Eight Claude Chabrol Films Screening at LACMA

Each element that makes a film directed by Claude Chabrol all the more compelling is also the one that renders it unseemly.

Thank you for not smoking. Jean-Pierre Cassel, Jacqueline Bisset, and Valentin Merlet in La cérémonie, 1995.

The astonishingly prolific French director Chabrol died last September at the age of 80, leaving behind more than 70 films marked by a predilection for passion, poison, and perversity. His filmmaking descended from the generation of Cahiers du cinema and the Nouvelle Vague, and it observed greed, adultery and murder with a narrow psychological intensity that made notions of sin or crime seem to be beside the point. 
He melded a lyric, semi-formal sensibility reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock and Fritz Lang with tense, cynicism-infused narratives, some derived from satirical suspense queens Patricia Highsmith and Ruth Rendell. In his cinematic world, it’s an act of pitiable optimism to suppose there are only seven deadly sins. An insurance broker, bourgeosie chateau dwellers, or a country cousin are no match for the machinations of a debauched student, an illiterate maid, or a scheming Swiss chocolate heiress. 
The effect: equally pure and corrupt. 
From January 28 through February 5, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art will be screening eight Chabrol films, starting with his first feature, Le beau Serge, and rounding out the set with recent work, including one of my favorites, Merci pour le chocolat.

Can’t miss: a guest appearance on Saturday night by Jacqueline Bisset, who appeared in La cérémonie as an industrialist’s wife undone by the machinations of the local postmistress.

January 28 7:30 pm, La femme infidèle, 1969
January 28 9:20 pm, The Bridesmaid, 2004
January 29 5:00 pm, Le beau Serge, 1958
January 29 7:30 pm, La cérémonie, 1995 (with a guest appearance by Jacqueline Bisset)
February 4 7:30 pm, Les cousins, 1959
February 4 9:35 pm, Les bonnes femmes, 1960
February 5 5:00 pm, Merci pour le chocolat, 2000
February 5 7:30 pm, This Man Must Die, 1969