“Stupidity is infinitely more fascinating than intelligence,” Claude Chabrol once said. Perhaps this explains why his movies are filled with amorous and foolish people doing a variety of ill-advised things, mostly involving sexual frustration, obsessive love, infidelity, murder, and the constrictions of bourgeois life. The seven films included here—all newly restored—were made in what many consider to be the auteur’s middle-career golden era (spanning the decade of 1968–78), each one a consummate example of his signature psychological thriller.
A key figure in the French New Wave and the development of Cahiers du Cinéma, Chabrol is widely regarded—if in oversimplified terms—as the French Hitchcock (he co-authored a book on the master with Eric Rohmer), with the film noir influences of Fritz Lang often detectable as well. His meticulously crafted dark works of suspense never fail to thrill and delight. Beneath their slick, cool veneer resides soapy drama, illicit liaisons, double-dealings, deadly passion, and sometimes gnawing guilt. All but one of these selections star his entrancing leading lady, Stéphane Audran, his wife and creative partner at the time, with whom Chabrol made roughly 25 films, and the co-conspirator of his efforts to explore a more cerebral side of crime and passion.
