Tag: Claude Chabrol

Twisting the Knife: Four Films by Claude Chabrol – Available on Blu-ray April 26th From Arrow Video

“I’m really enjoying this. They’re so bad in America. They rinse them in fresh water and it kills the taste.”

Twisting the Knife: Four Films by Claude Chabrol will be available on Blu-ray April 26th from Arrow Video

For five decades Claude Chabrol navigated the unpredictable waters of Cinema, leaving in his wake fifty-five feature films that remain among the most quietly devastating genre movies ever made.

The Swindle sees Chabrol at perhaps his most playful as a pair of scam artists, Isabelle Huppert and Michel Serrault, get in over their heads. But who is scamming who and who do you trust in a life built on so many lies? The murder of a 10-year-old girl sparks rumors and gossip in The Color of Lies, as suspicion falls on René (Jacques Gamblin) the dour once famous painter, now art teacher, who was the last person to see her alive. Enigmatic, perverse, seductive, Isabelle Huppert encapsulates everything that makes Nightcap a film John Waters calls “Cinematic Perfection” in this tale of suppressed family secrets. Finally, in The Flower of Evil, incest, old money and intergenerational guilt come under the scalpel as an outwardly perfect bourgeois family begins to unravel when the wife involves herself in politics.

Though influenced by Fritz Lang, Alfred Hitchcock and Jean Renoir, Chabrol’s voice was entirely and assuredly his own, influencing in turn filmmakers like Bong Joon-ho, James Gray and Dominik Moll. His amused, unblinkered view of life and refusal to judge his characters makes his films timelessly relevant and accessible to all. Arrow Video is proud to present this second collection of films by Claude Chabrol with a wealth of new and archival extras.

LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS

  • High definition Blu-ray presentations of all four films
  • New 4K restorations of The Swindle, Nightcap and The Flower of Evil
  • Original lossless PCM French stereo audio on all films plus DTS-HD 5.1 on Nightcap and The Flower of Evil
  • Optional English subtitles
  • 80-page collector’s booklet of new writing by Sean Hogan, Brad Stevens, Catherine Dousteyssier-Khoze, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, and Pamela Hutchinson
  • Limited edition packaging featuring newly commissioned artwork by Tony Stella

DISC ONE – THE SWINDLE

  • New commentary by critic Barry Forshaw and author Sean Hogan
  • New visual essay by scholar Catherine Dousteyssier-Khoze
  • New interview with Cécile Maistre-Chabrol
  • Behind the scenes
  • Interview with Isabelle Huppert
  • Introduction by film scholar Joël Magny
  • Select scene commentaries by Claude Chabrol
  • Trailer
  • Image gallery

DISC TWO – THE COLOR OF LIES

  • New commentary by critic Barry Forshaw and author Sean Hogan
  • New visual essay by film critic Scout Tafoya
  • New visual essay by film critic David Kalat
  • Behind the scenes
  • Introduction by film scholar Joël Magny
  • Select scene commentaries by Claude Chabrol
  • Trailer
  • Image gallery

DISC THREE – NIGHTCAP

  • New commentary by film critic Justine Smith
  • New visual essay by film critic Scout Tafoya
  • Interview with Isabelle Huppert
  • Interview with Jacques Dutronc
  • Behind the scenes
  • Screen test for Anna Mouglalis
  • Introduction by film scholar Joël Magny
  • Select scene commentaries by Claude Chabrol
  • Trailer
  • Image gallery

DISC FOUR – THE FLOWER OF EVIL

  • New commentary by film critic Farran Smith Nehme
  • New visual essay by Agnes Poirier
  • Behind the scenes
  • Interview with co-writer Catherine Eliacheff
  • Introduction by film scholar Joël Magny
  • Select scene commentaries by Claude Chabrol
  • Trailer

Lies and Deceit: Five Films by Claude Chabrol – Available on Blu-ray February 22nd From Arrow Video

“Fate’s the one to blame!”

Lies and Deceit: Five Films by Claude Chabrol – a new 5-disc set will be available on Blu-ray February 22nd from Arrow Video

Too often overlooked and undervalued, Claude Chabrol was the first of the Cahiers du Cinema critics to release a feature film and would be among the most prolific. The sneaky anarchist of the French New Wave, he embraced genre as a means off lifting the lid on human nature. Nothing is sacred and nothing is certain in the films of Claude Chabrol. Anything can be corrupted, and usually will be.

Arrow Video is proud to present Lies & deceit: Five Films by Claude Chabrol. Featuring Cop Au Vin (Poulet au vinaigre), Inspector Lavardin, Madame Bovary, Betty and Torment (L’enfer), this inaugural collection of Claude Chabrol on Blu-ray brings together a wealth of passionate contributors and archival extras to shed fresh light on the films and the filmmaker. Dark, witty, ruthless, mischievous: if you’ve never seen Chabrol before, you’re in for a treat. If you have, they’ve never looked better.

LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS

  • High definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentations of all five films
  • New 4K restorations of Madame Bovary, Betty, and Torment
  • Original lossless French PCM mono audio on Cop Au Vin, Inspector Lavardin, Madame Bovary and Betty
  • Original lossless French PCM stereo audio on Torment
  • Optional English Subtitles
  • Archive introductions to all films by film scholar Joël Magny
  • Select scene commentaries for all films by Claude Chabrol
  • Theatrical trailers and image galleries for all films
  • 80-page collector’s booklet of new writing by film critics Martyn Conterio, Kat Ellinger, Philip Kemp and Sam Wigley, and archive material
  • Limited edition packaging with newly commissioned artwork by Tony Stella

DISC 1: COP AU VIN

  • New commentary by critic Ben Sachs
  • New interview with film historian Ian Christie
  • Claude Chabrol at the BFI, Chabrol on stage with film historian Ian Christie in 1994
  • Claude Chabrol, Jean Poiret & Stephane Audran in conversation, archive Swiss TV episode with director and cast discussing Cop Au Vin

DISC 2: INSPECTOR LAVARDIN

  • New commentary by critic Ben Sachs
  • Why Chabrol?, new interview with film critic Sam Wigley on why Chabrol remains essential viewing

DISC 3: MADAME BOVARY

  • New commentary by critic Kat Ellinger
  • Imagining Emma: Madame Bovary on screen, new visual essay by film historian Pamela Hutchinson

DISC 4: BETTY

  • New commentary by critic Kat Ellinger
  • Betty, from Simenon to Chabrol, new visual essay by French Cinema historian Ginette Vincendeau
  • New interview with Ros Schwartz, the English translator of the Georges Simenon novel on which the film is based

DISC 5: TORMENT

  • New commentary by critics Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and Josh Nelson
  • On Henri Georges Clouzot, archival interview with Chabrol about, Clouzot’s abandoned attempt to make L’enfer
  • Interview with Marin Karmitz, archive interview with Chabrol’s most frequent producer from 1985 onward

Blu Monday: Audrey & Sophia

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French Filmmaker Claude Chabrol Dead At 80

The Guardian is reporting that the founding father of the Nouvelle Vague movement who turned out more than 80 films for the cinema and television has died.

Claude Chabrol, the celebrated French film director and a founding father of the Nouvelle Vague movement, has died aged 80.

Christophe Girard, the deputy mayor of Paris, announced the filmmaker’s death this morning, saying: “[Chabrol] was a colossal French director: free-minded, impertinent, political and loquacious. Thank you, Claude Chabrol, thank you for the cinema.”

A compatriot of greats such as François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, Chabrol rose to acclaim in the late 1950s after the release of Le Beau Serge, which was widely considered to have triggered the New Wave of innovative French cinema.

He went on to become one of Europe’s most prolific directors, turning out more than 80 films for the cinema and television. In the late 1960s and 70s he established himself as a master of the psychologically explosive suspense thriller with works such as The Butcher and The Unfaithful Wife.

From 1978 onwards, Chabrol’s collaborations with the young actor Isabelle Huppert proved hugely successful, with both gaining critical acclaim for films including Violette Nozière, about a young murderess; Story of Women, about a Vichy-era abortionist; and Madame Bovary, an adaptation of Gustave Flaubert’s novel of adultery and bourgeois oppression in 19th-century Normandy.

Spurred on by an apparently insatiable love of film-making, Chabrol kept going until the end, with a murder mystery film, Bellamy, appearing in French cinemas last year. A playful and approachable character in his appearances before the media, he was down to earth about his achievements, admitting in retrospect that some of his efforts had fallen flat.

“It is not necessary that each of my films is considered perfect,” he once said. “But I would like my work as a whole to give a very specific idea of my own vision of things.”

In a 2007 interview, he told L’Express magazine his career was not finished. “I would like to have resolved it all in my head before stopping,” he said. “To have found my formula.”

Source: The Guardian