Auteur List: Claude Chabrol - Discussion and Defenses

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barryconvex
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Re: Auteur List: Claude Chabrol - Discussion and Defenses

#151 Post by barryconvex » Mon Jan 13, 2020 3:45 am

Sorry I missed this one. My faves:

1. La Ceremonie
2. The Bridesmaid
3. Story Of Women
4. Les Biches
5. La femme infidèle
6. Le Boucher
7. Les Cousins
8. Une partie de plaisir
9. Que la bête meure
10. Le Beau Serge

I haven't seen Les Bonnes Femmes, The Third Lover, Les Innocents Aux Mains Sales, Les Noces Rouges or Les Fantômes Du Chapelier among others. I did recently watch The Champagne Murders which is minor Chabrol but was still a lot better than I thought it would be, not a bad film at all.

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Re: Auteur List: Claude Chabrol - Discussion and Defenses

#152 Post by nitin » Mon Jan 13, 2020 8:24 am

Are there any Chabrol restorations on the horizon anywhere?

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Auteur List: Claude Chabrol - Discussion and Defenses

#153 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Jan 13, 2020 9:02 am

barryconvex wrote:
Mon Jan 13, 2020 3:45 am
I haven't seen Les Bonnes Femmes
It’s my second favorite nouvelle vague film, and my favorite in the classical sense taking place on the streets of Paris. Right up there with Deville and Rozier for its playfulness though it has a darker agenda too, refusing to play by the rules even the unidentified ones in a movement that is based in rule breaking!

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barryconvex
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Re: Auteur List: Claude Chabrol - Discussion and Defenses

#154 Post by barryconvex » Tue Jan 14, 2020 2:34 am

I had a chance to buy the Kino dvd when it was still cheap and didn't take it. Is there another major director whose films have been as badly handled as Chabrol's? Most of those old Pathfinder dvds are barely watchable and there are only a handful of titles on blu. I guess I should be glad I got anything considering the complete lack of Deville in English.

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swo17
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Re: Auteur List: Claude Chabrol - Discussion and Defenses

#155 Post by swo17 » Tue Jan 14, 2020 2:37 am

barryconvex wrote:
Tue Jan 14, 2020 2:34 am
Is there another major director whose films have been as badly handled as Chabrol's?
Five years ago the answer might have been Rivette or Satyajit Ray

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NABOB OF NOWHERE
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Re: Auteur List: Claude Chabrol - Discussion and Defenses

#156 Post by NABOB OF NOWHERE » Tue Jan 14, 2020 3:02 am

nitin wrote:
Mon Jan 13, 2020 8:24 am
Are there any Chabrol restorations on the horizon anywhere?
Restoration funds were made available 4-5 years ago for the Artedis titles but rights issues have stalled the progress

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Re: Auteur List: Claude Chabrol - Discussion and Defenses

#157 Post by Lemmy Caution » Tue Jan 14, 2020 1:14 pm

I could have done this. I must have over two dozen Chabrol discs, including perhaps a handful I haven't seen. I find him wildly uneven. Really like Les Bonnes Femmes. Though I think I mostly/only know, or knew and forgot, the English titles for Chabrol films.

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barryconvex
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Re: Auteur List: Claude Chabrol - Discussion and Defenses

#158 Post by barryconvex » Sun Jan 19, 2020 3:29 am

I just watched The Third Lover which would definitely make My Chabrol top ten. And yes Lemmy, he's made his share of stinkers but his highlights are on a par with any other great director's best work and his late career yielded two all time classics in The Bridesmaid and Le Ceremonie. Actually three classics, Story Of Women deserves every accolade it gets, proves his versatility and contains another of Huppert's many great performances.

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Re: Auteur List: Claude Chabrol - Discussion and Defenses

#159 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Jan 19, 2020 4:01 am

L'Œil du Malin would absolutely make my list if I submitted it today, though likely just outside the top 10- a mistaken omission but such is life. It’s definitely had a hard effect on me since the project and I think about the psychology of the lead frequently, up there with his other great and complicated characters.

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knives
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Re: Auteur List: Claude Chabrol - Discussion and Defenses

#160 Post by knives » Sun Jan 19, 2020 8:23 am

I would never think of Story of Women as late Chabrol. I honestly thought at the beginning of that sentence you would reference something from his last decade.

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Re: Auteur List: Claude Chabrol - Discussion and Defenses

#161 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Jan 20, 2020 8:24 pm

Monsieur Saint-Saëns uses the strategy of historical fiction to meditate on a more general experience, as the famous French composer encounters Huppert and becomes captivated by her revolutionary identification which disrupts his routine and distracts him from societal comfort. The idea of a creative confronting the narrowness of his own scope and his conformity is conceptually ironic even if historically sound. There isn’t much to this brief tv episode but the depiction of the bourgeoisie as obsessive voyeur of the rebellious is interesting as he hides his emotion under his beard but exhibits total reawakening with his eyes. It made me think back on the times in my life where attention to a new population or perspective left me paralyzed and as a rhetorical yet abstract fable it works well.

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Re: Auteur List: Claude Chabrol - Discussion and Defenses

#162 Post by domino harvey » Mon Jan 20, 2020 8:28 pm

As someone who loathes noisy neighbors, I could sympathize with Huppert after he casually is like “Oh, hope you like piano music” when she’s moving in— I’d become a revolutionary too! I didn’t get much out of the sketch otherwise, though

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barryconvex
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Re: Auteur List: Claude Chabrol - Discussion and Defenses

#163 Post by barryconvex » Wed Jan 22, 2020 5:09 am

I thought Story Of Women was from circa '99-'00 but after checking imdb I see that I misremembered as it's from 1988. It was made thirty years into his career but since he directed films for another twenty I guess it counts as a mid-career work.

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Re: Auteur List: Claude Chabrol - Discussion and Defenses

#164 Post by NABOB OF NOWHERE » Fri Jan 24, 2020 2:04 pm

Coming from Studio Canal in march blu-rays of Landru and La Ligne de démarcation. No details if this is France only -seems to be a FNAC EXCLUSIVE at present.

Also coming on blu in France Le Scandale (aka The Champagne Murders) but again according to FNAC is inexplicably the English dub / cut with French subs.

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Re: Auteur List: Claude Chabrol - Discussion and Defenses

#165 Post by domino harvey » Fri Jan 24, 2020 2:10 pm

The latter is getting a US release from Kino a Lorber next month, hopefully they snatch up Landru too

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Re: Auteur List: Claude Chabrol - Discussion and Defenses

#166 Post by therewillbeblus » Fri Jan 24, 2020 2:26 pm

They should just prioritize the title nobody knows they desperately need, Juste avant la nuit

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Re: Auteur List: Claude Chabrol - Discussion and Defenses

#167 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Apr 07, 2020 2:05 pm

I finally caught up with Les fantômes du chapelier and unfortunately have to be the dissenting voice here. The film wasn’t bad, but the dry presentation (in a wet rainy film) has been done better many times over by Chabrol. I enjoyed the blunt, cold approach to the insanity of the serial killer-manikin conversations, and the mirroring of the suspicious neighbor with the killer was amusing not only in their dancing chases but in their respective identical placements in separate settings. There was a lot indebted to Lang’s M and perhaps Lang in general, though by the end everything just felt like a pointless exercise that was empty and not in the ways Chabrol harnesses emptiness for the purpose of exploring banalities in culture affecting us socially to facilitate emotional blunting. I don’t doubt that these were still the seeds that perpetuated the mechanics but they weren’t explored in a way that struck me as particularly inventive or arousing. Maybe I would’ve gotten more out of it if I had watched it in the depths of the project.

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Re: Auteur List: Claude Chabrol - Discussion and Defenses

#168 Post by domino harvey » Mon Jun 22, 2020 12:12 am

domino harvey wrote:
Sun Jun 02, 2019 11:47 am
Re: Paul Gégauff, I had to chuckle that he didn’t take his name off the rewrite for Les novices. The film is truly awful in a top-down fashion that watching and trying to figure which parts are Chabrol and which aren’t is pointless (though Zardi makes one scene easy to identify!). If you think the idea of BB as a nun and Annie Giradot as a prostitute (talk about backwards casting) becoming best buds sounds like a laff riot, well, then you have a lot in common with whoever financed this train wreck. There’s even a stray dog that has the third most screen time and does the whole “Timmy fell down the well” routine, to give you some idea how desperate this movie is
Here's surely one more reason Chabrol kept his name off the abysmal Les novices: having now seen Le plus vieux métier du monde, I was shocked to discover the entire ambulance brothel subplot was lifted wholesale from Claude Autant-Lara's Jean Aurenche-scripted segment! No wonder Chabrol pretended he didn't have a hand in it, would any self-respecting Young Turk ever be caught dead doing such a thing?

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Re: Auteur List: Claude Chabrol - Discussion and Defenses

#169 Post by domino harvey » Fri Nov 20, 2020 10:40 am

Le Banc de la désolation has English subs now on back channels. I liked it a lot more than Chabrol's other James adaptation for TV, though it's very much limited by being an hour long TV film with zero dollars budget (though a big star pops up for a wordless cameo 3/4 of the way through). The movie is also an anti-Mouret film, wherein meddling and external forces are ultimately rewarded and welcomed

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