This is a very intense film, that shakes us so ceaselessly and mercilessly, that I am obliged to remind you that not all film greats are pleasures to watch. For one thing, the film captures wonderfully the awkwardness and tension of entering into someone else's alien territory. And what animals he found there, too! Paul has all the charm of a stuffed goldfinch, while his aptly named friend, Clovis, creates a little zone of horror with his violent, aggressive, self-indulgent over-familiarity around Paul's apartment. With characters as repulsive as the barking Paul and Eunuch-like Clovis, we have no choice but to identify with Charles, and we are always anticipating a scene where Charles will get a little of his own back, but alas, that moment never comes.
Every thing is a displocation with Charles: dislocation with his lodging, his social circle, and his literary taste (Balzac). And we root for him. The party scenes in this film are cheaper versions of the orgies in "La Dolce Vita", and certainly as vulgar. Everybody is pretending to have a good time, for fear of being kept out. Little did we know, though, that herein lies the fatal tragedy of Charles.
How is this little claustrophobic Hall of Horror constructed on the screen, with its tense, stuffy atmosphere? The art is in the details. For instance, the young Chabrol possess the great trained ears of a major film artist: at one of the party scenes, the record plays the first movement of Mozart's Symphony No. 40,, with its tentative, tantalizing eagernessthat underlines Charles's state of mind. And at another party, Paul's embarassingly mediocre, over-the-top German monologue, one that only he himself took seriously, is accompanied by Wagner's music (from "Parsifal"? Not sure) that hints at a straw-made tyrannous Aryan "Super Man". And the use of the "Flight of the Valkries", again by Wagner (I guess Chabrol, like many Frenchmen, is no friend to Wagner), drives that fantasy home again later on. On the jazz side, the use of sparse drumbeat to underscore Charles' conflict is also always precise and apt.
And the eyes; what eyes of Chabrol! The cinematography is tinged with Film Noir sensibility, but far above its usual cliches. I shall just give two examples. When Charles is taken out fo a first ride around Paris, the camera trembles with excitement, and the street scenes just flash by in a confusion of light and shadow---this makes "Jules and Jim" look like a child's play. And the marvelous party scene right after the outburst of Philippe the jilted lover: seen though the glass partition wall, the crowd slowly and unsteadily returns to life, in awkward silence, like a group of zombies. Never seen 10 seconds of filming so closely packed with bite and despair!
I will have to go into a much longer harangue to tell you the many things to watch in this film. Go get the disc and let me rest :-)
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