ABC has given a script commitment with penalty to No Good Deed, a drama from writer Jeannine Renshaw, Nzingha Stewart (From Scratch), Justin Hartley (This Is Us) and his ChangeUp Productions and 20th Television, where Hartley is under a pod deal.
Written by Renshaw and directed by Stewart, No Good Deed follows a warm-hearted botany professor with a dark secret who welcomes a troubled student into her home, only the seeming victim turns out to be a deadly parasite who uses her wiles and charms on vulnerable friends and family, unearthing secrets in this small mountain town, and destroying lives in order to cement her own twisted bond with her professor.
Renshaw and Stewart executive produce with Hartley via his ChangeUp Productions. ChangeUp Head of Development Julianna Larosa serves as producer. 20th Television is the studio.
Renshaw most recently served as co-executive producer on Manifest,...
Written by Renshaw and directed by Stewart, No Good Deed follows a warm-hearted botany professor with a dark secret who welcomes a troubled student into her home, only the seeming victim turns out to be a deadly parasite who uses her wiles and charms on vulnerable friends and family, unearthing secrets in this small mountain town, and destroying lives in order to cement her own twisted bond with her professor.
Renshaw and Stewart executive produce with Hartley via his ChangeUp Productions. ChangeUp Head of Development Julianna Larosa serves as producer. 20th Television is the studio.
Renshaw most recently served as co-executive producer on Manifest,...
- 11/3/2021
- by Denise Petski
- Deadline Film + TV
Elie Samaha’s Luminosity Entertainment and Mike Karz’s Gulfstream Pictures have snagged the worldwide rights to Abner Benaim’s dramatic thriller, “Plaza Catedral.”
The deal, forged by Luminosity partner and co-president Daniel Diamond and Karz, closed just ahead of the film’s world premiere at the Guadalajara Int’l Film Festival (Ficg) on Oct. 3. “Plaza Catedral” is in competition at Ficg’s main category, the Mezcal Awards.
“Plaza Catedral is a very powerful, moving film with superb performances and outstanding direction by Benaim. We are proud to be a part of bringing this film to worldwide audiences,” said Diamond.
This is the first non-English pickup by Luminosity, which was launched in September. “I haven’t represented many, if any, non English-language films but audiences in the U.S. and around the world are demonstrating their interest in content of all nationalities and languages, as evidenced by the success of shows like ‘Lupin,...
The deal, forged by Luminosity partner and co-president Daniel Diamond and Karz, closed just ahead of the film’s world premiere at the Guadalajara Int’l Film Festival (Ficg) on Oct. 3. “Plaza Catedral” is in competition at Ficg’s main category, the Mezcal Awards.
“Plaza Catedral is a very powerful, moving film with superb performances and outstanding direction by Benaim. We are proud to be a part of bringing this film to worldwide audiences,” said Diamond.
This is the first non-English pickup by Luminosity, which was launched in September. “I haven’t represented many, if any, non English-language films but audiences in the U.S. and around the world are demonstrating their interest in content of all nationalities and languages, as evidenced by the success of shows like ‘Lupin,...
- 10/3/2021
- by Anna Marie de la Fuente
- Variety Film + TV
Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Alejandra Márquez Abella's The Good Girls is exclusively showing July 23 - August 22, 2020 in most countries in Mubi's Viewfinder series.Sofía saunters through her birthday party with the regal gait of a monarch. It’s the early 1980s in Mexico City, and she’s hobnobbing with the country’s crème de la crème, a chatty contingent of men and women in glamorous clothes who’ve flocked to her mansion. The 1982 economic crisis has just broken out, but none of the guests can foresee its seismic consequences, the way the peso crash and President López Portillo’s policies will spell the demise of many of the country’s richest. The Good Girls, Alejandra Márquez Abella’s sophomore feature, is the story of a fall from grace. It starts off with the outside world at an arm’s length, watching as...
- 7/22/2020
- MUBI
Alejandra Márquez Abella's The Good Girls, which is receiving an exclusive global online premiere on Mubi, is showing from July 23 – August 21, 2020 in most countries in Mubi's Viewfinder series.I’m very excited to be introducing my film Las niñas bien (The Good Girls) to the Mubi audience. It’s such a great honor! Las niñas bien was a compilation of Guadalupe Loaeza’s humoristic Sunday column in Mexico back in the early 80s. She wrote about what she was observing among her friends, the elite circle, during Mexico’s economic crisis. The column was published in one leftist journal at the time, it was a hit and a scandal for the real Niñas Bien who felt betrayed. Among other infamies, her writing revealed the great disconnection that the wealthy had with the political reality of their country. That book has been around for almost 40 years. Though perceived as pulpy,...
- 7/13/2020
- MUBI
Dušan Makavejev was born on King Milutin Street in Belgrade on October 13, 1932. This was about nine years before the city was occupied by the Nazis, at which point the Chinese embassy across the street became the headquarters of the German Chief Command of the Southeast. As a child, he watched German officers go in and out of the building, one of whom, Kurt Waldheim, would later become the Secretary of the United Nations—though of course the young Makavejev didn’t know this at the time. Following the Second World War, it was under Tito's Communist, but anti-Stalinist Yugoslavia that Makavejev first emerged as a major Eastern European filmmaker, initially associated with the loosely defined Novi Film (new film) movement. His eclectic career, the subject of a major retrospective at New York's Anthology Archives, garnered praise from the likes of Amos Vogel, Robin Wood, Stanley Cavell, Jonas Mekas, and Roger Ebert,...
- 2/27/2020
- MUBI
Will Ferrell and Paul Rudd are getting back together for the Mrc Television limited series The Shrink Next Door which is based on the 2019 No. 1 new Wondery and Bloomberg Media podcast. The last time the duo starred together was in 2013’s Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues.
Also inspired by true events, The Shrink Next Door is a dark comedy following the bizarre relationship between psychiatrist to the stars Dr. Isaac “Ike” Herschkopf played by Rudd, and his longtime patient Martin “Marty” Markowitz, played by Ferrell. Over the course of their relationship, the all-too-charming Ike slowly takes over Marty’s life, even moving into Marty’s home and taking over his family business. The series explores how a seemingly normal doctor-patient dynamic morphs into an unprecedentedly exploitative one filled with manipulation, power grabs, and dysfunction at its finest.
The Big Sick filmmaker Michael Showalter will direct with Georgia Pritchett writing. Ferrell,...
Also inspired by true events, The Shrink Next Door is a dark comedy following the bizarre relationship between psychiatrist to the stars Dr. Isaac “Ike” Herschkopf played by Rudd, and his longtime patient Martin “Marty” Markowitz, played by Ferrell. Over the course of their relationship, the all-too-charming Ike slowly takes over Marty’s life, even moving into Marty’s home and taking over his family business. The series explores how a seemingly normal doctor-patient dynamic morphs into an unprecedentedly exploitative one filled with manipulation, power grabs, and dysfunction at its finest.
The Big Sick filmmaker Michael Showalter will direct with Georgia Pritchett writing. Ferrell,...
- 2/19/2020
- by Anthony D'Alessandro
- Deadline Film + TV
What is the truth? And can you handle it? Notions of truth, perspective and judgment have long been staples of the courtroom drama, melded into specific social commentary concerning the cultural disparity between a country’s elders and its youth in Henri-Georges Clouzot’s late-career masterstroke, La Vérité. Released in 1960, where it would go on to nab an Academy Award nomination and win a Golden Globe, this was Clouzot’s last great hurrah, as the troubled production of 1964’s Inferno was never completed, while one final title in 1968 with La Prisonniere fell into immediate obscurity.
Arriving just as the Nouvelle Vague was redefining the stylistic possibilities of cinema, with Chabrol’s Les Bonnes Femmes, Truffaut’s The 400 Blows and Godard’s Breathless all arriving at or around the same time, Clouzot’s last notable hit stresses the divide of his classical filmmaking style with the topicality of a new generation.
Arriving just as the Nouvelle Vague was redefining the stylistic possibilities of cinema, with Chabrol’s Les Bonnes Femmes, Truffaut’s The 400 Blows and Godard’s Breathless all arriving at or around the same time, Clouzot’s last notable hit stresses the divide of his classical filmmaking style with the topicality of a new generation.
- 2/26/2019
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
New Wave director Claude Chabrol goes off in an odd direction with this Francophone adaptation of Hamlet. Convinced that his father was murdered, the heir to an estate behaves like a madman as he sets out to unmask the killers. The ‘castle’ is a country manse guarded by thugs as a precaution against the signeur’s striking union workers. Special added attraction: the stars to see are Alida Valli and Juliette Mayniel of Eyes without a Face.
Ophélia
Blu-ray
Olive Films
1963 / B&W / 1:66 widescreen / 104 min. / Street Date April 25, 2017 / available through the Olive Films website / 29.95
Starring: Alida Valli, Juliette Mayniel, Claude Cerval, André Jocelyn, Robert Burnier, Jean-Louis Maury, Sacha Briquet, Liliane Dreyfus (David), Pierre Vernier.
Cinematography: Jacques Rabier, Jean Rabier
Film Editor: Jacques Gaillard
Original Music: Pierre Jansen
Written by Claude Chabrol, Paul Gégauff, Martial Matthieu from a play by William Shakespeare
Produced and Directed by Claude Chabrol
I suppose...
Ophélia
Blu-ray
Olive Films
1963 / B&W / 1:66 widescreen / 104 min. / Street Date April 25, 2017 / available through the Olive Films website / 29.95
Starring: Alida Valli, Juliette Mayniel, Claude Cerval, André Jocelyn, Robert Burnier, Jean-Louis Maury, Sacha Briquet, Liliane Dreyfus (David), Pierre Vernier.
Cinematography: Jacques Rabier, Jean Rabier
Film Editor: Jacques Gaillard
Original Music: Pierre Jansen
Written by Claude Chabrol, Paul Gégauff, Martial Matthieu from a play by William Shakespeare
Produced and Directed by Claude Chabrol
I suppose...
- 4/25/2017
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Being called the French Hitchcock does Claude Chabrol a disservice, as his dark thrillers approach mystery and suspense almost completely through character, not cinematics. These three very good 1990s productions are completely different in tone and approach, and each showcases a stunning French actress.
Betty, Torment (L’enfer), The Swindle (Rien ne vas plus)
Blu-ray
3 Classic Films by Claude Chabrol
Cohen Film Collection
1992,1994,1997 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 103, 102, 105 min. / Street Date February 21, 2017 / 49.99
Starring Marie Trintignant, Stéphane Audran, Jean-François Garreaud, Yves Lambrecht; Emmanuelle Béart, François Cluzet, Nathalie Cardone, Dora Doll; Isabelle Huppert, Michel Serrault, François Cluzet, Jean-François Balmer.
Cinematography: Bernard Zitermann; Bernard Zitermann, Eduardo Serra
Film Editor: Monique Fardoulis (x3)
Original Music: Matthieu Chabrol (x3)
Written by Claude Chabrol from a novel by Georges Simenon; Claude Chabrol from a script by Henri-Georges Clouzot; Claude Chabrol
Produced by Marin Karmitz (x3)
Directed by Claude Chabrol (x3)
Not all Claude Chabrol films are equal, but...
Betty, Torment (L’enfer), The Swindle (Rien ne vas plus)
Blu-ray
3 Classic Films by Claude Chabrol
Cohen Film Collection
1992,1994,1997 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 103, 102, 105 min. / Street Date February 21, 2017 / 49.99
Starring Marie Trintignant, Stéphane Audran, Jean-François Garreaud, Yves Lambrecht; Emmanuelle Béart, François Cluzet, Nathalie Cardone, Dora Doll; Isabelle Huppert, Michel Serrault, François Cluzet, Jean-François Balmer.
Cinematography: Bernard Zitermann; Bernard Zitermann, Eduardo Serra
Film Editor: Monique Fardoulis (x3)
Original Music: Matthieu Chabrol (x3)
Written by Claude Chabrol from a novel by Georges Simenon; Claude Chabrol from a script by Henri-Georges Clouzot; Claude Chabrol
Produced by Marin Karmitz (x3)
Directed by Claude Chabrol (x3)
Not all Claude Chabrol films are equal, but...
- 2/21/2017
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Exclusive: Principal photography is underway for Courtney Hoffman’s feminist western short The Good Time Girls from Haven Entertainment. Hoffman writes, Quentin Tarantino executive produces and Laura Dern stars in this 1880s tale about three female vigilantes who seek revenge against the outlaws who ruined their lives. Alia Shawkat, Annalise Baso, Q'orianka Kitcher, Garret Dillahunt, and Dana Gourier also star. There are plans to ultimately turn this short into a feature…...
- 6/22/2016
- Deadline
With bittersweet anticipation, we look forward to the final seven episodes of Mad Men's final season. Matthew Weiner has selected "ten movies that had an important influence" on the show for a series running at the Museum of the Moving Image—and he's written the descriptions for each himself: Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest and Vertigo, Billy Wilder's The Apartment, David Lynch's Blue Velvet, Claude Chabrol's Les Bonnes Femmes, Fielder Cook's Patterns, Delbert Mann's Dear Heart and The Bachelor Party, Jean Negulesco's The Best of Everything and Arthur Hiller's The Americanization of Emily. Today's entry features more goings on in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, London, Venice and beyond. » - David Hudson...
- 3/6/2015
- Fandor: Keyframe
With bittersweet anticipation, we look forward to the final seven episodes of Mad Men's final season. Matthew Weiner has selected "ten movies that had an important influence" on the show for a series running at the Museum of the Moving Image—and he's written the descriptions for each himself: Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest and Vertigo, Billy Wilder's The Apartment, David Lynch's Blue Velvet, Claude Chabrol's Les Bonnes Femmes, Fielder Cook's Patterns, Delbert Mann's Dear Heart and The Bachelor Party, Jean Negulesco's The Best of Everything and Arthur Hiller's The Americanization of Emily. Today's entry features more goings on in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, London, Venice and beyond. » - David Hudson...
- 3/6/2015
- Keyframe
Actor with a natural and rebellious style, she helped to launch the French New Wave
Bernadette Lafont, who has died aged 74, could have claimed to be the first female star of the Nouvelle Vague. François Truffaut chose the sensual, dark-haired, 18-year-old Lafont and her new husband, Gérard Blain, to play lovers in the director's first professional film, Les Mistons (The Mischief-Makers, 1957). In this charming short, shot in Nîmes one summer, a group of pubescent boys spy on Lafont and Blain's lovemaking in the fields. Blain and Lafont were also picked to appear in arguably the first French New Wave feature, Claude Chabrol's Le Beau Serge (1958). In this film, about a young man returning to his childhood home, Lafont played the "village vamp".
Lafont's fresh look and performance style crystallised the movement's ideological and cinematic ambitions. Truffaut and his colleagues found mainstream stars inadequate to their needs, using instead unknown and non-professional actors,...
Bernadette Lafont, who has died aged 74, could have claimed to be the first female star of the Nouvelle Vague. François Truffaut chose the sensual, dark-haired, 18-year-old Lafont and her new husband, Gérard Blain, to play lovers in the director's first professional film, Les Mistons (The Mischief-Makers, 1957). In this charming short, shot in Nîmes one summer, a group of pubescent boys spy on Lafont and Blain's lovemaking in the fields. Blain and Lafont were also picked to appear in arguably the first French New Wave feature, Claude Chabrol's Le Beau Serge (1958). In this film, about a young man returning to his childhood home, Lafont played the "village vamp".
Lafont's fresh look and performance style crystallised the movement's ideological and cinematic ambitions. Truffaut and his colleagues found mainstream stars inadequate to their needs, using instead unknown and non-professional actors,...
- 7/26/2013
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
(Beloved world premiered at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and was picked up for distribution by IFC Films. It opens theatrically on August 17, 2012. Visit the film’s website to learn more.)
Beloved, the latest film from French writer/director Christophe Honoré, uses the history of the late 20th century as a framework for exploring the difficult love affairs of a mother, Madeleine (played as a young woman by Ludivine Sagnier and as an older woman by Catherine Deneuve) and her daughter, Vera (Chiarra Mastroianni). Like much of Honoré’s work, the movie is rich with allusions not only to literary and theatrical forms, but to the history of the cinema itself; opening in a Parisian shoe store in 1964, it takes Honoré only a few moments to reference The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Cléo From 5 To 7 and Les Bonnes Femmes before, in a single beat, spinning directly into a nod to Belle Du Jour.
Beloved, the latest film from French writer/director Christophe Honoré, uses the history of the late 20th century as a framework for exploring the difficult love affairs of a mother, Madeleine (played as a young woman by Ludivine Sagnier and as an older woman by Catherine Deneuve) and her daughter, Vera (Chiarra Mastroianni). Like much of Honoré’s work, the movie is rich with allusions not only to literary and theatrical forms, but to the history of the cinema itself; opening in a Parisian shoe store in 1964, it takes Honoré only a few moments to reference The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Cléo From 5 To 7 and Les Bonnes Femmes before, in a single beat, spinning directly into a nod to Belle Du Jour.
- 8/16/2012
- by Tom Hall
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
Netflix has revolutionized the home movie experience for fans of film with its instant streaming technology. Netflix Nuggets is my way of spreading the word about independent, classic and foreign films made available by Netflix for instant streaming.
Sorry, folks… there are simply too many great films streaming this week to post an image for them all, but that’s a good thing, eh? You’ve got your movie watching work cut out for you, due in great part to Miramax releasing damn near their entire catalog of films on one day!
B. Monkey (1999)
Streaming Available: 05/01/2011
Director: Michael Radford
Synopsis: Good-hearted schoolteacher Alan Furnace (Jared Harris) desperately wants some excitement in his life — and he may just get some. One lonely night at a London bar, Alan spies the raven-haired beauty Beatrice (Asia Argento) arguing with two friends, Paul (Rupert Everett) and Bruno (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers). Beatrice quickly befriends Alan and...
Sorry, folks… there are simply too many great films streaming this week to post an image for them all, but that’s a good thing, eh? You’ve got your movie watching work cut out for you, due in great part to Miramax releasing damn near their entire catalog of films on one day!
B. Monkey (1999)
Streaming Available: 05/01/2011
Director: Michael Radford
Synopsis: Good-hearted schoolteacher Alan Furnace (Jared Harris) desperately wants some excitement in his life — and he may just get some. One lonely night at a London bar, Alan spies the raven-haired beauty Beatrice (Asia Argento) arguing with two friends, Paul (Rupert Everett) and Bruno (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers). Beatrice quickly befriends Alan and...
- 4/29/2011
- by Travis Keune
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
The 15th City of Lights, City of Angels, a festival with both a handy acronym, Col•Coa, and a winning subtitle, "A Week of French Film Premieres in Hollywood," has opened with Philippe Le Guay's Service Entrance and closes on Sunday with Dany Boon's Nothing to Declare. In all, 34 features and 26 shorts will be screened, and we're teaming up with the festival to present five of those shorts for free. All five have been made by students of La fémis in Paris (whose alumni, by the way, include Laurent Cantet, Costa-Gavras, Claire Denis, Louis Malle, Arnaud Desplechin, Claude Miller, François Ozon and Alain Resnais). You can view our offering here.
In Brice Pancot's À cor et à cir (image above), a woman who's just turned her car over is discovered by a man and his son; see the teaser here. In Marion Desseigne-Ravel's Uniform (Les Murs...
In Brice Pancot's À cor et à cir (image above), a woman who's just turned her car over is discovered by a man and his son; see the teaser here. In Marion Desseigne-Ravel's Uniform (Les Murs...
- 4/18/2011
- MUBI
Claude Chabrol is the kind of figure who could be reclaimed after death – there are some films that might look much better years later
Nearly 50 years ago, Claude Chabrol – who died last weekend – wrote an essay, Big Subjects, Little Subjects, in which he set out an attitude to movies and a guide to his own career (which had only just begun). "You can make a film about the French Revolution, or a squabble with the next-door neighbour, the apocalypse of our time or how the barmaid became pregnant, the last hours of a hero of the Resistance, or the inquest on a murdered prostitute. It's all a question of personality."
If you wanted to demonstrate this theory in defence of modesty, you could point to Madame Bovary (1991), where despite the presence of Isabelle Huppert in the title role, Chabrol seems a little overawed or diffident with the material. If only...
Nearly 50 years ago, Claude Chabrol – who died last weekend – wrote an essay, Big Subjects, Little Subjects, in which he set out an attitude to movies and a guide to his own career (which had only just begun). "You can make a film about the French Revolution, or a squabble with the next-door neighbour, the apocalypse of our time or how the barmaid became pregnant, the last hours of a hero of the Resistance, or the inquest on a murdered prostitute. It's all a question of personality."
If you wanted to demonstrate this theory in defence of modesty, you could point to Madame Bovary (1991), where despite the presence of Isabelle Huppert in the title role, Chabrol seems a little overawed or diffident with the material. If only...
- 9/16/2010
- by David Thomson
- The Guardian - Film News
Prolific French director of films with murder at their heart
The film director Claude Chabrol, who has died aged 80, created the first ripple of the French new wave with his first feature, Le Beau Serge (1958). Unlike some of his other critic colleagues on the influential journal Cahiers du Cinéma, who also became film-makers, Chabrol was perfectly happy in the mainstream. Along with Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette, he paid serious attention to Hollywood studio contract directors who retained their artistic personalities through good and bad films, thus formulating what came to be known as the "auteur theory".
In 1957, he and Rohmer wrote a short book on Alfred Hitchcock, whom they saw as a Catholic moralist. Hitchcock's black humour and fascination with guilt pervades the majority of Chabrol's films, most of which have murder at their heart. However, although Chabrol's thematic allegiance to Hitchcock remained intact, his...
The film director Claude Chabrol, who has died aged 80, created the first ripple of the French new wave with his first feature, Le Beau Serge (1958). Unlike some of his other critic colleagues on the influential journal Cahiers du Cinéma, who also became film-makers, Chabrol was perfectly happy in the mainstream. Along with Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette, he paid serious attention to Hollywood studio contract directors who retained their artistic personalities through good and bad films, thus formulating what came to be known as the "auteur theory".
In 1957, he and Rohmer wrote a short book on Alfred Hitchcock, whom they saw as a Catholic moralist. Hitchcock's black humour and fascination with guilt pervades the majority of Chabrol's films, most of which have murder at their heart. However, although Chabrol's thematic allegiance to Hitchcock remained intact, his...
- 9/14/2010
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
The French New Wave veteran has died aged 80. We look back over his career with a selection of clips from his films
Along with François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol ushered in the New Wave that washed over French cinema at the end of the 1950s. Like them a critic turned filmmaker, Chabrol shared their appreciation of classical genre form – to some, he appreciated it too much, exploring rather than subverting its strictures. But his prodigious output and technical mastery assure his place as one of the great figures of cinema's first century.
Born in 1930 to a middle-class family, Chabrol studied law before joining Godard, Truffaut, Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette in making Cahiers du Cinema, the epicentre of auteurist celebration of 'low' Hollywood. In 1957, he and Rohmer published their influential study of Hitchcock – a director who would have an enduring influence on Chabrol's work behind the camera – and,...
Along with François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol ushered in the New Wave that washed over French cinema at the end of the 1950s. Like them a critic turned filmmaker, Chabrol shared their appreciation of classical genre form – to some, he appreciated it too much, exploring rather than subverting its strictures. But his prodigious output and technical mastery assure his place as one of the great figures of cinema's first century.
Born in 1930 to a middle-class family, Chabrol studied law before joining Godard, Truffaut, Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette in making Cahiers du Cinema, the epicentre of auteurist celebration of 'low' Hollywood. In 1957, he and Rohmer published their influential study of Hitchcock – a director who would have an enduring influence on Chabrol's work behind the camera – and,...
- 9/13/2010
- by Ben Walters
- The Guardian - Film News
Peter Bradshaw on the French New Wave figure who out-Hitchcocked Hitchcock with his hypocrisy-exposing suspense thrillers
For 30 years after the death of Alfred Hitchcock, the French film-maker Claude Chabrol near single-handedly kept alive a genre that without him might have become a museum piece, like the musical or the western: the icily elegant suspense thriller. The existence of these tense dramas depended largely on a strict set of social codes, a strong sense of order and a buttoned-up bourgeois society within which the idea of crime is unthinkable.
Yet the genre's dramatic charge depends not merely on the chill of transgression, but on the realisation that with sufficient ruthlessness, or ingenuity, or social privilege, some crime or psychopathic outrage might be concealed and fester, unseen, for ever.
Perhaps it is telling that Hitchcock was an Englishman; Chabrol found something in French society that was highly congenial to the suspense genre,...
For 30 years after the death of Alfred Hitchcock, the French film-maker Claude Chabrol near single-handedly kept alive a genre that without him might have become a museum piece, like the musical or the western: the icily elegant suspense thriller. The existence of these tense dramas depended largely on a strict set of social codes, a strong sense of order and a buttoned-up bourgeois society within which the idea of crime is unthinkable.
Yet the genre's dramatic charge depends not merely on the chill of transgression, but on the realisation that with sufficient ruthlessness, or ingenuity, or social privilege, some crime or psychopathic outrage might be concealed and fester, unseen, for ever.
Perhaps it is telling that Hitchcock was an Englishman; Chabrol found something in French society that was highly congenial to the suspense genre,...
- 9/13/2010
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Claude Chabrol, one of the founding players of the French New Wave, and the director of more than fifty films, has died in Paris, aged 80.Starting out as a pharmaclogist at the University of Paris, he was drawn to the cinema, and like his nouvelle vague contemporaries Francois Truffault, Jean-Luc Godard, Eric Rohmer, Alain Resnais and Jacques Rivette, was a critic for the seminal French film magazine Cahiers du Cinema.His Les Bonnes Femmes was one of the earliest films of the nouvelle vague: an intriguing mix of romantic comedy and psychological horror. But as the most "commercial" of his contemporaries, it was for his thrillers, poking around in the rotten core of bourgeois society, that he became most revered. At the fall of the Berlin Wall, he said that he'd read it meant the end of class war, and commented "only someone with money would say such a thing". His hero was Alfred Hitchcock,...
- 9/13/2010
- EmpireOnline
Claude Chabrol, who died Sunday, Sept. 12 at 80, was a founder of the New Wave and a giant of French cinema. This interview, which took place during the 1970 New York Film Festival, shows him at midpoint in his life, just as he had emerged from a period of neglect and was making some of his best films.
Claude Chabrol's "This Man Must Die" is advertised as a thriller, but I found it more of a macabre study of human behavior. There's no doubt as to the villain's identity, and little doubt that he will die (although how he dies is left deliciously ambiguous).
Unlike previous masters of thrillers like Hitchcock, Chabrol goes for mood and tone more than for plot. You get the notion that his killings and revenges are choreographed for a terribly observant camera and an ear that hears the slightest change in human speech.
For this reason,...
Claude Chabrol's "This Man Must Die" is advertised as a thriller, but I found it more of a macabre study of human behavior. There's no doubt as to the villain's identity, and little doubt that he will die (although how he dies is left deliciously ambiguous).
Unlike previous masters of thrillers like Hitchcock, Chabrol goes for mood and tone more than for plot. You get the notion that his killings and revenges are choreographed for a terribly observant camera and an ear that hears the slightest change in human speech.
For this reason,...
- 9/12/2010
- by Roger Ebert
- blogs.suntimes.com/ebert
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.