Visions of Seven - Youth through the Eyes of French Filmmakers 2006 / Les cousins / France 1959
Jean-Claude Brialy and Gérard Blain had already played the two opposing characters in Chabrol’s famous debut Bitter Reunion. While, in this film, the audience is given a ray of hope at the end, there is no sign of a happy ending in The Cousins, likewise in the works of practically all adherents of the French New Wave.
This film, one of the first to launch the New Wave in France, is dominated by two sharply opposing characters. The villager Charles is a timid introvert and diligent student, whilst his Parisian cousin Paul is a born bon vivant who thinks only of parties and tantalising love affairs. He doesn’t bother with his studies, but still manages to pass his exams, while plodder Charles fails. When he arrives in Paris during the opening scene of the film, Charles gazes, mesmerised, at the colourful city and the bohemian lifestyle of Paul and his entire clique. The atmosphere of this image, however, gradually changes and a sense of apprehension starts to build up. Charles’s prospects of love, friendship and his law diploma turn into a series of crushing defeats. Paul’s flat, which at first seemed a refuge full of hope, finally becomes a nightmarish trap from which there is no escape.
110 min / Black & white, 35 mm
Director Claude Chabrol
/ Screenplay Claude Chabrol, Paul Gégauff
/ Dir. of Photography Henri Decaë
/ Music Paul Misraki
/ Editor Jacques Gaillard
/ Producer Claude Chabrol
/ Production Gaumont
/ Cast Gérard Blain, Jean-Claude Brialy, Juliette Mayniel, Guy Decomble
/ Contact Gaumont
Claude Chabrol (b. 1930, Paris) is one of the founders of the French New Wave. His very first films demonstrated that he already had a sense for the clear psychological depiction of his characters and for the dramatic, increasing tension in his stories. This soon turned him away from the existential films cultivated by his colleagues and led him to specific genres, in particular detective films and psychological, political and socio-critical thrillers. Chabrol’s tales may appear as mysterious dramas without a broader social context, but the director merely avoids ideology, instead preferring to examine the mentality and lifestyle of various social strata. Films (selection): Bitter Reunion (1958), The Butcher (1969), Dirty Hands (1975), The Blood of Others (1984), A Judgement in Stone (1995).
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