''Les Cousins'' is a 1959
French New Wave
French New Wave (french: La Nouvelle Vague) is a French art film movement that emerged in the late 1950s. The movement was characterized by its rejection of traditional filmmaking conventions in favor of experimentation and a spirit of iconocla ...
drama film
In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super-g ...
directed by
Claude Chabrol
Claude Henri Jean Chabrol (; 24 June 1930 – 12 September 2010) was a French film director and a member of the French New Wave (''nouvelle vague'') group of filmmakers who first came to prominence at the end of the 1950s. Like his colleagues an ...
. It tells a story about two cousins, the decadent Paul, played by
Jean-Claude Brialy
Jean-Claude Brialy (30 March 1933 – 30 May 2007) was a French actor and film director.
Early life
Brialy was born in Aumale (now Sour El-Ghozlane), French Algeria, where his father was stationed with the French Army. Brialy moved to mainland ...
, and the naïve Charles, played by
Gérard Blain
Gérard Blain (23 October 1930 – 17 December 2000) was a French actor and film director.
Biography
Blain appeared in sixty films between 1944 and 2000. He also directed nine films between 1971 and 2000. In 1971, he won the Golden Leopard ...
. The film won the
Golden Bear
The Golden Bear (german: Goldener Bär) is the highest prize awarded for the best film at the Berlin International Film Festival. The bear is the heraldic animal of Berlin, featured on both the coat of arms and flag of Berlin.
History
The winn ...
at the
9th Berlin International Film Festival
The 9th annual Berlin International Film Festival was held from 26 June – 7 July 1959. The festival welcomed the cinematic movement known as the New Wave and screened the work of directors such as Jean-Luc Godard, Agnès Varda and Françoi ...
.
Plot
The naïve, innocent, and idealistic Charles, who is from the provinces and is something of a mama's boy, moves to Paris to share his uncle's extravagant apartment with his dissolute, profligate, and jaded cousin Paul while both young men attend law school. Whereas Charles takes his studies very seriously in order to not disappoint his mother, to whom he writes daily, Paul never seems to go to lectures or crack a book.
At the club where many of Paul's friends hang out during the day, Charles meets the beautiful Florence, who has a reputation for being promiscuous. She spends some time with Charles at one of Paul's raucous parties, and finds him intriguing. Charles, knowing nothing of Florence's past, falls in love with her.
One day, due to a misunderstanding Florence shows up at the apartment two hours before Charles had told her to meet him at school after a class. She is greeted by Paul, who tries to convince her that she and Charles are not suited to each other and she will end up bored and cheating on Charles if they stay together. Clovis, a thoroughly corrupt friend of Paul's who operates as a kind of hustler, pimp, and purveyor of bizarre entertainments for Paul and his friends, drops by and continues the argument. He says Florence's recent virtuous impulses are fleeting and Paul is really who she should be with.
Charles finally comes home after waiting for Florence for two hours after his class ended. Paul and Florence tell him that Florence has decided to move into the apartment to be with Paul, not him, and Charles seems to take the news quite well, saying he will wait his turn. He begins to spend almost all of his time studying in his room, but his focus is regularly broken by reminders that Paul and Florence are together.
Florence moves out shortly before Paul and Charles are to take an important exam, Paul the day before Charles. Paul, somehow, does not have any trouble passing and throws a big party. Florence comes and tries to talk to Charles in his room, but he says she is interrupting his studying and throws her out, after which he seems distracted by more than just the noise from the living room.
To everyone's surprise, Charles flunks his exam. He tries to go to a church, but it is closed, and the words of a friendly bookseller fail to lift his spirits, so he wanders around. Winding up at the river, he throws his school papers and student ID in the water before heading back to the apartment. Charles loads a single bullet into one of his uncle's six-chamber
revolver
A revolver (also called a wheel gun) is a repeating handgun that has at least one barrel and uses a revolving cylinder containing multiple chambers (each holding a single cartridge) for firing. Because most revolver models hold up to six roun ...
s, spins the cylinder, and pulls the trigger while pointing the weapon at the sleeping Paul's head. The hammer clicks on an empty chamber, and Charles drops the gun and goes to bed.
In the morning, Paul tries to cheer Charles up. While he talks, he playfully picks up the revolver and pulls the trigger, as he often does. Charles frantically tries to warn Paul that the gun is loaded, but he cuts off when he is struck by the bullet and dies without saying another word. Dumbfounded, Paul struggles for a few moments to take in what has just happened. The doorbell rings and he goes to answer the door.
Selected cast
*
Gérard Blain
Gérard Blain (23 October 1930 – 17 December 2000) was a French actor and film director.
Biography
Blain appeared in sixty films between 1944 and 2000. He also directed nine films between 1971 and 2000. In 1971, he won the Golden Leopard ...
as Charles
*
Jean-Claude Brialy
Jean-Claude Brialy (30 March 1933 – 30 May 2007) was a French actor and film director.
Early life
Brialy was born in Aumale (now Sour El-Ghozlane), French Algeria, where his father was stationed with the French Army. Brialy moved to mainland ...
as Paul
*
Juliette Mayniel as Florence
*
Claude Cerval
Claude Cerval (21 February 1921 – 25 July 1972) was a French film actor. He appeared in more than forty films from 1955 to 1971.
Filmography
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cerval, Claude
1921 births
1972 deaths
Male a ...
as Jean Dalbecque (known as Clovis)
*
Guy Decomble as the bookseller
*
Geneviève Cluny
Geneviève Cluny (born 18 April 1928) is a former French film actress. She appeared in both French New Wave films as well as popular mainstream commercial productions during the 1950s and 1960s. She is credited for the basic idea on which Jean- ...
as Geneviève
*Michèle Méritz as Yvonne
*Corrado Guarducci as Count Minerva
*
Stéphane Audran
Stéphane Audran (born Colette Suzanne Dacheville; 8 November 1932 – 27 March 2018) was a French actress. She was known for her performances in award-winning films such as ''The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie'' (1972) and ''Babette's Feast'' ...
as Françoise
*
Paul Bisciglia
Paul Antoine Alphonse Bisciglia (30 July 1928 – 18 April 2010) was a French film actor.
Career
Throughout his acting career, Bisciglia appeared in more than one hundred feature films. He made his debut in the 1950 film ''Trois télégram ...
as Marc
*
Jeanne Pérez
Jeanne Pérez (28 September 1894 – 11 May 1975) was a French film actress. She appeared in 50 films between 1930 and 1975.
Filmography
References
External links
*
1894 births
1975 deaths
French film actresses
People from Caste ...
as the cleaning lady
*
Françoise Vatel
Françoise Vatel (born Françoise Watel, 28 November 1937 – 24 October 2005) was a French actress.
Vatel was born in Clichy, Hauts-de-Seine. She began her film career at the age of 16 in Jean Gourguet's ''Les Premiers outrages'', and she wo ...
as Martine
*Jean-Louis Maury as a bridge player
*André Jocelyn as Philippe
Production
Chabrol had planned for ''The Cousins'' to be his first film, but the high production costs ($160,000) made him decide to postpone the project and make the less-expensive ''
Le Beau Serge
''Le Beau Serge'' (, literal English translation: "Handsome Serge") is a 1958 French film directed by Claude Chabrol. It has been cited as the first product of the Nouvelle Vague, or French New Wave, film movement. The film is often compared wit ...
'' first. The two films featured the same lead actors—
Gérard Blain
Gérard Blain (23 October 1930 – 17 December 2000) was a French actor and film director.
Biography
Blain appeared in sixty films between 1944 and 2000. He also directed nine films between 1971 and 2000. In 1971, he won the Golden Leopard ...
and
Jean-Claude Brialy
Jean-Claude Brialy (30 March 1933 – 30 May 2007) was a French actor and film director.
Early life
Brialy was born in Aumale (now Sour El-Ghozlane), French Algeria, where his father was stationed with the French Army. Brialy moved to mainland ...
—but many aspects of their characters and their function within the plot were reversed (for example, Brialy now played the "insider", and Blain the "outsider"). ''The Cousins'' was the first film Chabrol wrote in collaboration with
Paul Gégauff
Paul Gégauff (10 August 1922 – 24 December 1983) was a French screenwriter, actor, and director. He collaborated with director Claude Chabrol on 14 films. Among his films are ''Les Biches'', ''Plein Soleil'' and the autobiographical '' Une ...
.
Style
The film introduced a number of elements that would soon be regarded as typically Chabrolian. It is set in a bourgeois
milieu
The social environment, social context, sociocultural context or milieu refers to the immediate physical and social setting in which people live or in which something happens or develops. It includes the culture that the individual was educate ...
and the overall style is self-consciously polished, which recall the "Cinema of Quality" more than the New Wave. There is also a typical ambiguity about the characters, with the guileless Charles emerging as something of a prig, and Paul as a flawed, but more complex and interesting character. Charles' guardian angel, an idealistic bookseller, is counterbalanced by Paul's companion, the malevolent Clovis.
The party scenes reveal "Chabrol's taste for the theatrical and flamboyant."
The unwitting murder in the end is, seemingly, inspired by "the theme of the exchange of guilt which Chabrol and
Rohmer analysed in
Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English filmmaker. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema. In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 featur ...
."
Reception
The film won the
Golden Bear
The Golden Bear (german: Goldener Bär) is the highest prize awarded for the best film at the Berlin International Film Festival. The bear is the heraldic animal of Berlin, featured on both the coat of arms and flag of Berlin.
History
The winn ...
at the
9th Berlin International Film Festival
The 9th annual Berlin International Film Festival was held from 26 June – 7 July 1959. The festival welcomed the cinematic movement known as the New Wave and screened the work of directors such as Jean-Luc Godard, Agnès Varda and Françoi ...
. It had 1,816,407 admissions in France, making it the second most popular film of Chabrol's career.
Bosley Crowther
Francis Bosley Crowther Jr. (July 13, 1905 – March 7, 1981) was an American journalist, writer, and film critic for ''The New York Times'' for 27 years. His work helped shape the careers of many actors, directors and screenwriters, though his ...
commented in ''The New York Times'' that "Chabrol has more skill with the camera than he has with the pen, and his picture is more credible to the eye than it is to the skeptical mind. But it is not the less overwhelming, and it is beautifully played by much the same cast that performed for him in ''
Le Beau Serge
''Le Beau Serge'' (, literal English translation: "Handsome Serge") is a 1958 French film directed by Claude Chabrol. It has been cited as the first product of the Nouvelle Vague, or French New Wave, film movement. The film is often compared wit ...
''." ''Variety'' said that "director Chabrol has gone in for a little too much symbolism. The characters sometimes remain murky and too literary rather than real form. But a concisive progression, fine technical aspects, and a look at innocence destroyed by the profane keeps it absorbing despite the slightly pretentious treatment at times." ''Time'' called the film "a fairly clever, mildly depressing study of France's I-got-it-beat generation."
Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael (; June 19, 1919 – September 3, 2001) was an American film critic who wrote for ''The New Yorker'' magazine from 1968 to 1991. Known for her "witty, biting, highly opinionated and sharply focused" reviews, Kael's opinions oft ...
wrote: "''The Cousins,'' more than any other film I can think of, deserves to be called ''The Lost Generation,'' with all the glamour and romance, the easy sophistication and quick desperation that the title suggests." ''TV Guide'' called it "a major film of the French New Wave that provides a grim, clear-eyed look at the cynicism of youth, this is not to be missed."
See also
*
1959 in film
*
French films of 1959
References
External links
*
*
''Les cousins: The Nature of the Beast''an essay by
Terrence Rafferty
Terrence Rafferty is a film critic who wrote regularly for ''The New Yorker'' during the 1990s. His writing has also appeared in '' Slate'', ''The Atlantic Monthly'', ''The Village Voice'', ''The Nation'', and ''The New York Times''. For a number ...
at the
Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scholars, cinep ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cousins
1959 films
1959 drama films
French drama films
1950s French-language films
Films directed by Claude Chabrol
Films with screenplays by Paul Gégauff
French black-and-white films
Golden Bear winners
Films set in Paris
1950s French films