User Reviews

Questionably considered the first entry in the Nouvelle Vague, or French New Wave, movement, Claude Chabrol's debut feature serves more as a precursor to the highly influential approach to film- making. While Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard broke new ground and had surprising international success with The 400 Blows (1959) and A Bout de Soufflé (1960) respectively, Le Beau Serge still retains a classical feel. Still, Chabrol's self-financing, on- location shooting, unorthodox editing and the use of non- professional actors proved to be highly influential to the Cahiers du Cinema crew and the first of its kind.

After more than a decade away from his home town, city boy Francois (Jean-Claude Brialy) returns to Sardent for the winter to rest and recover from a recent bout of life-threatening illness. Upon arrival, he notices that the place has barely changed but is oddly deserted, with only a handful of his old friends and acquaintances remaining. One who has remained is Serge (Gerard Blain), Francois' former best friend. The man once dubbed 'handsome Serge' has now been reduced to a bitter alcoholic, trapped in an unhappy marriage with Yvonne (Michele Meritz) who he blames for the loss of his child. Finding himself now at odds with small-town life, Francois still feels compelled to help his old friend.

Despite the odd flash of New Wave characteristics, Le Beau Serge shares more in common with the Neo-Realist movement in post-World War II Italy and the 'angry young man' films that would pepper Hollywood throughout the 50's. Chabrol, who grew up in Sardent, captures the crumbling town with both nostalgia and sadness. While obviously fond and whimsical of such a life, Francois' character feels oddly isolated in the town he once called home, unable to understand how accepting its inhabitants are of their inconsequential existence. The narrative drags in places, but this is both a funny and powerful film, especially if you hail from similar small-town beginnings. Chabrol would build his career on thrillers, but his debut shares a sensitive and socially insightful side rarely seen from the director.

This film is considered to be the first film of the French New Wave film movement, preceding 400 Blows, Hiroshima Mon Amour and Breathless. I don't think you can put this film in the same category as those films. This film is a straight up conventional narrative about Francois who travels back to his hometown after 12 years, looking for a peaceful, restful place and recuperating from a lung infection, he finds that the people he once knew are all in dire straits. They are poor, provincial and cant seem to get out of their rut in this small town, the town Chabrol grew up in. Watching this film I didn't quite know in which way it was headed. The acting is superb and I really felt like I was in that small town with these people. Francois former friend turned alcoholic Serge turns in a convincing performance of drowning ambitions. This film was meticulously put together and the moving shots were intelligently fluid and effective. Unlike what other reviewers have said, this does not feel like a film from a first-timer. I have only seen Chabrol's last two films, Inspector Bellamy and A Girl Cut in Two and they were masterful in execution and i expected this one to be weaker but i was delightfully surprised. It holds up really well and I even think modern American audiences would enjoy this film about sacrifice and reformation.

This is such a low key film, watched today, especially considering its importance in world cinema, being Claude Chabrol's first film and the film that is considered to have set off the Nouvelle Vague. It seems especially ordinary when compared to Godard's A Bout De Soufflé and Vivre Sa Vie, but then these were from 1960 and 1962, two and four years after this breakthrough film. Although this film is not city set and street wise, still harbouring melodrama and some theatricality it is not set bound, is made entirely within the village using the inhabitants within the drama and contains some bold camera-work, including long tracking shots and dynamic close-ups. It is also about the people we are introduced to, there is no historic event being reconstructed or alluded to, this is the here and now. Jean-Claude Braly plays Francois, the young man returning to the village after 12 years apparently a wiser man and Gerard Blain plays his old chum Serge who he feels could have done better for himself. Some great snow scenes at the end round off a thoughtful and involving piece.

Suffering from a bronchial infection, Jean-Claude Brialy, a young Parisian, seeks convalescence in his home village in the Creuse, where he hasn't set foot for 10 years. There he meets up with his former friend, Gerard Blain, who, despite a brilliant adolescence and a bright future, has ended up in a drunken stupor after his marriage. The first film by Claude Chabrol, who launched the New Wave with this bitter account of rural life, perfectly constructed, and served with the talent of Jean-Claude Brialy and Bernadette Laffont.

The film that officially kick-started the "Nouvelle Vague" (interestingly, Chabrol was the only one in that talented crowd to have debuted with a full-length feature and self-financed to boot!) is, surprisingly, an "Angry Young Man"-type drama in a pastoral setting. The radical technique associated with this school of film-making is not really in evidence in this case, but nor is it needed – given that what we have here is essentially a character-driven piece.

In this respect, apart from the director himself (who also wrote the film on his own), the film brought in an array of fresh talent in front of the cameras as well – namely Gerard Blain (evoking Montgomery Clift in particular), Jean-Claude Brialy (restrained in comparison to his other work for Chabrol that I have watched) and the waif-like Bernadette Lafont (already effortlessly exuding carnality in her second film – and the first of 7 with this director – she was also married to her co-star Blain at the time).

Chabrol's realistic depiction of provincial France here, authentic both in the everyday detail of the locale and its characters' foibles (Blain is a hopeless drunk, Lafont is raped by her 'father', etc.), actually makes the much-later THE HORSE OF PRIDE (1980) not the odd-film-out it had at first appeared! One other atypical element is that of spirituality – especially when, towards the end, Brialy determines (albeit predictably) to reform Blain almost at the cost of his own life during one particularly blizzard-ridden night in which his friend is supposed to become a father!

By the way, Chabrol gives himself a cameo in the film: with him appears assistant director Philippe de Broca (whose character is named Jacques Rivette, after another "New Wave" exponent, obviously!); unfortunately, the subtitles – in a small white font – were especially hard to read during this scene.

In what is considered the first film of the French New Wave, Claude Chabrol gives us a hypnotic vision of opposites in the same style as Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt. Le Beau Serge follows the story of Francois, a young man who returns to his home town after twelve years, who finds that the town is dying. His landlady even tells him that everyone will be gone soon enough. In particular, he finds that a once-promising childhood friend, Serge, is trapped as an alcoholic in a loveless marriage.

The brilliance of the film lies not in its storytelling (it is quite slow at parts) nor its acting (most of the actors were non-professionals) but in its structure. Everything is seen in doubles. Francois and Serge are two sides to the same coin. Each has an elder counterpart. Each has a female relation which seems to switch off at times. Serge has both a wife and a mistress who is at one point Francois girlfriend; at the same time, Serge's wife becomes morally attached to Francois. In addition, scenes are doubled; two scenes in the cemetary, two implied sexual scenes in Glomaud's home, two turns by Francois and Michel at the beginning, the list goes on and on. Furthermore, entire shots are doubled with different couples in each. It is brilliant.

In addition, the film looks as if it were unpolished (which is a basic tenet of the New Wave), but it looks as if it was a director's first attempt. But that's not necessarily a bad thing.

The greatest detraction (apart from the sometimes overacting) is the musical score. It is extremely discordant with regards to the movie. Minimal scenes such as Serge exiting his house are accompanies by percussion that sounds as if it were a harbinger of doom. I don't know if Chabrol wanted this, but it becomes irritating and causes the viewer to laugh at the film.

As an added note, watch for the parallels of Francois and Serge with the town's children. The kids pop up everywhere.

In France, François Baillou (Jean-Claude Brialy) returns to his village to spend the winter as part of his treatment of tuberculosis. On the arrival, François sees his former best friend Serge (Gérard Blain) and greets him, but Serge is drunk and does not recognize him.

François learns that Serge is a frustrated man since he had not gone to the Architecture University and has stayed in the village working as truck driver since he had to marry his pregnant girlfriend Yvonne (Michèle Méritz). When the baby was born, he was mongoloid and died. Now Serge is the drunkard of the village.

François meets the seventeen year-old Marie (Bernadette Lafont), who is the slut of the village, and he feels attracted by the teenager. Meanwhile he tries to help his friend.

"Le Beau Serge" is the debut of the great French director Claude Chabrol that shows his talent to tell a simple and realistic drama. The performances are top-notch and the open conclusion is a trademark of Chabrol. It is weird to see a man treating tuberculosis smoking so many cigarettes along the story. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Nas Garras do Vício" ("In the Claw of the Addiction")

If this was indeed the first film of the New Wave then it has a lot to answer for. Unless there are other causal influences I don't know about, the New Wave destroyed French cinema. Old wave films like Carné's "The Children of Paradise" (1943), Clouzot's "The Wages of Fear" (1953), and Tati's "My Uncle" (1958) make Truffaut, Renais and Chabrol look earthbound and dreary. As, by and large, they are. (Even in the years after 1959 France's best films had little to do with, and owed little to, the New Wave.) But "Beautiful Serge" is at least a nice little film, only somewhat earthbound, and not so dreary at that.

An earlier reviewer has complained about the music; and, indeed, at the screening I attended there were some people up the back determined to chortle at what they perceived to be musical heavy-handedness. A cheap response would be that the film needed SOMETHING to lift it above the level of a 7-Up documentary. A fairer response would be that this is a story in which the theological significance of the hero's actions shines through a mundane surface, and the score serves to express that, too. It's the faint but real sense of fantasy that keeps "Beautiful Serge" very much alive.

...This first effort ,made on a shoestring budget ,actually belongs to the old directors school and would not be out of place in ,say ,Duvivier's or Clouzot's brilliant filmographies.It even recalls Italian neorealism sometimes.Anyway,among all the directors of the otherwise a bit overrated new wave,Chabrol is the most accessible,the most palatable, particularly for those ,like me ,who do not give a damn about ,say,Rohmer or Godard.The depiction of the Bourgeoisie which will begin with the follow-up "les cousins"(with Brialy teaming with Blain again) and will become Chabrol's trademark is absent here .Laffont is the only pure new wave actress :Brialy used to work with the "old "guard as well,and Blain 's career really began with Julien Duvivier's unfairly overlooked and sensational "voici le temps des assassins"(1956).

The story is linear,with a lot of characters and a dash of melodrama thrown in -which is by no means new wavesque-.The rural milieu depiction will pave a reliable way for the highly superior "le boucher" (1969).There's also a tendency to dwell on the sordid side of life.Outside the good cast,two scenes in a graveyard are impressive.

This marvelous low budget film, Claude Chabrol's first, is considered by many to be the opening salvo of the French New Wave. It stars Jean-Claude Brialy as a man who returns to his hometown after a long absence only to find that his old friend, "beautiful Serge," played by Gerard Blain, who Truffaut called "the French James Dean," has failed to realize his potential as a man and is no more than an embittered alcoholic. Serge takes out his self-loathing on his pregnant wife (Michele Meritz) while Brialy begins an affair with her sexually aggressive kid sister, the astonishing Bernadette Lafont, Blain's wife in real life at that time. This magnificent story of psychological suspense was shot in the village of Sardent and, presumably, includes some locals in the cast. If you've ever wondered why so many have wished to visit France or live there for awhile, some answers may be found here, in its presentation of the special character of the French people. It provides a template for the career of the unique Claude Chabrol. Beautifully shot, staged and edited, it would profit the viewer to see it multiple times.

France's so-called New Wave was a confluence of pretension and mediocrity. It was first and foremost a mid-fifties school of film criticism that postulated that (1) cinema was of great intellectual import, probably too good for the masses, and that (2) most successful French directors before the publication of its fanzine, "Les Cahiers du Cinéma" (Marcel Carné, Julien Duvivier, Marcel L'Herbier, Jean Gremillon, Henri-George Clouzot, Jean Delannoy, Henri Decoin, to name a few) should be despised, shunned, bullied, ridiculed and persecuted or at least treated with suspicion while most American directors of the same period (except for Wyler, Zinnemann and Stevens) were to be considered as "geniuses" and "pioneers". It was therefore based on a misunderstanding which made it more important to talk intelligently and pretentiously about films (thereby excluding most people from film appreciation) than to make films that people would actually want to see.

The movement had two cliquish firebrands, Jean-Luc Godard - who made increasingly unwatchable and solipsistic films all through his career - and François Truffaut - an acid-tongued journalist who attained a certain commercial success with the help of snobism, in spite of his idiotic and dogmatic principles and his obvious lack of talent and humanity. They will always be remembered as the two vindictive and parochial "mean girls" of French cinema and judged by posterity as "dwarves standing on the shoulders of the giants that preceded them" (e.g.: Jean Renoir, René Clair and Sacha Guitry). Their main legacy is the sad fact that very few of France's really important films (i.e. pre-New Wave) have been preserved and restored for posterity, unlike their own idiotic opuses. For good measure, Truffaut also despised the work of Jean Gabin, Michèle Morgan, Gerard Philippe and Michel Simon.

This misunderstanding also means that all the more successful, quietly innovative or truly revolutionary films of the period have been claimed as "New Wave" when they simply were not (e.g.: the best films of Chabrol, Malle, Varda, Demy, Resnais and Rohmer) and their directors have repeatedly said so, while the films of their "enemies" were excluded from any form of recognition (e.g.: Marcel Carné's "Les Tricheurs" and Julien Duvivier's "La Fête à Henriette").

"Le Beau Serge" is a case in point. It can only be considered "New Wave" in that it is made with no money by a young, dedicated but inexperienced director who tried to imitate his elders and betters and made many mistakes along the way. At that point, Malle didn't know how to sustain attention, direct actors or put a final product together (look at the editing and listen to the music, all dreadful).

This film is only watchable today because of Gérard Blain's heartfelt James Dean impression, Blain having been exploited by the New Wave for his charm and screen presence (and the fact he was married to Bernadette Lafond) and then vomited as soon as he started producing intelligent films that didn't carry the official New Wave label (e.g.: "Les Amis", 1970).

Everything I wrote here has been written countless times before but it can never be repeated often enough.

Chabrol himself once said: "There is no new wave, there is only the ocean."

A line by Bernadette Laffont in this movie was often mentioned by French critics to depict Chabrol's finest hour afterwards : "you watch us as though we were insects ". Claude Chabrol was considered the French entomologist director : a critic wrote that if a historian wanted to know what an early seventies bourgeois was ,he had to watch Michel Bouquet(who's just passed away) ....

"Le beau Serge" does not take place in Paris or a province town ,but in a rural milieu ,though it's likely that François comes from a well-to-do milieu ; but Chabrol's depiction of a small village is extremely precise (see also "le boucher" for that matter) , with its gossips, its vicar who sees his congregation diminish over the years ("only six old women ,when they're gone ...") the way of life before the sixties when there was no contraception .And mainly ,the beginning of the rural exode after WW2 epitomized by François whose perspectives are bright ; Le beau Serge ,like him,wanted to escape a dead end by becoming an architect ,but in a small French village,when you got a girl pregnant ,you had to marry her.

Le Beau Serge is par excellence the dropout ; strange how Chabrol saw Gérard Blain as the loser in both this movie and "les cousins "; in the former work , he never knew who his father really was ,which was prophetic as far as the actor was concerned ;when Blain became a (brilliant) director, all his movies , in a remarkable overall coherence , would deal with the longing for a family (Blain's father left home when he was young) .The best scene ,in the cemetery, belongs to him and it seems that the actor improvised his lines .

Brialy plays here a role diametrically opposite to his part in "les cousins" ;he's not the cynical Parisian ,but the compassionate chum ,who really wants to give a human wreck a helping hand .The ending remains ambiguous though, predating those of the latter works of late sixties/early seventies works.

'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.

Released in a year ahead to the French New Wave landmarks

such as Hiroshima Mon Amour, The 400 Blows, and Breathless,

the first feature of another giant in the movement doesn't really

contain any innovativeness that the others show off. Rather, Le

Beau Serge expresses the modest respect to the directors of older

generations in France; especially there is an obvious similarity

between Le Beau Serge and Bresson's The Diary of Country

Priest. However, like the rest of French New Wave, the film's low

budget attitude loudly speaks the antithesis to the French

mainstream cinema, such as the works of Clement, at the point.

Relationships among main characters randomly oscillate

between friendship and hostility, don't develop, and go nowhere.

Consequently the story can't keep the audience's attention.

Born in 1930, this contemporary of Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut and Eric Rohmer really was, like them, a vital part of the French "New Wave"...if only to have helped usher it in via a neo-realist approach. This is Claude Chabrol's first film and it launched him on a career that spanned 40 years and included mostly thrillers, often inspired by Alfred Hitchcock. Other of his notable works include LES COUSINS (1959), OPHELIA (1962), LE BOUCHER (1969) and MADAME BOVARY (1991) An "enfant terrible" and a genuine eccentric, he approached the making of this first film in a way that would later be identified with the "new wave" movement. He used mostly inexperienced actors, crude editing, lots of location filming and imbued it with a sense of spontaneity. Focusing on content over style allowed him to carve out a distinct piece work that is both compelling and a fine study of human nature. From opening shots of pensive lead actor J.C. Brially* riding a bumpy bus into his childhood town to the powerful closing shot of Gerard Blain shocked into sobering up, this film will have you looking at LE BEAU SERGE with adoration. *(Catch Brially starring in one of the finer French horrror films made; LE DEMON DANS L'ILE)

Although the film is called "Le Beau Serge", the story really isn't about Serge as much as it is about his old friend, François Baillou, a man with a savior complex.

When the story begins, François arrives back in the town he grew up in and where he hasn't been in many years. He is surprised to see that his old friend Serge is now a drunk and Serge's new family is a huge mess. Soon it becomes apparent that François has a bit of a savior complex and works hard to try to 'fix' Serge and his family....even if they don't want fixing!

This film is so unlike Chabrol's later films, though the twist ending and mental illness aspects of this film were often seen in his later, more cinematic movies. I didn't love it but did enjoy it...and it provides you a lot to think about and interpret.

The first film by Chabrol has an interesting pace and well developped characters, portraying, in a tiny cold town, frustration, alcoholism and a lot of mysoginy. Everybody falks about the changes in in town through those 12 years, but patryarchal and selfish roots seem to be what never changes, although it was not the perception of the leading character.

Francois comes back to his home village in France after more than a decade. He notices that the village has not changed much, but the people have, especially his old friend Serge who has become a drunkard. Francois now tries to find out what happened to him and tries to help him.

It has been cited as the first product of the Nouvelle Vague, or French New Wave, film movement. The film is often compared with Chabrol's subsequent film "Les Cousins", which also features Jean-Claude Brialy and Gérard Blain. Perhaps I am mistaken, but "Cousins" is the film that is better known today and more highly praised. But, of course, it was also more expensive to make, so we couldn't have "Cousins" if "Serge" had not been a success.

The film initially ran to 2 hours and 35 minutes, though Chabrol cut a great deal of quasi-documentary material to reduce the running time, a decision he later regretted. Where exactly that footage is now, I have no idea, because the version released by Criterion is a modest 99 minutes. This would mean an extra 45 minutes may exist somewhere.

Claude Chabrol's first film has some things going for it, starting with its cinematography, simple in that it's all shot in the French village of Sardent, and yet with at least a few of the glimpses into the techniques that would be called 'New Wave'. One really feels the smallness of the village that François (Jean-Claude Brialy) returns to after some years have passed, only to find his friend Serge (Gérard Blain) a drunkard with a horrible attitude. The scenes in the snow and at night towards the ending are simply beautiful.

There is a rebelliousness to the film, mainly in the form of Serge, who is frustrated that his dreams of becoming an architect have been dashed, that he was trapped into a marriage because of a pregnancy, and the baby turned out to be stillborn. François has returned to a crumbling village whose inhabitants lead dissolute lives and believes he can and should help them, but the trouble is, they don't want his help. The relationship between the two isn't particularly profound, but the film is touching in a few places. Adding some spice to it all is Serge's flirtatious sister-in-law (Bernadette Lafont).

I didn't care for the musical score, which was too jaunty and annoying in places. After an interesting setup, the plot fizzles a bit, and I think the ending was simplistic. This is a good film, one worth watching, but a better one is Chabrol's film the following year, Les Cousins, starring the same two actors.

Amazing character study of childhood friends whose lives don't turn out quite as planned. There's angst and anger, tenderness and intimacy, peril and perviousness. Moreover, there's a price to pay for not minding your own business.

I don't care one iota if this is part of any "wave" of cinema. It's a solid story and a solid film with solid acting. I loved the ending.

What a dark and depressing film this is. At the same time, it is visually beautiful. The moral depravity of virtually all inhabitants of the village is unsettling, and the fellow who comes back to convalesce there after a bout with tuberculosis gets a chance to view the scene anew, and with some degree of disgust.

The cinematography is excellent, so if you are into visuals, by all means watch Le beau Serge..

(1959) Le Beau Serge/ Handsome Serge (In French with English subtitles) DRAMA First film from veteran filmmaker Claude Chabrol who was along with Francois Truffaut and Jean Luc Godard part of the 'French New Wave'. Much more resonating than Chabrol's other film "Les Cousins" made during the same year. This is the first of two movies he made during that particular year he reused two of the same actors of Gérard Blain and Jean-Claude Brialy for two different movies. Written and directed by Claude Chabrol starring Jean-Claude Brialy as François Baillou, who's just returning back to the little village he grew up in after finishing from his studies after 12 years. And finds that, even though the village itself hadn't changed much during his long absence, but that many of it's local residents had, particularly his best friend, Serge( Gérard Blain), consistently on a drinking binge, living with his girlfriend who's expecting their first child. The one scene I was incapable to understand are the relationship between the drunken father Glomaud (Edmond Beauchamp), and the daughter, Maria (Bernadette Lafont) scene, which regards to the reaction from François which that one scene can be defined as totally outdated. This entire theme should be something viewers should able to identify with because it often questions viewers how things can change after a long absence, and I do know a great amount of people can either change for the worst or for the better. But because of social media, sometimes it almost seems like they're still here living with them.

Excellent film, does anyone else see similarities to Cat on a hot tin roof, and a number of southern Gothic references.....I read more than I probably should, sham loveless marriage , first child conceived by perve father, Francois and Serge maybe shared more than society would allow, Village priest, hmmm.Beautifully shot and so poetic, Chabrol's most sincere and honest.. just saying....Strong characters that have a grand noble purpose. Not at all apologetic and a testament to faith and hope in a futile, provincial and incestuous post war Europe. You feel their hunger and desperation. So revealing a film, yet it left so much unanswered. Post war French cinema is timeless and classic.