Claude Chabrol's Aesthetics of Opacity

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.