103 - Le Beau Serge, 1958. Dir. Claude Chabrol.

Thursday, April 13, 2017

103 - Le Beau Serge, 1958.  Dir. Claude Chabrol.

Francois is riding the bus.

He is going home, to Sardent, where he grew up, to visit for the Winter.

He has a spot on his lungs.  Maybe tuberculosis.  And he needs to go home to rest.

It has been twelve years.

An old schoolmate named Michel will show him around, take him to the old sites, tell him what has happened to various people.

Francois sees his old friend Serge.  Serge is plastered.  Drunk.  He does not recognize Francois when Francois calls to him.  He turns back around and walks back into the pub.

Michel explains.  Serge had wanted to be an architect, but he got a girl pregnant.  So he settled down and married her.  Then she had a miscarriage.  Serge feels stuck.

Now she is pregnant again.

Francois will find Serge the next day.  They talk.  Begin to reconnect.  It makes Serge feel bad for his life.

Serge tells his wife that they are scum.  That Francois is back and will think poorly of them.

Francois goes to church.

The priest says, I prayed for you.  While you were gone.

What do you want to do? / Make a lot of money. / I thought you wanted to teach.  I remember you once wanted to be a priest.

Francois meanders.  The film meanders.

Serge gets drunk.

The town drunk, Glomaud, gets drunk.

The town drunk has a daughter named Marie.

Marie has a boyfriend.  Each day.  Each day a different boyfriend.

Marie will go for Francois.

Marie will go for Serge.

The town is desperate.  People struggle.  They have no purpose.  No vision.  No hope.

Francois tries to help.

He makes things worse.

People resent it.  Serge resents it.  They get into a brawl.

Francois discovers that Marie is not Glomaud's daughter.

Glomaud demands that Francois state that she is.  Francois tells Glomaud that she is not.  You know she is not.

Glomaud goes to Marie.  Slithers in like a snake.

Francois is furious.  Meets Glomaud at the cemetery.  Beats him.

Francois confronts Serge.

Why are you all like this?  /  Everybody's like this.  /  It's not true.  You're like animals.  It's like you have no purpose in life.  /  That's right!  And where would we find one?  People here make just enough to keep from starving. . . . They work because there's nothing else to do.

They all go to the dance. 

Marie ends up with Serge.  In front of Francois.  In front of Serge's wife Yvonne. 

Yvonne goes home.  Yvonne goes into labor.  Francois gets the doctor.  Francois gets Serge.

The baby is born.

Serge has a look on his face that expresses hope.


Le Beau Serge is translated as "Handsome Serge."

It is cited by some as the first Nouvelle Vague film.

The Nouvelle Vauge, or French New Wave, was a group of young French film critics that wrote for a magazine called Cahiers du cinema.

As the young writers reviewed movies, they developed a philosophy for how they thought movies should be made.  They retained an admiration for the films of Jean Renoir and Jean Vigo, both of whom we have watched thoroughly, but they rejected others as being Papa's cinema.  They wanted something new.

They also admired the great studio directors from the United States, including Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, and John Ford, as well as some of the independents, such as Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, and Nicholas Ray.

Eventually they began to make their own movies as a way of experimenting with the ideas they were developing.

Eventually they themselves became filmmakers and not just film critics.

And this film is often cited as the first.

The great Italian neo-realism director Roberto Rossellini appreciated the writings of this group of young critics.

So he came to Paris and asked them to write him some scenarios that he could film with his new 16mm camera.

Claude Chabrol wrote the scenarios that would become Le Beau Serge.  Rossellini chose not to direct them.  Chabrol ended up directing them himself, and turned them into a single feature film.

The film launched the career of Claude Chabrol and opened the door for his friends.

The next year, 1959, Francois Truffaut came out with The 400 Blows.  The next year, 1960, Jean-Luc Godard came out with Breathless.

The two films became surprising global sensations and launched the careers of Truffaut and Godard into the stratosphere.  Chabrol, as one of them, came along for the ride.

The group had tapped into something new.

Youth culture.

Fashion.  Music.  Night life.  Irony.

They also adopted specific techniques.

On-location filming.  The use of their own locations and friends.  Improvisation.  Jump cuts.  Breaking the line.  Non-linear plotting. 

Tomorrow we will watch another film by Claude Chabrol.

Then we will watch four films by other directors.

Then we will arrive at the giants.  Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut.

We are about to enter the New Wave.