Le Beau Serge (1958)
Directed by Claude Chabrol

Film Review

Hard has it may seem, the French New Wave began not with an almighty bang of Earth-shattering proportions but with a fairly modest piece which offers little if any of the revolutionary innovation or stylistic excess that we tend to associate with la Nouvelle Vague. It was through a stroke of good fortune - his wife inheriting a large amount of money - that Claude Chabrol was able to make the transition from critic to filmmaker, the first of the hot-headed intellectuals on Les Cahiers du cinéma to impose his own stamp on French cinema.  From the mid-1950s, Chabrol and his fellow critics - Eric Rohmer, François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard and Jacques Rivettte - had been vociferous in their condemnation of contemporary French films, expressing dissatisfaction with the so-called quality tradition whilst simultaneously calling for a radical overhaul of the way in which films were made so that they would be more relevant to a modern audience.  In the decade that followed, all five of these  cinephilic Hell-raisers would get his chance to pick up a clapperboard and offer his own vision of cinema.  Claude Chabrol was the first to make it to the editing suite, but, ironically, he would be the last to find success in his new metier.

Chabrol's early films are very different from the films for which he is best remembered today, slick, psychological dramas with a Hitchcockian feel and a darkly humorous underbelly.  They almost appear to be the work of a completely different director - more experimental, more daring, more willing to shock audiences.  Le Beau Serge is not the most distinguished of Chabrol's early work, but it is one of his most interesting and humane films, in which we can already see the themes that would predominate in later years, notably a distaste for flawed bourgeois morality.   Stylistically, the film appears to have been influenced by Italian neo-realist films of the previous decade.  Chabrol shot the entire film on location, in an unattractive backwater of France (the equivalent of De Sica's Milan), employing non-professional actors for all of the secondary roles and fairly inexperienced actors for the leading roles.  The grim location, low contrast black and white photography and absence of artificial lighting give the film an austere sense of reality that could not be more different from the the polished elegance of Chabrol's subsequent films, which all suggest a world of privilege and moral decay.

The one thing that makes the strongest connection with Chabrol's later films is the central character, François.  A bourgeois intellectual (very much in the Dostoevskian mould), he considers himself morally superior to the lower classes by dint of his intelligence and cultural refinement.  When he returns to his home village, he looks like a visitor from another planet.  The people he encounters, including his childhood friend Serge, appear to be no more than animals, filthy beasts wallowing in their own squalor.   François epitomises the one unifying theme in Chabrol's oeuvre - the failure of the bourgeoisie to engage with the problems of the real world.  Unlike many of the director's subsequent bourgeois characters, François is motivated by sincere motives, but this will not prevent him from failing in his mission, to rescue Serge from a dissolute and meaningless life.  Unable to understand the mindset of the people in the rural community where he once lived, alienated from them by his learning and newly acquired bourgeois prejudices, François can only make things worse for Serge and his entourage.  Do we really believe that the final episode in the film really took place, that François achieved a miraculous reconciliation between his friend and his wife, at the risk of his own life?  It is far more likely that this is merely a dream - the happy ending that François imagined he would bring about when he first set foot in the village, bourgeois self-delusion at its most grotesque.  The point of the film is that neither Serge nor François can be saved - both are trapped in their arid and pointless little worlds by their flawed moral viewpoint and a lack of moral conviction to bring about the change whereby they may find happiness and fulfilment.   

Le Beau Serge brings together three of the actors who would become closely associated with the French New Wave: Jean-Claude Brialy, Gérard Blain  and Bernadette Lafont (the latter two had previously worked together on François Truffaut's debut short Les Mistons).  Whilst each of these actors gives a very credible performance, it is unquestionably Blain who has the greatest impact.   Watching Blain in this film, it is hard not to recall James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause (1955). There is vitality and depth to his portrayal that makes him stand out from the film like a character in a children's pop-up book, yet there is also wild quality that makes it difficult for us to sympathise with him.  (Another feature of Chabrol's cinema is its objectivity - we rarely, if ever, form any emotional attachment with the protagonists.)  Blain's bestial, child-like Serge makes a startling contrast with Brialy's civilised man-of-the-world François - the difference in acting styles helps to emphasise the enormous gulf that exists between the two characters.  Lafont is just as well-cast as the mischievously seductive Marie, another wild child that seems to revel in her own depravity, but one who is at least contented with her situation - notice how easily she is reconciled with her father after he rapes her.  Watch carefully and you will see Chabrol and his assistant director Philippe de Broca make a brief cameo appearance in the film.  Blain and Brialy would be reunited for Chabrol's next film, Les Cousins (1959), which is both a continuation of and a complement to Le Beau Serge - it pretty well tells the same story, but within the director's more familiar bourgeois setting and with a more modernist sheen.

Film Synopsis

Stricken with tuberculosis, a young student named François returns to his home town of Sardent in the Creuse region of central France for a period of quiet convalescence.  On his arrival, he soon meets up with his childhood friend, Serge, and is struck by how he has changed.  Married to a woman he no longer loves, Serge has become a chronic alcoholic, prone to extreme bouts of depression and violence.  He treats his wife Yvonne with contempt and frequently beats her, even though she is heavily pregnant with their second child.  The reason for his friend's erratic behaviour is soon revealed to François.  Serge still hasn't come to terms with the still birth of his first child.

Unable to stand by and watch his friend destroy himself, François tries to cure him of his addiction to alcohol, with little chance of success.  As he does so, he attracts the attention of Yvonne's sister, Marie, who reveals she has fallen in love with the cultivated student.  The two friends come to blows at a dance when Serge insults his wife by making advances to Marie, his former mistress.  Even though his health is rapidly deteriorating, François cannot bring himself to desert his old friend, although it is clear to everyone else that his efforts are useless.  As Yvonne goes into labour, François puts his own life in jeopardy by going out to look for his friend one cold night.  It is a noble sacrifice.  Serge loses his well-meaning friend but he gains a healthy infant - and a reason for changing his ways.