Beaks here...

Though Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard are often credited with kicking off the French New Wave with, respectively, THE 400 BLOWS (1959) and BREATHLESS (1960), the movement truly began in 1958, when Claude Chabrol financed (mostly with his wife's inheritance) the homecoming drama LE BEAU SERGE. Like most of his CAHIERS DU CINEMA colleagues, Chabrol was fascinated with the cinema of Alfred Hitchcock, in which he identified a number of complex themes that had escaped the notice of the era's critics; unlike most of his cohorts, he was more than happy to work within the classical constraints of genre rather than comment on it. It was easy to take Chabrol for granted because he worked so frequently. And while he played around a bit in the early '60s (LES BONNES FEMMES is well worth watching), he ultimately moved in a more conventional direction than contemporaries like Godard and Jacques Rivette. There was nothing sexy or revolutionary about extolling the virtues of Chabrol's cinema: for the most part, he made thrillers. The best of them are insidiously unnerving character studies: LE BOUCHER is a masterful portrait of a serial killer that grows increasingly ambiguous, while LES BICHES sticks in memory for subtly subverting its lurid suspense elements. Most of them, though, are just solid movies with enough unexpected twists to keep you engaged. The good folks at MUBI have links to some of the more insightful summations of Chabrol's career; you should definitely give these pieces a read, and check out some of his most celebrated films (especially LE BOUCHER). There's certainly no shortage of Chabrol movies; he made the most of his eighty years on this planet.