Les cousins

Les Cousins is definitively part of the French New Wave of the late 1950s. Whilst slightly more polished than the films of his contemporaries (notably Godard and Truffaut), Chabrol's film bubbles with an insurgence of new cinematographic techniques and fresh acting talent. The sense of newness is reinforced by presence of so many young actors, dressed elegantly in tuxedos and evening dresses, but acting somewhat delinquently for the most part. The film appears almost like the christening party for the birth of a new era in French cinema.

Both the direction and photography are of a high calibre and capture very well the changing mood of the central character, Charles. The film starts cheerfully and optimistically with the young man's arrival in Paris. Like him, we are enchanted by the bright lights, the wide boulevards and the historic monuments. But then, little by little, the mood changes to ennui and disappointment when the shallowness of the Paris jet set is revealed. Finally, a much darker mood prevails as Charles' best efforts to succeed are brutally crushed by a combination of circumstances, partly of his own making but largely as a result of the hand of fate. This ability to alter the mood of the film so subtly and effectively is one of Chabrol's great skills as a director and is used to far greater effect in some of his subsequent thrillers.

Both of the two central characters, Charles and Paul, are played admirably by Gérard Blain and Jean-Claude Brialy. Blain manages to capture the innocence of the outsider and offers a sympathetic and memorable performance. Brialy seems to revel in his role as the extravagant city student, hosting his parties with the gusto of a true bon-vivant, whilst exhibiting a more complicated and sensitive persona in his conversations with the characters Charles and Florence.

Both actors were used by Chabrol in an earlier film, Le Beau Serge, which, in some ways, is the mirror image of Les Cousins. In Le Beau Serge, Brialy played a city boy who returns to his home in a provincial town where he met up wih a childhood friend played by Blain. Brialy's character was the outsider and ultimately he was destroyed by his alien surroundings. In Les Cousins, the situation is cleverly reversed. Here, Blain's character is a country boy who joins Brialy in the city of Paris. It is Blain's character who is now the outsider, and who is finally destroyed by his unfamiliar environment. It is interesting to watch the two films back-to-back, to note the similarities and compare the differences. Both films seem to side with the outsider and condemn the society that rejects him, although it is perhaps disappointing that, in both cases, that the outsider is destroyed without having any significant impact on the society that crushed him. At least, in Le Beau Serge, the victim's fate was sealed by an altruistic desire to do some good for the community that rejected him, whereas in Les Cousins, the victim brought his destruction on himself by trying to attack the society he felt so repulsive.

Les Cousins lacks the emotional intensity of Le Beau Serge and appears in some places a little too stage-managed. (The ending is particularly stagy, but it works perfectly to the film's advantage.) On the plus side, Les Cousins benefits from a far superior musical score, a more interesting set of characters, and some impressive location filming in Paris. It is an engaging and accessible film which still appears fresh and vibrant.

Chabrol before he truly became Chabrol. This might seem to be one of his more 'realistic' films, with its obligatory nouvelle vague scene of Parisian freewheeling, but one of 'Les Cousins'' main themes is the disparity between reality and fantasy, and the fate of those who cannot tell between them. Just as paul turns his personality into a series of roles, his life into ritualistic tableaux, so Chabrol suffuses his realistic narrative with references to myth, fable, fairy tale, opera, and, especially, film.

'Les Cousins' plays like a counterpart to Melville's 'Les Enfants Terribles', with the same theatricality, claustrophobia, incestuousness, and mythological base; the same cinematographer, even one of Melville's actors! most interesting is the development of Chabrol's style, the lockjaw camerawork, the complex use of point of view, the puncturing of solemnity with incongruous humour (see especially the hilarious 'fish' scene).

Chabrol's second film, made months after his first Le Beau Serge, and a more mature film director is evident. Helped, no doubt by those he gathered around him notably on script and camera, while the first film had charm and passion, this has that and more. Not only is this an interesting and intriguing tale of student life and affairs late 50s, the way it is shot opens up a whole new world of cinema. At least for the next five years this new Wave would dominate French cinema and also influence most of the world's cinema. With a fluid camera movement, jump cuts and an emphasis on 'real' people, having fun, being serious about politics, smoking all the time and having sex, cinema would, as they say never be the same again. Les Cousins is all of the above and entertains and amuses. Chabrol has complete control of the music this time, which works very well - even if it includes youngsters dancing around to Wagner! Important and enjoyable - can't say fair than that.

Chabrol's second feature. I haven't seen his first, Le beau Serge, but this is the most French New Wave film I've seen from Chabrol. As such, it's by far my favorite. I like several of his films, but I do find even my favorites a little dry. This one is just gorgeous and it's quite a lot of fun throughout. Gerard Blain plays a provincial who is moving to Paris to go to college. He moves in with his cousin (Jean-Claude Brialy), who is himself a student. Brialy is a total party animal, spending all his free time drinking with friends and none of it studying. The two get along at first, but then a woman (Juliette Mayniel) comes between them. The film is kind of a precursor to Jules et Jim.

This is more akin to the recognizable style of the "Nouvelle Vague" (with one of the characteristics being an unduly harsh quality to the cinematography, typically a prerogative of the film noir genre) than Chabrol's previous (and first) film, HANDSOME SERGE (1958).

Interestingly, while it features the same two leads – Gerard Blain and Jean-Claude Brialy – their roles are practically reversed (with the former now ingenuous and the latter world-weary), and set this time around in Paris rather than the provinces. Incidentally, the film forms a trilogy of sorts with Chabrol's other tales of amoral youth, all stemming from the vitriolic pen of the ill-fated Paul Gegauff i.e. LES BONNES FEMMES (1960) and WISE GUYS (1961).

Unfortunately, I did not watch this in the most congenial atmosphere – being a recording off French TV with subtitles in that language (it is odd that such an essential piece in both the director's canon and the influential "New Wave" filmography seems to be otherwise unavailable!). Anyway, having sensed a nod to Fellini in Chabrol's THE CHAMPAGNE MURDERS (1967), I can see definite links with this earlier effort (especially Brialy interrupting a wild party at his flat with a candle-lit recital of an epic German poem) – and which actually predates a similar occurrence in LA DOLCE VITA (1960) itself!

The film is also notable for being Stephane Audran's first collaboration (out of a total of 23!) with Chabrol; though her role is secondary, and a sluttish one at that, the actress – with hair dyed blonde – manages to make an impression nevertheless (she obviously did on her director, since they would eventually be married until 1980). Actually, the leading lady here is doe-eyed Juliette Mayniel (soon to play an unwilling donor in Georges Franju's EYES WITHOUT A FACE [1960] – ironically, one of several distinguished native directors dismissed as archaic by Godard et al), not an actress usually attached to the "New Wave" movement but who acquits herself exceedingly well under the circumstances.

Other characters within the narrative include yet another ambiguous and, in this case, much older live-in figure (who also acts as a bad influence on the heroine) and a librarian harboring almost paternal feelings for Blain. The film's abrupt tragic ending, casually treated by the director and deemed pointless by some, would seem to be suggesting that the bustle of city life spells the death of innocence (especially for someone not attuned to its grinding pace).

P.S. With this, I concluded my nearly two-month tribute to the octogenarian French master that included 27 films (all of them being first viewings!) and I regret not having had more time to revisit some of his other work – particularly A' DOUBLE TOUR (1959), LES BONNES FEMMES, TEN DAYS WONDER (1971) and INNOCENTS WITH DIRTY HANDS (1975)! For the record, I intend to pursue a similar retrospective for Jean-Luc Godard, who will himself turn 80 next December