Les Cousins (1959) dir. Claude Chabrol
Starring: Gérard Blain, Jean-Claude Brialy and Juliette Mayniel

***

By Alan Bacchus

It’s appropriate that this film gets its Blu-ray debut via The Criterion Collection at the same time as Chabrol's previous film, La Beau Serge. Both films represent an inverse of each other, a cinematic yin and yang of sorts.

While Serge features Gérard Blain and Jean-Claude Brialy as brothers - Brialy from the city returning to meet Blain from the country - in Les Cousins, it’s Blain still playing the country boy coming to Paris to stay with his bohemian cousin played by Brialy. Tonally, La Beau Serge played like a rebellious and angst-ridden James Dean film. Les Cousins is a playful though quietly disturbing satire on family rivalry.

Here Blain plays Charles, a quiet and humble boy from the country arriving in the big adventurous city of Paris to study law with his cousin. His cousin, Paul (Brialy), is the opposite - a brash, cocky bohemian who struts around his garishly hip apartment leading a pack of other hipster minions and hangers-on. While there’s some warmth and congeniality between the two, at every turn Brialy engages in a series of mental games, passive aggressive behaviour and backhanded compliments to exert his authority.

At stake here are their education and their women. In their studies, Charles as the responsible one is careful not to lose sight of his goal, while Paul shrugs off the shackles of academics in favour of a carefree way of living. When Paul notices Charles’ attraction to one of Paul’s frequent guests, Florence (Mayniel), he aggressively goes after her in order to subjugate his cousin.

For most of the film’s nearly two-hour running time Chabrol plays these mental games without much conflict or threat. From the outset, it’s clear that Charles’ responsibility and studiousness will eventually get the better of Paul. As such, it’s a playful tone, as loose and easy-going as Paul’s lifestyle. Some exhaustion and repetitiveness sets in late in the picture, as we are unsure where this is all going. But Chabrol pulls a wicked trump card out of his back pocket by engineering an intense third act and denouement, which pays off the unfocused pacing.

With this picture I suspect Martin Scorsese may have found some influence in Taxi Driver and a number of his other pictures. Chabrol’s meandering camera moves with the same kind of precision as Scorsese’s, and at times it moves on its own motivated by the character's emotions as opposed to physical movements. Chabrol’s key set piece, Paul's attempted subversion of Charles on the night before his exam, set to Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyres has the same kind of slow brewing intensity as some of Scorsese’s celebrated sequences.

Florence’s seduction of Charles during his desperate attempt to cram for his exam the next day is a nail-biting scene and echoes Robert De Niro's seduction of Juliette Lewis in Cape Fear. By now, knowing that Paul has passed his exam, Charles is set up to be completely humiliated for Paul’s sadistic enjoyment. And in the denouement Chabrol again turns the table for the dark, pessimistic finale, turning the film completely upside down from where it started two hours prior.

Les Cousins is available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.

Le Beau Serge (1958) dir. Claude Chabrol
Starring: Gérard Blain, Jean-Claude Brialy, Bernadette Lafont, Claude Chabrol, Philippe de Broca.

***½

By Alan Bacchus

Though most people consider Francois Trauffaut’s The 400 Blows to be the first of the French New Wave, fellow Cahier Du Cinema writer Claude Chabrol beat him by a year with his melodramatic, angst-ridden, but no less moving feature about sibling rivalry in small town France. It’s a beautifully stark and moving character film that jump-started the Nouvelle Vague, and yet it feels more akin to the angst-ridden rebel films of the James Dean/Marlon Brando Hollywood era.

Francois is an erudite but sickly city slicker returning home to his humble rural roots for an extended vacation. It’s not exactly a homecoming for Francois, as he immediately searches out his brother Serge, who, by reputation, is now a drunk reeling over the stillborn death of his child. Even with a new baby on the way with his wife Yvonne, he’s still on a downward bender into oblivion.

The return of Francois certainly doesn’t improve Serge's recovery. The mere presence of Francois, quietly basking in success and throwing pity at his brother, is as transparent as his brother’s alcoholic coping mechanism. A love triangle emerges with Yvonne’s friend Marie, who once had a fling with Serge. Adding even more conflict into the small town shenanigans is Marie’s father, Goumand, a dangerous presence who resents Francois’ courtship of his daughter resulting in a heinous act of revenge.

Despite these narrative layers, La Beau Serge is anchored in the story of two brothers. It's a complex relationship, at once contradictory and violent, but also loyal and loving. Like all boys, Francois and Serge are quick to fight and quicker to make up - an unbroken and unspoken bond of brotherhood, warts and all.

There's a strong hint of 1950s method angst. In fact, Gerard Blain's anxious, disaffected look is often compared to that of James Dean. He's also ruggedly handsome like Marlon Brando, but even more self-destructive than Stanley Kowalski. Despite his perpetual drunken stupor and his characterization as a rural hick left behind by his ambitious brother, Serge is still able to analyze Francois and put him in his place. And if Serge is Dean or Brando then Francois is probably Karl Maldon, the moral conscience of the film, but considerably less angelic and saintly.

While A Streetcar Named Desire skirted sexual connotations delicately in Hollywood, Chabrol is more direct, helping to eschew these increasingly obsolete moral traditions. The rape of Marie by the man assumed to be her father is tragic and alarming. And the frank depiction of Yvonne’s pregnancy difficulties also feels modern.

Under the crisp Criterion Collection Blu-ray treatment, Henri Decae’s cinematography is striking. The moody look with strongly contrasting light and dark creates a brooding, almost ‘Slavic’ sense of tragedy (think Tarkovsky's Ivan's Childhood or anything by Bela Tarr). The quaint town and use of real locations and non-actors lend invaluable neorealist credibility and poignancy. And by the end the film it reaches heights achieved by only a few in the New Wave. The triumphant finale is emotional, moving and poignant, reminiscent of any number of great John Ford pictures.

Le Beau Serge is available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.