A co-production of France and Canada, Blood Relatives (Les liens de sang) is set in Montreal. Adapted from an Ed McBain novel by Claude Chabrol and Sydney Banks, the plot involves a brutal murder crossing two overlapping circles of family incest. Chabrol directed. The opening on a rain-soaked street at night, mysteriously, hauntingly in black […]
Tag Archives: Chabrol/Grunes
The Germans have already invaded France. In the winter of 1941, in a village in the Jura Mountains, the Loue River divides Free France and Occupied France. The bleak grayness of Jean Rabier’s immaculate black-and-white cinematography in writer-director Claude Chabrol’s La ligne de démarcation expresses the sadness of the French people, and the defeatism of […]
“It’s useless to ask questions, for there are no answers.” “You cannot escape your fate.” Dedicated to Fritz Lang, who had died earlier that year, writer-director Claude Chabrol’s Alice ou la dernière fugue certainly expresses Lang’s fatalistic view of life. It is one of the most chilling and nightmarish films I have seen—and one […]
From his and Paul Gégauff’s cunning script, Claude Chabrol directed this semi-delirious adaptation of Stanley Ellin’s mystery novel The Key to Nicholas Street. It opens with a bravura pan of artist Leda Mortoni’s cottage in Aix-en-Provence; highlighted by Leda’s absence, the passage projects the stillness of death. Seemingly confounding this, the film plunges into sexy […]
Working from his and Cécile Maistre’s fine, twisting, elusive script, Claude Chabrol made one of his most teasingly ambiguous films: La fille coupée en deux, both a heartrending feminist fable and quite cruel black comedy that concludes with a sardonic, agonizing dash of Max Ophuls’s Lola Mont ès (1955): the fated stage-bound finish that echoes […]
Dennis Grunes 