Claude Chabrol might never have been born on June 24, 1930. Three months pregnant, his mother, intoxicated by carbon monoxide in the bath, stood up to the doctors who recommended an abortion. With a dreamy temperament that caused his parents to fear he was mentally challenged, little Claude began his career as an anthropologist at an early age, avidly observing the bourgeois comedy unfolding before his eyes. During the Second World War, his parents, who had joined the Resistance, sent him to the family stronghold in Sardent, Creuse, in the free zone, where life went on peacefully. Between joyful camaraderie and teenage romances, he discovered literature (notably Madame Bovary, which he brought to the screen in 1991) and the radio serials written by Simenon, whose motto he adopted: understand and do not judge.
In post-war Paris, the young man, reluctant to follow in his father’s footsteps, skipped his pharmaceutical courses to soak up the films at the Cinémathèque française. He would indulge his cinephilic passion a few years later, thanks to the loving and financial support of Agnès, his first wife. After producing Jacques Rivette’s Le coup du berger, the inaugural short film of the Nouvelle Vague, in 1956, Claude Chabrol gave the revolutionary wave its first feature-length film, Le beau Serge, shot in Sardent. What followed, until his death in 2010, were 57 films spread over half a century, made in an atmosphere of joy and complicity with the help of his loyal tribe: scriptwriters, technicians, actors, along with the women in his life (Stéphane Audran, his muse; Aurore, his scriptwriter) and his children, including Cécile, Aurore’s daughter, whom Chabrol adopted and who directs this portrait.
In post-war Paris, the young man, reluctant to follow in his father’s footsteps, skipped his pharmaceutical courses to soak up the films at the Cinémathèque française. He would indulge his cinephilic passion a few years later, thanks to the loving and financial support of Agnès, his first wife. After producing Jacques Rivette’s Le coup du berger, the inaugural short film of the Nouvelle Vague, in 1956, Claude Chabrol gave the revolutionary wave its first feature-length film, Le beau Serge, shot in Sardent. What followed, until his death in 2010, were 57 films spread over half a century, made in an atmosphere of joy and complicity with the help of his loyal tribe: scriptwriters, technicians, actors, along with the women in his life (Stéphane Audran, his muse; Aurore, his scriptwriter) and his children, including Cécile, Aurore’s daughter, whom Chabrol adopted and who directs this portrait.
Production
Cécile Maistre-Chabrol
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