Another big one leaves the film world. RIP Claude Chabrol

13 Sep 2010 Leave a Comment

by abimorella in Film, Film and culture Tags: Cinemateque, Claude Chabrol, Erick Rohmer, French Cinema, French new wave, Godard

Chabrol always wanted to be the less serious one, out of all the French New Wave filmmakers

It  must have been a year and half ago  since I saw La femme infidèle (Chabrol 1976) . At that time, I didn’t know who actually directed the film, I was just attracted to watch it,as I had seen an American remade a few years back. I didn’t have much knowledge about who Chabrol was and when I found out, I had difficulties pronouncing his name, as I always get confused with the Spanish and English pronunciation of foreign names.

On September 12th 2010, another  one of the big ones abandoned this world and I guess, he  will be missed. With 50 films that spanned four decades,  Chabrol was one of the pioneers of French cinema and one of the founders of The French New Wave movement. Although, it is quite clear that all filmmakers of that time went separate ways; they transformed cinema forever in all kinds of ways.  Early on, this year, another one passed away, Erich Rohmer. Just as an observation, (kind of  something to bring into conversation really), if we are to follow this line, then we can say, there’s still a list on the countdown; Alan Resnais , the unforgettable Godard and Jack Rivette. Going back to Claude Chabrol, he, himself used profits to fund Rohmer’s Le Signe du Lion (1959) and they both started an intense analysis of Hitchcock’s films, like no one else had done before; in this way, they created the opportunity for film criticism in the 1950s/1960s.   Looking back into time, this  makes me think that  all is left is the thought of film buffs at the  Cinémathèque Française in the Avenue de Messina , where all of them( and to what it seems now the “heroes” of  what we once thought a golden era, The Nouvelle Vague) argued over the right film technique and what cinema is( but I guess that vision is product of  my mind). I  find fascinating how these filmmakers’s techniques  have transformed throughout  decades and have slowly adapted to the state of  contemporary cinema, (without losing what they initially aspired to do though). Chabrol’s death works as a reminder of an epic age that  will simply be printed in encyclopedias for future generations. For this, and some other reasons, I’ll leave you with an extract of Chabrol’s first film.

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