Claude Chabrol's cinema is generally associated with a specific type of psychological thriller, one set in the French provinces and fascinated with murder, incest, fragmented families, unstable spaces and inscrutable female characters. But Chabrol's films are both deceptively accessible and deeply reflexive, and in this innovative reappraisal of his filmography Catherine Dousteyssier-Khoze explores the Chabrol who was influenced by Balzac, Magritte and Stanley Kubrick. Bringing to the fore Chabrol’s ‘aesthetic of opacity’, the book deconstructs the apparent clarity and comfort of his chosen genre, encouraging the viewer to reflect on the relationship between illusion and reality, and the status of the film image itself.
Catherine Dousteyssier-Khoze is Reader in French at Durham University. She specializes in (19th-century) French literature and French film. She is also the author of a début novel, La logique de l’amanite (Grasset, 2015).
List of illustrationsAcknowledgementsIntroductionChapter 1: Contexts and InfluencesChapter 2: Chabrol and GenresChapter 3: The Human BeastChapter 4: Family SecretsChapter 5: Chabrolean spaces as heterotopias of crisisChapter 6: Through the Looking Glass: Chabrol’s ‘crystal-image’Conclusion: Towards an Aesthetics of Visual Opacity
Seven years after his death, this is a timely appraisal of Chabrol’s work. Dousteyssier-Khoze shows how Chabrol is more indebted to Balzac than we may have thought. She deftly navigates his serial killers, and shows how Deleuze’s crystal-image and Foucault’s heterotopia can illuminate Chabrol’s manipulation of space and time.
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John Mullarkey, Anthony Paul Smith, London) Mullarkey, John (Professor of Film and Television, Kingston University, La Salle University) Smith, Anthony Paul (Assistant Professor in Religion
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Sean Bowden, Simon Duffy, Deakin University) Bowden, Sean (Alfred Deakin Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Sydney) Duffy, Simon (Research Associate
Marcelo Svirsky, Simone Bignall, University of Wollongong) Svirsky, Marcelo (Lecturer and Marie Curie Fellow, Sydney) Bignall, Simone (Adjunct Senior Lecturer, University of Technology
João Pedro Cachopo, Patrick Nickleson, Chris Stover, the Universidade Nova de Lisboa and the University of Chicago) Cachopo, Joao Pedro (Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow, Queen's University at Kingston) Nickleson, Patrick (Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Oslo) Stover, Chris (Research Fellow, Joao Pedro Cachopo
Grace Hellyer, Julian Murphet, University of New South Wales) Hellyer, Grace (teacher, University of Adelaide) Murphet, Julian (Jury Professor of English Language and Literature
Grace Hellyer, Julian Murphet, Grace Hellyer, Julian Murphet, University of New South Wales) Hellyer, Grace (teacher, University of Adelaide) Murphet, Julian (Jury Professor of English Language and Literature
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