour la chocolat (2000).

Chabrol proved himself a particularly gifted director of women, drawing a series of terrific performances from his then-wife Stéphane Audran between the years of 1964-1980. Together, they made some of his best, most suspenseful films: Les biches (1968), Le boucher (1970) and La Femme infidèle, a story of a frustrated housewife's affair that was later remade in the U.S. as Unfaithful. In the latter stages of his career, Chabrol frequently collaborated with Isabelle Huppert, directing her to some of her finest performances in Violette Noziere (1978), Madame Bovary (1991) and La cérémonie (1995).