A History of the French New Wave Cinema

4 Claude Chabrol: Launching a Wave

4 Claude Chabrol: Launching a Wave For me, Mozart has always been a composer engaged in a search for minuscule, scarcely palpable beauty. He is also a composer who sensed putrefaction and decadence in the simplest things. —CLAUDE CHABROL, in “Chabrol’s Game of Mirrors” W I T H I N A fifteen-month period, from January 1959 to March 1960, Claude Chabrol premiered four feature films in Paris: Le beau Serge, Les cousins (The Cousins), A double tour, and Les bonnes femmes (The Good Girls). At a time when the French press was full of accounts of a New Wave in the cinema, Chabrol was promoted as the central agent of change. Chabrol was leading the way for his Cahiers du cinéma cohorts François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard and trying to get others such as Eric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, and even Philippe de Broca on track by producing their first features. In fact, in Paris theaters, the New Wave’s real testing ground, The Cousins proved to be the second most successful film by a Cahiers du cinéma filmmaker during these years, with 416,000 entries . Only Truffaut’s The 400 Blows later surpassed it, with 450,000 tickets sold, while Godard’s Breathless came in third with 380,000. As historian Claire Clouzot points out, Chabrol represented the novelty , success, and euphoria of the New Wave for that era: “Chabrol was living the unbelievable adventure of a director who knows nothing of filming and then overnight becomes the rave of Paris, the darling of all critics.”1 Consequently, Chabrol is often acknowledged as the “first” New Wave director by most historians today, with Le beau Serge and The Cousins recognized as “the breakthrough films of a new generation” or “the lightning bolts” announcing the New Wave.2 Yet after such a promising beginning Chabrol directed a string of poorly received films, lost his independent production company, and by 1964 had to look hard to find commercial projects such as Le tigre aime la chair fraiche (Tiger Likes Fresh Meat). 125 The uneven commercial value, inconsistent aesthetic success, and vague ideological slant of Chabrol’s oeuvre have left many historians confused about how to summarize the contributions of this prolific charter member of the New Wave. Chabrol’s sudden fall from grace with many critics and the resulting confusion over his long-term significance are part of the reason his career is so fascinating. One can approach Chabrol’s early career from three directions: his production practices, his narrative strategies , and his troubling thematics, all of which shed light on what makes Chabrol so puzzling yet essential for any history of the New Wave. First, Chabrol’s groundbreaking economic practices helped provide a new blueprint for filmmakers who wanted to make commercially viable feature films yet lacked patrons, massive private fortunes, or a traditional preparation for filmmaking. It is important to point out that Chabrol was not interested in forging a purely alternative personal cinema along the lines of an Agnès Varda or even an Alain Resnais. Chabrol, like Louis Malle, wanted to be a major new player in the French cinema, and his financial good fortune and marketing savvy allowed him not only to enter into the world of inexpensive production but also to point the way for others to play the production game as well. The initial funding in 1958 for Chabrol’s film career came in the form of an inheritance from his wife’s grandmother. With the bulk of the inheritance (thirty-two million old francs, or roughly sixty-four thousand dollars) he staked his own company, AJYM (named after his family), thereby modestly following Louis Malle’s model of establishing his own production house.3 He surpassed Malle’s autoproduction, however, by helping produce films by other directors as well. Moreover, Chabrol, like a good tax lawyer, knew how to work the new French prime de qualité rules to his advantage, and he argued for and won major concessions from the Centre national de la cinématographie, all in the name of encouraging young outsiders to revitalize the cinema. For instance, Chabrol appealed to the CNC and won an exemption during production of Le beau Serge: Chabrol could eliminate three union positions from the crew in order to keep his costs low.4 The jobs cut from the downsized production included set designer, sound engineer, and make-up person. These exemptions not only helped keep costs lower...