(1968)4Wheeler Winston DixonHis many adherents regularly dub Chabrol "the French Hitchcock," and while it is a convenient way of reducing his work to its bare essentials, there are many differences between the two artists. While Chabrol deals in suspense, Hitchcock, particularly in his last films, revealed a deep streak of cruelty and misogyny that undercuts such films as Marnie (1964), The Birds (1963), and especially Frenzy (1972). Chabrol was more circumspect about such matters, and embraced a wider set of concerns in his films, making them much more universal in their appeal, and lasting in their social commentary. La Femme Infidèle is a tale of passion and adultery, but done with a much more distanced and ironic air than is typical of Hitchcock. Charles Desvallées (Michel Bouquet) discovers that his wife, Hélène (Stéphane Audran), is cheating on him. Methodically, he hires a private detective to have her followed, and discovers her lover's identity: he is Victor Pegala (Maurice Ronet), a writer. Driving to Pegala's apartment, Charles calmly introduces himself as Hélène's husband, and then kills Pegala with off-handed diffidence. The subsequent police investigation takes numerous and twists and turns, as is typical for Chabrol. But what interests the director here primarily is not the police inquiries, or even the moral questions surrounding Charles' guilt. What, Chabrol asks, will be Hélène's response to the crime? In the final analysis, Chabrol's film is more interested in matters of the heart than in questions of guilt or innocence, and becomes a psychological investigation of the situation surrounding the murder, rather than a typical policier. Born in 1930, Chabrol is remarkably prolific, with nearly 70 films to his credit, and at this writing still actively producing films, which are at once both commercially, and aesthetically satisfying. La Femme Infidèle is one of Chabrol's key early films, and a superb introduction to the work a master filmmaker who is interested not so much in suspense, but rather in the hearts and minds of those who inhabit his morally ambiguous universe.
Many critics consider this suspenseful, character-driven, erotic and cynical examination of a bourgeois marriage gone awry to be one of French filmmaker Claude Chabrol's greatest dramas. Charles is a Versailles insurance salesman who suspects that his lovely wife has been messing around. He hires a private investigator to prove it. When he learns that she has been philandering with a Parisian writer, the enraged husband rushes off for a confrontation that results in murder. He then goes back to his wife, who when she discovers what her husband has done, feels fiery stirrings for him that she thought were long gone. Unfortunately, love is no match for the long-arm of the law.
