'Le Beau Serge' by Claude Chabrol is considered by many to be the first French New Wave to have ever been released. The screenplay written by Chabrol himself focuses on a young man named François Baillou who comes back to his childhood village to spend the winter there. He is amazed by how much the village has changed in his absence. He also encounters his old friend Serge who is now a man living a mundane state of existence with his pregnant wife.
With a storyline which involves a character going back to his childhood village, one might expect a film that celebrates nostalgia like 'Cinema Paradiso', however 'Le Beau Serge' is anything but a film that wallows in nostalgia. This film brutally shows the discrepancies in the development and spread of modernity between the big cities and the villages in Post WWII France. The people in this particular village are living in a perennial state of hopelessness. They exist because they have to, they have no ambitions, no opportunities and no real goals. François with his urban sensibilities is horrified by the state of affairs here. The screenplay also gives us a bit of a mirror- like relationship between François and Serge. It is implied that their roles could have easily been reversed had things turned out slightly differently. Serge could have been the one who went to the cities while François could have been trapped in this village. This overwhelms François with a sense of guilt to see his childhood friend live in hopelessness. So he decides to bring in a change in attitude towards life in the village as a whole as well as help Serge in almost a Christ-like fashion.
The screenplay falters a bit when it comes to the depiction of female characters. The two major female characters, namely Marie and Yvonne are nothing but two female stereotypes on the opposite ends of the spectrum. Chabrol's direction doesn't really add any depths to these characters. Marie is nothing short of a plot device and her choices in the film make little sense. There is also a very disturbing incident that takes place in the film and the justification given for it made it even more shocking and not in the admirable way. Another flaw in the film is the unnecessary way in which the Christ-like nature of François' motives gets verbally referenced by other characters. It was clear and there need not have been the overt declaration of it.
Although this was the first New Wave film, but this was before the release of more monumental works like Truffaut's 'The 400 Blows' and Godard's 'Breathless'. So it doesn't have the unique storytelling and editing techniques that were ushered in by those films and feels a little more standard and conventional. As a matter of fact, 'Le Beau Serge' has a bit of an Italian Neo-realist feel to it due to the way the film depicts the sorry and stagnant nature of life in post-war France. The camera moves a lot in the shots and regularly pans rapidly to a particular portion of the shot to reveal something important. Chabrol also uses a lot of tracking shots in the film. Technically the film is well shot and put together.
'Le Beau Serge' was a solid first film for Chabrol, it is well directed, competently acted and the story has something to say. But I believe there are also some flaws in the film that I couldn't overlook. It still deserves to be recommended.
With a storyline which involves a character going back to his childhood village, one might expect a film that celebrates nostalgia like 'Cinema Paradiso', however 'Le Beau Serge' is anything but a film that wallows in nostalgia. This film brutally shows the discrepancies in the development and spread of modernity between the big cities and the villages in Post WWII France. The people in this particular village are living in a perennial state of hopelessness. They exist because they have to, they have no ambitions, no opportunities and no real goals. François with his urban sensibilities is horrified by the state of affairs here. The screenplay also gives us a bit of a mirror- like relationship between François and Serge. It is implied that their roles could have easily been reversed had things turned out slightly differently. Serge could have been the one who went to the cities while François could have been trapped in this village. This overwhelms François with a sense of guilt to see his childhood friend live in hopelessness. So he decides to bring in a change in attitude towards life in the village as a whole as well as help Serge in almost a Christ-like fashion.
The screenplay falters a bit when it comes to the depiction of female characters. The two major female characters, namely Marie and Yvonne are nothing but two female stereotypes on the opposite ends of the spectrum. Chabrol's direction doesn't really add any depths to these characters. Marie is nothing short of a plot device and her choices in the film make little sense. There is also a very disturbing incident that takes place in the film and the justification given for it made it even more shocking and not in the admirable way. Another flaw in the film is the unnecessary way in which the Christ-like nature of François' motives gets verbally referenced by other characters. It was clear and there need not have been the overt declaration of it.
Although this was the first New Wave film, but this was before the release of more monumental works like Truffaut's 'The 400 Blows' and Godard's 'Breathless'. So it doesn't have the unique storytelling and editing techniques that were ushered in by those films and feels a little more standard and conventional. As a matter of fact, 'Le Beau Serge' has a bit of an Italian Neo-realist feel to it due to the way the film depicts the sorry and stagnant nature of life in post-war France. The camera moves a lot in the shots and regularly pans rapidly to a particular portion of the shot to reveal something important. Chabrol also uses a lot of tracking shots in the film. Technically the film is well shot and put together.
'Le Beau Serge' was a solid first film for Chabrol, it is well directed, competently acted and the story has something to say. But I believe there are also some flaws in the film that I couldn't overlook. It still deserves to be recommended.