In honor of the late Claude Chabrol, one of the great filmmakers of the French New Wave, co-author with Eric Rohmer of the first book on Alfred Hitchcock, maker of moral thrillers and autopsier of the dis-ease of the bourgeoisie ("Les biches," "La femme infidel," "Le boucher," "La rupture," "Violette Nozière," "La cérémonie"...), here is my Opening Shot (and closing shot) piece for "La femme infidel:
A fairy-tale home in a wooded setting. Two women sit an an outdoor table in the shade of some tall trees. The camera glides across the lawn silently (we can't hear what they're saying, just barely audible laughter) at an oblique angle that takes us closer to the women, but not directly toward them. A big black trunk passes startlingly across the screen in the foreground. Then a smaller trunk comes into the shot, mid-distance, and nicely frames the image. That's all there is to the opening shot (which lasts less than 10 seconds), but to understand the context we have to consider the rest of the brief pre-titles sequence.
Continued here...
6 Comments
Lovely tribute.
R.I.P Mr. Chabrol.
I forgot how cool the Opening Shots Project was. Any chance you'll be bringing it back sometime soon?
I concur. The Opening Shots Project needs immediate revival.
Always been a highlight of this blog.
The ambiguity of perspective in the final shot is formally subtle but emotionally powerful.
It begins as the husband's optical POV, and the gliding camera movement at first suggests that he has started walking away. But the shot is held too long (presumably he is not shuffling backwards down the road) and is augmented by a zoom in; it slips free of technical subjectivity to achieve a more free-floating, poetic subjectivity. This staggered dolly/zoom perfectly embodies the logic of the scene: the push/pull tension of emotionally reaching out but physically drawing away, of being at once closer (metaphorically) and farther (literally) than ever.
Form, emotion--same thing.
Yes! The final shot, and the way you describe it, gives me goosebumps -- it's like an out-of-body experience the way it slides, in one movement, from an actual POV shot to something, as you say, "more free-floating, poetic." What a beauty this movie is...
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