Episode Description
Cinéclub Podcast number 24 is a conversation with Catherine Wheatley about Claude Chabrol.
Chabrol is a favourite of mine and I’ve wanted to do an episode on him ever since the podcast started. Now seemed the right time because the BFI is about to begin a season of films and talks entitled Claude Chabrol: Elements of Crime at the BFI Southbank, with 10 films streaming on BFI Player and a Blu-Ray box set to come next year. Beautifully restored versions of three Chabrol classics, Les Biches, La Femme Infidèle and Le Boucher have also been acquired for the BFI catalogue and are being made available to cinemas nationwide, so even if you can’t get to London for screenings, you may be in with a chance of seeing those.
Needless to say, this is extremely exciting for Chabrol fans, especially as many of his films have only been available in DVD quality or lower for many years.
Chabrol began his career in film at Cahiers du Cinéma in the 1950s alongside fellow critics and soon-to-be filmmakers Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Eric Rohmer (with whom he wrote a book on Alfred Hitchcock) and Jacques Rivette. Of this group, soon to be dubbed the nouvelle vague or French New Wave, Chabrol was the first to make a feature. He would later deny that the New Wave constituted a coherent artistic movement, and indeed, his career took a different shape to those of his old Cahiers colleagues. Struggling to work in the mid-1960s, he took on a series of jobs as a director-for-hire, making spy comedies and other commercial genre films, emerging towards the end of the decade with a run of films now often seen as signature works: 1969’s Les Biches and the five films that constitute the ‘Hélène’ cycle.
There have been quieter stretches in Chabrol’s career, and numerous ‘returns to form’. From the late 1970s onwards he begun to work fruitfully with Isabelle Huppert, and in 1995 she starred alongside Sandrine Bonnaire in La Cérémonie, a late-period masterpiece that kicked off another impressive run. Chabrol’s final film, Bellamy, was released in 2009, and he died a year later, leaving behind an astonishing, sometimes bewildering, oeuvre of more than 60 features.
To discuss Chabrol’s films I was joined by Catherine Wheatley. Catherine is a Professor of Film and Visual Culture at King’s College London and the season curator for the upcoming BFI season.
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* I will no longer be uploading podcasts to Spotify and have removed all previous episodes of the podcast from that platform. It’s something I’ve been meaning to do for ages, because Spotify is a transparently evil company that delights in ripping off musicians, promoting AI slop, and enabling genocide in Palestine.
Show notes
* Info on the Claude Chabrol: Elements of Crime season at the BFI Southbank
* Richard Dyer’s introduction to Les Biches
* My piece on Chabrol’s L’Œil du malin (taken from Cinéclub fanzine issue 1)
* Buy issue 2 of the Cinéclub fanzine
* 44 pages w/ articles on Conrad Rooks’ bizarre, star-studded countercultural artifact Chappaqua, some shorter pieces on punk and film, and an essay linking Bertrand Tavernier’s 1974 film The Watchmaker of St. Paul (also known as The Clockmaker of St. Paul) to Paul Vecchiali’s La Machine from 1977. DIY and sold on a not-for-profit basis at a cost that just covers the cost of printing: £2.50 plus postage. Shipping internationally.
* Issue 1 is also still available, and you can buy both as a bundle.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cineclub.substack.com