Sunday, September 12, 2010

"Les Choses sérieuses" / "Serious Things"


CLAUDE CHABROL

(June 24, 1930 – September 12, 2010)


La Muette by Claude Chabrol, 1964/1965:



Brigitte et Brigitte [Brigitte and Brigitte] by Luc Moullet, 1966:



"That Cahiers du cinéma directs itself with regularity to the Hitchcock 'case' is no secret, nor are the sarcasms of our colleagues on the subject. From Georges Sadoul to Denis Marion, from Jean Quéval to Georges Charensol, we have been spared no ironies. They've tried to pick quarrels on the shakiest of grounds — even to the point of trying to make believe that on one occasion I translated 'larger than life' into French as métaphysique, when anyone who knows me knows I could not possibly have done anything of the kind."

— Claude Chabrol, "Les Choses sérieuses", Cahiers du cinéma no. 46, April 1955. Translation by Liz Heron.

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Claude Chabrol and Gérard Depardieu, photo for interview with Cahiers du cinéma on Bellamy, 2009:



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Dave Kehr's obituary in The New York Times is here, with additional notes and comments at Dave's blog here.

Hommage also rendered here at The Withered Spoon.

Griffe / Préfère l'impair / via Bruno Andrade, here.

A 2008 interview with Chabrol about cuisine, from Libération's Les Foodingues section — "You Can't Tell a Lie When Your Mouth's Full" — here.

"Les films de Claude Chabrol qui vous ont marqué" at Le Monde, here.

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On a related note, here's a DVD from France which everyone should discipline themselves to save up the money and pay for (and in the sense that it's the opposite of punishment) —




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3 comments:

  1. I've been reading tributes to Chabrol all morning. Without a doubt, this is one of the best.

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  2. Any idea if the Moullet disc is subtitled? Showing the Moullet shorts DVD to friends has been tough because simultaneous translations are not at all easy to do.

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  3. I love the way your homage interweaves several of Chabrol's obsessions, particularly that with food; the running joke about Lavardin's obsession with breakfast is among the great pleasures of those films (and really enliven the Lavardin telefilms). He uses food as a more serious way of commenting on wartime realities in Une Affaire de femmes, but in a very subtle manner.

    There's a great, sprawling interview with Chabrol in the Cahiers "Hors Série" issue devoted to his work in 1997 (?) during which various parts of the conversation touch on the food theme.

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