sunday french classics,  claude chabrol days

Le Beau Serge

France | 1959 | b&w | 98 mins | dir. Claude Chabrol, with Gérard Blain, Jean-Claude Brialy, Bernadette Lafont

Chabrol's debut feature is a powerful examination of male friendship and its consequences with Jean-Claude Brialy as a student who returns from Paris to his childhood home to find that his once-brilliant friend (Blain) has become an alcoholic after the loss of a child. A bleak and beautifully observed picture of provincial life, Le Beau Serge is generally regarded as the film that launched the New Wave.

 Sun 20 Jan | 2.00pm | cert. 15