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Film Description
Possibly Chabrol's best known and most critically acclaimed film, it is consistently taut with engrossing twists in the director's own script. A tense and enthralling thriller set against the wonderfully observed background of provincial French life.
This 1970 Claude Chabrol effort is quietly delightful and very sensitive if not intimate. I've only seen one other film of his -"L'Enfer" and if these two are anything... more >
This 1970 Claude Chabrol effort is quietly delightful and very sensitive if not intimate. I've only seen one other film of his -"L'Enfer" and if these two are anything to go by, this director to me dwells a lot on implied terror and personal relationships. It reminds me distinctly of Hitchcock in that sense because there is no blatant throat-slashing nor heart-stopping action but more of conceptual suspense. Like in "Rope", we wonder throughout the film if the corpse was even in the case while all the elaborate conversation surrounds it. The movie also reminds me of the original "The Haunting" in terms of texture and camerawork -it's always quiet and sometimes even sleepy but yet somehow chilling.
As its title suggests, the film is about a butcher, Popaul (Jean Yanne) who works in a small French town by the countryside. At a wedding, he meets Helene (Stéphane Audran) the local primary school headmistress. The pair become fast friends and their relationship begins to gather pace but always we see an air of uneasiness about them still. Casting further doubt on their progress are a series of murders taking place in the village with no identifiable suspects. Helene gets suspicious about Popaul but we are unsure of whether or not Popaul is indeed the wanted culprit.
As with all psychological thrillers, the ending may not always be satisfying to the average thriller fan who expects some shocking twist or some profound message from it. To risk comparing Chabrol to Hitchcock again, I must say that there is no humour nor lightness to the film other that the sublime rural imagery. It is very much a film about two people, their interaction and the events surrounding them which might or might not change their relationship. The suspense lies not so much in what happens but rather how it happens. I also quite enjoyed the strange music that play through the film and found it very affirmative to the ambience of the whole story.
All in all, I'd recommend this little flick to viewers who would enjoy psychological thrillers made in the same vein as "The Lady Vanishes", "The Haunting", "Les Diaboliques" and "Rosemary's Baby".
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A magnificent film, full of the colours and rural life of the Dordogne. Above all, I loved the spiralling structure of the film: Ordinary life continues while an inves... more >
A magnificent film, full of the colours and rural life of the Dordogne. Above all, I loved the spiralling structure of the film: Ordinary life continues while an investigation takes place in the back ground and circles, closer and closer and closer. < less
Lovingly photographed evocation of rural France in which Chabrol need only call attention to a single object – a silver cigarette lighter – to create suspense; allowin... more >
Lovingly photographed evocation of rural France in which Chabrol need only call attention to a single object – a silver cigarette lighter – to create suspense; allowing Stephane Audran's consummate portrayal of the elegant headmistress to reveal the film’s wider psychology. < less
