Claude Chabrol: Elements of Crime
Claude Chabrol was one of the original critic-turned-filmmakers from the influential film magazine Cahiers du Cinèma who, alongside Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Jacques Rivette and Éric Rohmer, spearheaded the French New Wave of the late 1950s and early 60s.
Whilst his four colleagues were busy reshaping the language of cinema in their own image, Chabrol was more interested in reshaping French cinema in the image of Alfred Hitchcock. Chabrol’s fascination with Hitchcock’s coolly detached visual style led to some of the finest French films like Le Boucher and La Femme infidèle.
This selection of newly-restored films allows us to experience again Chabrol’s elegant and thrilling cinema.
Presented with thanks to the BFI.
Upcoming screenings in this season
La Femme infidèle
classified 15Subtitled screening
Chabrol’s ice cold tale of infidelity, passion and violence – an unmissable Hitchcockian thriller set against a backdrop of bourgeois respectability in late 1960’s Versailles which inspired Andrey Zvyagintsev's Cannes 2026 Grand Prix winner Minotaur.
Les Biches
classified 15Subtitled screening
A wealthy bourgeoise is plucked off the street by a Parisian pavement artist who whisks her away to off-season Saint-Tropez for a life of idle decadence in the company of her raffish friends.
Le Boucher
classified 15Subtitled screening
Claude Chabrol’s masterful thriller hinges on the unlikely bond between a schoolmistress and a butcher and the unsettling possibility that all might not be what it seems as a wave of murders grip their small idyllic French village.
La Rupture
classified 18Subtitled screening
Maybe marrying into wealth and position was a bad life move for Hélène. After her acidhead husband freaks out, sending their son to the hospital, father-in-law Ludovic hires erstwhile romantic charmer Paul to blackmail her.
Juste avant la nuit
classified 15Subtitled screening
A Parisian advertising executive strangles his lover in an S&M game gone wrong but finds it increasingly difficult to confess his crime.