Le Beau Serge (1959)
Director: Claude Chabrol
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
Chabrol's first film - one of the first manifestations of the Nouvelle Vague - is about a young student (Brialy) who returns to his native village to convalesce from an illness, finds that his childhood friend and hero (Blain) has become a hopeless drunk, and attempts to reclaim him at the cost of his own health. As mirror images of each other, the two men reflect the interest in Hitchcockian themes of transference later elaborated in Chabrol's work, but here expressed rather too overtly in terms of Christian allegory (a transference not so much of guilt as of redemption). Shot entirely on location in the village of Sardent (where Chabrol spent much of his childhood), it presents a bleak, beautifully observed picture of provincial life, later revisited to even more stunning effect in Le Boucher.Author: TM
Cast & crew
Director: Claude Chabrol
Producer: Jean Cotet
Cast: Gérard Blain, Jean-Claude Brialy, Michèle Meritz, Bernadette Lafont, Jeanne Perez, Claude Cerval, Edmond Beauchamp full cast
Duration: 97 mins
Most popular on this site
Features
To the letter
Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.
Mind over matter
David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.
Fool's gold
Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.
We are the championed
Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."
A history of violence
Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.
True romantic
James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.
Playing in the dark
MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.
Junk bonds
Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.



What do you think?
Post your review now