Nada

For nearly a decade, in the late 60s and early 70s, Claude Chabrol was arguably the greatest director in the world, in Europe at any rate. 'Nada' comes from this period, and yet is an exception in the oeuvre. Instead of a claustrophobic thriller in a domestic setting, 'Nada' is about international terrorists running amok through France (in a way, the film is a parody of the previous year's 'Day of the Jackal'). Instead of intricate psychological depth, Chabrol offers pure cartoon. The police are a hangover from the Vichy era, murderously cyncial, while the terrorists are organised by someone who no longer believes in revolution.

As a sophisticated analysis of pressing contemporary events, the whole thing seems rather silly, until you start spotting Chabrol's wicked, misanthropic irony, and you wonder if the old boy hasn't done it after all. Never take Chabrol's glittering surfaces at face value. The massacre scene is deeply cynical, shocking, brilliant cinema.

So far, very few reviewers seem to have grasped what is going on in this film and the rest are floundering. For it is highly local and highly topical, as Chabrol contrasts two poisons then prevalent in French society.

One, more recent, was the evil residue of the unrest in 1968. In France, as in West Germany and Italy, minuscule groups of ex-students mouthing empty slogans took to robbery, extortion and murder in the apparent hope of triggering the collapse of capitalism.

The other, longer lasting, was the even more toxic legacy of successive military defeats. After the defeat by Germany in 1940, the upper levels of the French civil service and police were permeated with men who collaborated in the horrors of the Vichy dictatorship and the Nazi occupation. After the defeat in Algeria in 1962, the army was also infected by the bloody repression of its opponents, real or supposed. Too many men had learned that you got results by ignoring the rules and by resorting to torture and murder.

Chabrol's terrorists are suitably dangerous but bumbling, with only their leader aspiring to some sort of Lucifer status. His cops are terrifying, replicas of the Gestapo that had terrorised France only 30 years earlier, with the diabolical commissaire sporting a hairstyle of the early 1940s while his two goons could easily have been pulling out toenails at that time.

Though placing the story in a highly contemporary setting, as always Chabrol is not making a political statement or giving us a history lesson. His subject is humanity and its flaws.

PS One reviewer warns us not to let our children see this film. Not because of the endemic violence and profanity but because of two brief moments when a woman is shown with no clothes and a man is shown on top of a woman under the bedclothes. Both are intrinsic to the story, as the first glimpse is of a prostitute at her place of work and the second is of a terrorist, who (highly symbolic!) has to admit to the girl that he is impotent. Though it is always admirable to broaden young people's minds, I can't think of a single Chabrol film which could really be appreciated before the age of 18.

An anarchist group called Nada kidnap the American ambassador in a high class Paris brothel. The state then counter this by giving the chief of police license to deal with the situation. The state proves to be more brutal than the terrorists.

This is a pretty atypical film from Claude Chabrol. While it deals with moral ambiguity, which many of his films do, it also is very directly political which is unusual. Other than the idea that the state can be more amoral than terrorists, I'm not too sure what else the film has to say. The subject matter of Marxist revolutionaries taking radical action is one that would have been much more in vogue in the 70's than now though. Overall, the film lacks the personal feel of Chabrol's more intimate thrillers. The political angle doesn't seem to be material best suited to his style. And as a result Nada is a slightly underwhelming movie.

"Nada" was the most inadequate follow-up to "Les NOces Rouges" which,with hindsight,appears now as the last good movie of Chabrol's golden era (1967-1973) "Nada" is Chabrol's first real attempt at a wholly political movie;his previous work "les Noces Rouges" had also political elements but it was more a psychological thriller with the usual look at society in French provinces."Nada" includes terrorists,ambassador,hostage-taking,a lot of blood,not really Chabrol's field.A heterogeneous cast gives the movie the coup de grâce :only Duchaussoy,who had already played with the director ,and Maurice Garrel are up to scratch.Viviane Romance ,one of Duvivier's actresses ("la Belle Equipe" "Panique") ,is wasted as a madam (Gabrielle).Italian actors (Fabio Testi,Lou Castel)are awful.

With "Nada" this a second period of barren inspiration for Chabrol .It would be "Violette Nozières" before he was again at the top of his game.

If you are fond on French crime novels world, you know that this film was adapted from à Jean-Patrick Manchette's novel. One of the best French novelist from the seventies and eighties. The novel which this feature is adapted from was a very nihilistic tale against the institutions, governments and state rules. And this movie made by Claude Chabrol - whose it is not the kind of movies he usually did, you know that - this film seems very close, scene for scene, to the book. If you dare comparing, this film NADA is, to the genuine novel material, exactly the same that Jean-Pierre Melville's LE DEUXIEME SOUFFLE was to Jose Giovanni's novel. In both cases, the movies made from the books seem so close to them. But you would be damn wrong if you thought so. Concerning Melville's film, please read my comment. But about NADA, I repeat, Manchette gave us a story which enhanced the anarchists, or left winged terrorists, he tried to give them some good reasons to behave as they did. But if you read the book and then watch the movie very closely, you will notice that Chabrol doesn't have the same language. In a sort of way, he criticizes the anarchists. He wants to show to the audiences the emptiness of everything they do. In that purpose, he uses some sentences told by the anarchists characters. Even if, I repeat, the movie seemed to have been shot, "book handed". Page by page.

The message was not the same.

And, besides, I have already seen movies adapted very differently from novels but only on the "shape" - scenes - but not on the true meaning. For instance both RIFIFI films: RIFIFI CHEZ LES HOMMES and RIFIFI CHEZ LES FEMMES.

I will finish by telling you that Michel Aumont gives in this film one of his best performances ever as the terrific, nasty, disgusting commissaire - superintendent - Goémond. Nasty and sometimes funny, when he speaks or listens to someone, very unusual for a disturbing character, some kind of Gestapo torturer. He plays as if he was in a comedy or light hearted film, and not a brutal thriller, where his character is absolutely sadistic. Actually, he plays as he usually does in most of his other films, but this very movie NADA is not one of his other films. But why not? Watch very closely to his character's performance please, especially, I repeat, for the very evil character he is. You won't be deceived. He has in this film a role very close to the one Robert Hossein had in LE PROFESSIONAL, a kind of fascist like superintendant. And the relation between two supporting characters, Maurice Garrel and the anarchist hooker, is also very unusual and touching, especially during his impotency sequence. This is also a typical post 1968 era feature, which shows the political manipulation, the most realistic and unbearable one, when high scale ministers order their "henchmen", killer cops working for the government, to kill, kill, even innocents, but not in a straight way, with proper words, in the purpose to achieve their shameful goals. Very daring for this time, in the pure Yves Boisset style. The ministers order to kill and then get rid of the scapegoats whom they ordered to execute the power low works. Very very close to reality, believe me.