avik-basu1889 'Le Beau Serge' by Claude Chabrol is considered by many to be the first French New Wave to have ever been released. The screenplay written by Chabrol himself focuses on a young man named François Baillou who comes back to his childhood village to spend the winter there. He is amazed by how much the village has changed in his absence. He also encounters his old friend Serge who is now a man living a mundane state of existence with his pregnant wife.With a storyline which involves a character going back to his childhood village, one might expect a film that celebrates nostalgia like 'Cinema Paradiso', however 'Le Beau Serge' is anything but a film that wallows in nostalgia. This film brutally shows the discrepancies in the development and spread of modernity between the big cities and the villages in Post WWII France. The people in this particular village are living in a perennial state of hopelessness. They exist because they have to, they have no ambitions, no opportunities and no real goals. François with his urban sensibilities is horrified by the state of affairs here. The screenplay also gives us a bit of a mirror- like relationship between François and Serge. It is implied that their roles could have easily been reversed had things turned out slightly differently. Serge could have been the one who went to the cities while François could have been trapped in this village. This overwhelms François with a sense of guilt to see his childhood friend live in hopelessness. So he decides to bring in a change in attitude towards life in the village as a whole as well as help Serge in almost a Christ-like fashion.The screenplay falters a bit when it comes to the depiction of female characters. The two major female characters, namely Marie and Yvonne are nothing but two female stereotypes on the opposite ends of the spectrum. Chabrol's direction doesn't really add any depths to these characters. Marie is nothing short of a plot device and her choices in the film make little sense. There is also a very disturbing incident that takes place in the film and the justification given for it made it even more shocking and not in the admirable way. Another flaw in the film is the unnecessary way in which the Christ-like nature of François' motives gets verbally referenced by other characters. It was clear and there need not have been the overt declaration of it.Although this was the first New Wave film, but this was before the release of more monumental works like Truffaut's 'The 400 Blows' and Godard's 'Breathless'. So it doesn't have the unique storytelling and editing techniques that were ushered in by those films and feels a little more standard and conventional. As a matter of fact, 'Le Beau Serge' has a bit of an Italian Neo-realist feel to it due to the way the film depicts the sorry and stagnant nature of life in post-war France. The camera moves a lot in the shots and regularly pans rapidly to a particular portion of the shot to reveal something important. Chabrol also uses a lot of tracking shots in the film. Technically the film is well shot and put together.'Le Beau Serge' was a solid first film for Chabrol, it is well directed, competently acted and the story has something to say. But I believe there are also some flaws in the film that I couldn't overlook. It still deserves to be recommended.

Claudio Carvalho In France, François Baillou (Jean-Claude Brialy) returns to his village to spend the winter as part of his treatment of tuberculosis. On the arrival, François sees his former best friend Serge (Gérard Blain) and greets him, but Serge is drunk and does not recognize him.François learns that Serge is a frustrated man since he had not gone to the Architecture University and has stayed in the village working as truck driver since he had to marry his pregnant girlfriend Yvonne (Michèle Méritz). When the baby was born, he was mongoloid and died. Now Serge is the drunkard of the village. François meets the seventeen year-old Marie (Bernadette Lafont), who is the slut of the village, and he feels attracted by the teenager. Meanwhile he tries to help his friend."Le Beau Serge" is the debut of the great French director Claude Chabrol that shows his talent to tell a simple and realistic drama. The performances are top-notch and the open conclusion is a trademark of Chabrol. It is weird to see a man treating tuberculosis smoking so many cigarettes along the story. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "Nas Garras do Vício" ("In the Claw of the Addiction")

MARIO GAUCI The film that officially kick-started the "Nouvelle Vague" (interestingly, Chabrol was the only one in that talented crowd to have debuted with a full-length feature and self-financed to boot!) is, surprisingly, an "Angry Young Man"-type drama in a pastoral setting. The radical technique associated with this school of film-making is not really in evidence in this case, but nor is it needed – given that what we have here is essentially a character-driven piece.In this respect, apart from the director himself (who also wrote the film on his own), the film brought in an array of fresh talent in front of the cameras as well – namely Gerard Blain (evoking Montgomery Clift in particular), Jean-Claude Brialy (restrained in comparison to his other work for Chabrol that I have watched) and the waif-like Bernadette Lafont (already effortlessly exuding carnality in her second film – and the first of 7 with this director – she was also married to her co-star Blain at the time).Chabrol's realistic depiction of provincial France here, authentic both in the everyday detail of the locale and its characters' foibles (Blain is a hopeless drunk, Lafont is raped by her 'father', etc.), actually makes the much-later THE HORSE OF PRIDE (1980) not the odd-film-out it had at first appeared! One other atypical element is that of spirituality – especially when, towards the end, Brialy determines (albeit predictably) to reform Blain almost at the cost of his own life during one particularly blizzard-ridden night in which his friend is supposed to become a father! By the way, Chabrol gives himself a cameo in the film: with him appears assistant director Philippe de Broca (whose character is named Jacques Rivette, after another "New Wave" exponent, obviously!); unfortunately, the subtitles – in a small white font – were especially hard to read during this scene.

klauskind This is said to be the first film of the Nouvelle Vague. I don't see the Nouvelle Vague anywhere here. The distance between Le Beau Serge and The 400 Blows is not one year but an age. Chabrol's first film is like a melodramatic throwback to 19th century naturalism with a touch of redemption, that is, unnaturalized naturalism. Serge and his gang are enslaved by circumstances but his Parisian pal will work hard to bring them hope. It feels as if it had already been outdated at the time of opening and it doesn't look very chabrolian. Not that chabrolian always means "good".I've seen at least as many bad movies by Chabrol as good ones. How could this happen to me? Once upon a time… people used to say he was a legendary master, someone to keep track of. Maybe he was. He has indeed made some masterful pictures in the 1960s-70s and some think he's also made 3 or 4 very interesting films in the last 20 years.Anyway, that's no excuse for all the mediocrity he's churned out so complacently not only during the last 20 years but, as it turns out, since 1958 when he directed this shrill rural drama. There's even a mean priest and, of course, the saviour is a secularized priestly figure, he's devoted to his flock but has sex. As priests go, I'd rather have the uncanny Gerard Depardieu in that miracle Pialat borrowed from Bernanos: Sous le Soleil de Satan.