"La Rupture" - Claude Chabrol (1970)

Claude Chabrol’s La Rupture (The Breach, aka The Breakup, 1970) is in my opinion his finest film, but it is a hard one to classify.  It can be considered to be a thriller, a film noir, a horror film, or a philosophical fantasy, but it seems to escape the boundaries of all of these genre types.  From any angle, the film turns out to be not what you would expect.  For this reason the film has been a puzzle to many viewers and has had a variety of critical responses [1,2,3,4,5,6]. 

Scripted and directed by Chabrol (Les Cousins, 1959), who was one of the original members of the French New Wave (Nouvelle Vague), La Rupture was based on Charlotte Armstrong’s novel The Balloon Man (1968).  The film featured excellent production values, particularly in connection with Jean Rabier’s skillfully restless cinematography and with Pierre Jansen’s eerie musical score.

The film features a virtuoso performance in the lead role on the part of Stéphane Audran, Claude Chabrol’s wife, whose portrayal of earnest, steadfast feminine authenticity represents a key narrative element to the story.  In fact we could say that a basic theme of the story is that of persistent innocence that is victimized and virtually engulfed by corrupt social elements.  But what makes this whole thing fascinating is the surreal and expressionistic way that this theme is presented. 

Indeed, the expressionistic element is an explicit feature here, inasmuch as Chabrol has remarked that La Rupture belonged to his Fritz Lang period – Lang having been a noted German Expressionist filmmaker [1].  However, Chabrol’s expressionistic presentation is different than the usual fare, which I have characterized by the following [7]:

“In their paintings, Munch and the German Expressionists presented a world that is distorted and coloured by the inner emotions evoked in the subjective viewer. This is a highly charged, emotional world vastly different from the photographic reality captured by a camera. The attempt is made to show that there is not so much a separation from the inner state of the subject and the external world as perceived by that subject. For example, when the subject is fear, every aspect of the physical world is shown to be nightmarishly oppressive and threatening.”

In other words, a distraught inner, mental world is usually portrayed in Expressionistic art by showing a distorted surrounding physical environment, often in film by means of dramatic camera angles and lighting.  But here in La Rupture it’s different – the presented physical world is entirely normal and seemingly objective.  Instead, the expressionistic elements in the film are constituted by the baroque characters that surround the main character, along with the eerie, surreal music sometimes present on the soundtrack. 

The opening title of the film offers a quotation by Jean Racine that foretells the impending atmosphere that will come to haunt the protagonist:

    “What utter darkness suddenly surrounds me.”

The film narrative proceeds through four segments.

1.  A Dramatic Marital Rupture

The film begins with a cheerful domestic scene showing Hélène Régnier (played by Stéphane Audran) happily serving breakfast to her four-year-old son Michel.  But then her husband, Charles (Jean-Claude Drouot), emerges from the bedroom with a disturbed look on his face – there is something clearly wrong with him.  Wordlessly, he throttles Hélène and then picks up his son and throws him down, giving the boy a severe concussion and breaking his leg.  Hélène manages to get up and knock her husband out with a frying pan.   Then she rushes her son to the hospital. 

Charles’s extremely wealthy parents, Ludovic (Michel Bouquet) and Emilie (Marguerite Cassan) Régnier, soon arrive and take their disturbed son to their home to tend to him.  In short order it is clear enough that both Charles’s parents and Hélène want an immediate divorce.  The only item at issue is who will get possession of the boy Michel.  The contest for the boy will constitute the driving narrative conflict for the film.

In terms of resources, the contest is between very unequal adversaries, and in this connection we are given some background concerning the marriage of Charles and Hélène.  Ludovic and Emilie never approved of their son’s marriage to Hélène, whom they disparagingly regard as lower class.  But Charles wanted to be a writer, and Hélène managed to find work as a stripteaser, and later as a barmaid, in order to support her unemployed and unsuccessful husband.  And of course this kind of work only made Ludovic and Emilie despise her even more and to the belief that Hélène ruined their son. 

Charles’s frustrations as an unpublished writer led him to taking drugs and eventually to mental illness.  With his latest outburst, Hélène now feels that even though she has loved her husband, it is no longer possible for her and Michel to live near him.  In the meantime she wants to live near the hospital where Michel is being treated so that she can see him as much as possible.  So on the advice of friendly Dr. Blanchard (Angelo Infanti), she rents a room in a boarding house directly across the street from the hospital.

2.  An Adversarial Agent is Hired
Ludovic Régnier discovers that the only way he can get legal possession of Michel is to prove that Hélène is unfit to be the boy’s mother.  So he hires the out-of-work son of a former business associate to dig up some dirt on Hélène.  This new hire, Paul Thomas (Jean-Pierre Cassel), proves to be the direct adversarial agent of Hélène, and the rest of the story follows the tussle between the unscrupulous Paul and the innocent Hélène. 

The boarding house where Hélène now stays turns out to be a bizarre theater of the absurd, featuring a number of baroque, symbolic tenants who provide the key expressionistic backdrop to the tale.  These people are

• Mme. Pinelli (Annie Cordy) is the landlady of the boarding house and is a strict, but well-meaning, moralist.
   
• Elise (Katia Romanoff) is the Pinelli’s mentally retarded teenage daughter.  She is perpetually cheerful and represents pure, unsuspecting innocence.
   
• Henri Pinelli (Jean Carmet) is Mme. Pinelli’s husband and is a hopeless alcoholic and almost perpetually inebriated.  He symbolizes human frailty.
   
• The Three Fates – Mme Humbert (Margo Lion), Mme. Claire (Louise Chevalier), and Mme. Marineau (Maria Michi) are three gossipy old ladies who are perpetually playing games of tarot cards in the boarding house parlor.  Together, these three ladies explicitly symbolize the Three Fates (Parcae), the mythical feminine personifications of destiny, who in ancient times famously controlled the fateful outcomes of people and gods.
   
• Gerard Mostelle (Mario David) is an outrageously histrionic theater actor, who, curiously enough, ultimately symbolizes truth and authenticity.  It is he who staunchly refuses to be bought out for materialistic gain.
   
• Dr. Blanchard (Angelo Infanti) is a very handsome and conscientious doctor who is seemingly cut out to be a heroic rescue figure in this story.  The fact that he lives at the boarding house suggests he is single and a potential romantic partner for Hélène.  But he proves to be a narrative red herring and is always too busy to be around when Hélène needs his help.

Into this mix enters Paul Thomas, who, claiming he is suffering from cancer and needs every-other-day treatment at the hospital, secures a room in Mme. Pinelli’s boarding house in order to falsely befriend Hélène and carry out his nefarious plans.  Another outrageously expressionistic character, but one who doesn’t live in the boarding house, is Paul’s sexy girlfriend, Sonia.  Sonia is an almost hysterical nymphomaniac, who is constantly demanding sex and is almost always seen naked in the film.

All of these bizarre figures suggest that when Hélène has come to live in the boarding house, she has entered into an expressionistic dreamworld from which there is no escape.  As a part of this surreal theme, there is a long shot of Hélène walking in the park and encountering a man selling balloons (recall that the title of Charlotte Armstrong’s novel is The Balloon Man [8]).  The balloons here may suggest mysterious, ungraspable dreams that float in the sky.

Anyway, during this segment of the story, Paul tries a number of tactics to ruin Hélène’s reputation, but he is unsuccessful.  All of Hélène’s associates stand by her and affirm her basic virtue.

3.  A Nasty Plan

So Paul hatches a malicious plan to sexually corrupt the innocent Elise and have it all blamed on Hélène by staging a drug-fueled automobile accident.  This is a complicated scheme, and it involves getting Mme. Pinelli, the Three Fates, and  Hélène to leave the boarding house for an extended period of time under various false pretenses.  Then he has to ply Henri Pinelli with liquor until the man is stupefyingly drunk so that he can whisk Elise over to Sonia’s apartment so that she can gleefully sexually molest the young girl. 

Moreover, in order to blame everything on Hélène, Paul ultimately has to drug her, too, and this part of his scheme fails.  So Paul has to quickly deposit the sedated Elise back in her own bedroom.

4.  The Unraveling

Meanwhile Hélène goes to the plush Régnier family home to see Charles.  There, in a moving and adroitly performed shot of 3:30 duration, Hélène explains to the still mentally disturbed Charles that, while she still loves him, she can never again live with him and that she and Michel must leave their city and move to Paris.  Then she returns to the boarding house. 
   
At the boarding house, lunch is served in the dining room, and Paul spikes Hélène’s orange juice with a narcotic.  But then Elise wakes up and reveals to others that she wasn’t so oblivious, after all, to what Sonia was doing to her as Paul and Sonia had supposed.  Paul’s evil plot is clearly coming undone.

Now Hélène, dazed by Paul’s narcotic drug, goes outside into the park, accompanied by the Three Fates, who want to protect her.  Then Charles, unwilling to give up on Hélène, arrives in a rush at the boarding house.  Alarmed by the crazed look in Charles’s eyes, Paul knifes Charles to death.  Although he is hoping to pass this killing off as self-defense, the whole murderous act was witnessed by Hélène and the Three Fates, thereby assuring Paul’s guilt and the end to his story.
  
In the final scene, Hélène, still dazed, goes outside again in search of Michel, and we are still with her in her dreamworld.  She sees the balloon man releasing his helium-filled balloons, and, deliriously, she watches them floating up heavenward into the sky as the film ends.


La Rupture ends ambiguously and with several elements unresolved.  Paul and Charles are finished, but what will happen to Hélène?  And what about Michel?  Instead of addressing these questions, we are left in another space – Hélène’s dreamworld.  And this is where Chabrol presumably wanted us to be.  In some ways, as the world around Hélène progressed relentlessly towards ever more malicious lunacy, this is the only place we could end up at. 

This cinematic descent into existential bewilderment is masterfully orchestrated by director Claude  Chabrol.  Some naive viewers, though. might consider the extravagant performances on the part of some of the actors to be simply cases of overacting, but this is not the case here.  Those performances are essential pieces of the expressionistic tapestry that Chabrol has woven for us.  In some ways, though, the most important artistic contribution to the film comes from the beautiful Stéphane Audran in the role of Hélène Régnier.  Her performance is soulful and mesmerizing as the perfect embodiment of feminine authenticity.
★★★★

Notes:

1. Vincent Canby, “Screen: 'La Rupture':Chabrol's Melodrama Shown at Festival The Cast”, The New York Times, (5 October 1973).   
2.  Dave Kehr, “La rupture”, Chicago Reader, (n.d.).   
3. Andrew Pragasam, “Rupture, La”, The Spinning Image, (n.d.).   
4. James Travers, “La Rupture (1970)”, French Films .org, (2008).   
5. Ed Howard, “La rupture”, Only the Cinema, (30 June 2008).   
6. Ian Jane, “La Rupture”, Rock! Shock! Pop!, (30 April 2011).   
7. The Film Sufi, “Expressionism in Film”, The Film Sufi, (28 June 2008).   
8. When Charlotte Armstrong’s novel The Balloon Man was translated into French, its French title was  Le Jour des Parques, i.e. The Day of the Fates.

"Les Cousins" - Claude Chabrol (1959)

Claude Chabrol was one of the original members of the French New Wave (Nouvelle Vague), a youthful group of film critics writing for Cahiers du Cinema magazine (they included Jacques Rivette, Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, and Eric Rohmer) who began putting their theories into practice by making their own films at the end of the 1950s. Although the New Wave filmmakers had a variety of styles, they generally shared a belief in the “auteur theory” originally put forward by François Truffaut: that despite the fact that movies necessarily involve contributions from many creative sources, the authorship of the film, its vision, comes from the director.

Of course each of the Nouvelle Vague directors had his own vision that he wanted to express in film. Each wanted to be an auteur. Truffaut’s early films were personally lyrical, Rohmer’s were cerebral contemplations, and Godard’s films offered social and political commentary. But Chabrol’s early films were not so obviously personal expressions. His film technique looked more “professional”, and his narratives were more conventional than those of his New Wave comrades. In addition his lengthy and somewhat uneven film career of more than fifty features has been relatively mainstream and has included a number of rather ordinary efforts that are sometimes dismissed as hack jobs. Nevertheless, I hold that Chabrol really is an “auteur”, in that original sense, and that he has his own unique cinematic vision and style. Insight into that vision can be gained by examining his second feature, Les Cousins, which he directed in 1959 at the age of twenty-nine. It still stands as one of his best films and can be ranked along side his great run a decade later that included Les Biches (1968), La Femme Infidèle (1969), Que la Bête Meure (1969), Le Boucher (1970), and his masterpiece, La Rupture (1970).

Chabrol’s style is ultimately expressionistic, but he achieves this expressionism not by lighting and moody exteriors, but more by the social dynamics of his intense character interactions. This has led him sometimes to be labeled satirical, cynical, or even aloof, as if he were sneering at his own characters. But I do not feel that he completely dismisses his characters; instead he sees them from a sympathetic, but ironic perspective.

The story of Les Cousins revolves around two young men who are cousins and are university students in Paris. Charles is from a small French town and has been sent by his mother to live with his cousin, Paul, who has an apartment in the big city. Although the two of them immediately get on together, they couldn’t be more different. Charles is direct, sincere, guileless, and rather naive. Paul is a sophisticated poseur, unwilling to accept any responsibility and ready to adopt whatever role might amuse him for the moment. In short, Charles is a country boy, and Paul is a cosmopolitan playboy. When it comes to studying, Charles is earnest and dedicated, while Paul is a lackadaisical hedonist. This dichotomy is emphasized every step of the way through the film, and that may sound too simple-minded and static. But there is a inner movement in the mind of the protagonist, Charles, as his innocent world view molded from traditional values is challenged by the face of corruption.

In some ways Les Cousins can be viewed as a descent into Hell, and there are cues throughout the film that reinforce that metaphor. As presented, the plot of the film can be broken down into roughly four sections, each one centered around a social gathering.

1. The Students Club. (28 minutes)

Charles (played by Gérard Blain) arrives in Paris from the countryside and goes to Paul’s luxurious apartment, where he introduces himself to Paul (played by Jean-Claude Brialy) and his boorish companion, Clovis. Paul, with his circle beard (goatee with connected mustache) has a Mephistophelean look about him. On the walls of the apartment are mounted guns and hunting paraphernalia belonging to his wealthy and always-away father. As part of his posing and role-playing, Paul has the habit of taking an unloaded revolver from the wall and playfully aiming it at people. I was once warned, by the way, that if you ever see a gun mounted on the wall in the first act, it will be fired before the last act is over.

Paul, Charles, and Clovis are soon visited by a former girlfriend of Paul’s, Genevieve, who is distressed because she has just learned that she is pregnant by Paul. Paul and Clovis both flippantly tell her to “get rid of it”, and Paul offers her some money to have it taken care of. This gives the viewer a quick early picture of the depths of feeling Charles and Clovis have for the concerns of other people. Later Paul takes Charles out on the town, and they visit a social club, where fellow students are drinking heavily, smooching, and playing cards in various rooms. As Paul shows him around, he says to him, “Look, . . . into the bowels of Hell”. Charles, the innocent rube in the big city, is fascinated. He meets some of the other students, including Philippe, who is heartbroken over having been dumped by Françoise (played by Stéphane Audran, who would be later become Chabrol’s wife and long-time leading actress). He also is introduced to Florence, a modest and beautiful girl, to whom he is immediately attracted. When he follows her out onto the street, she is already engaged with others, so he wanders into a nearby bookstore and talks to the proprietor. The bookseller, who will serve as a reminder of the values by which he was raised, favorably compares the earnest provincial student to the superficial slackers that live in the city.

2. The 1st Party. (25 minutes)

The next day Paul throws a wild, drunken party, to which Clovis has invited a wealthy Italian businessman, Count Arcangelo Minerva. From the scenes here, we can see that the obnoxious Clovis is, among other things, a pimp and a racist. The party rolls on with lots of drunken, raucous role-playing, with Paul in the thick of things. He puts loud Wagnerian operas on the hi-fi and parades around the room making overblown, histrionic gestures. Meanwhile Charles meets Florence again. Charles’s awkward sincerity, which contrasts so markedly with the rude and lewd behaviour of the other youths, charms Florence, and soon they are sweetly embracing. He invites her out for an evening drive, but before he can depart with her, the partygoers all decide to go outside for a drive, and their intimate moments are over.

3. The Seduction of Florence. (31 minutes)

Charles arranges to meet Florence the next day, but a miscommunication leads to her showing up at their apartment two hours early, while Charles is away in class. This is the one scene in the film where the focalization seems to move away from Charles. But to a certain extent it could be said that Charles is still the center of focalization here, even though he is absent for most of the scene. Only Charles and Clovis are there at the apartment to meet Florence, and together, they scold her for her sentimental feelings towards Charles. In the key sequence in the film, lasting nine minutes, Clovis, now revealing his genuinely satanic self, sets out to convince Florence that she is too weak to live up to the standards of true love. He manipulatively breaks down her resistance until she succumbs and falls into the arms of Paul, who then takes her to the bedroom. See the separate article, "The Seduction of Florence in Chabrol’s Les Cousins", for a detailed shot breakdown of this scene.

When Charles finally returns to the apartment, looking for Florence, he is shocked to learn that Florence is now Paul’s woman and that she has moved in with him. Later Charles runs into the bookseller again, who consoles him and tells him about women and to concentrate on his studies. Charles then devotes himself earnestly to his studies, despite the annoying distractions of Florence and Paul parading around the apartment at all hours.

4. The 2nd Party. (21 minutes)

As examinations loom, Charles devotes himself even more assiduously to his studies, while Paul spends all his time partying. Paul’s exams (they are apparently oral examinations) are one day prior to Charles’s, and though unprepared, he somehow manages to pass them. To celebrate, he immediately throws another wild party, although this interferes with Charles’s exam preparations. Florence, still has a flicker of sentiment for Charles and goes to his study room, but her half-hearted gestures are rejected and she is turned away.

The next day Charles takes his exams, and, as we might expect, he doesn’t pass. He seeks solace at a church, but it is closed; then he goes to the bookseller, but only hears the empty-sounding encouragement to try harder next time. Walking the streets for hours in agony over his failure, he returns to the apartment while Paul is asleep. He dismounts a revolver from the wall and loads a single bullet, before spinning the chamber in preparation for a game of Russian Roulette. At Paul’s bedside Charles aims the gun at Paul’s head and a click is heard, but no shot is fired. Since Chabrol cuts the camera away from the gun at critical instant, it is not clear whether Charles actually pulled the trigger or he thought better of it and stopped short. Then Charles goes downstairs to the sitting room and broods. Later Paul awakens and comes downstairs. Learning that Charles has failed his exams, he launches into his customary extravagant gestures, trying to encourage him. He picks up the gun in his usual cheeky, histrionic manner and takes aim.

In the progressively more surreal and expressionistic world of Les Cousins, everything works out well for Paul, but not for Charles. Despite his superficial, conceited air and devilish appearance, all the girls seem charmed by Paul and his confidence. And yet Paul bears noone any malice. He just lives for day-to-day pleasure and couldn’t care less about anyone else’s inconvenience or troubles. Throughout the film, Charles keeps reminding himself that his way – living according to the traditional values of civilization, good manners, and responsible actions – must be the right way in the long run. But his confidence and convictions are continually eroded by perpetual defeat. In the end he seems to be asking himself, “could the world be so constructed that I am bound to fail, no matter what? . . . Could the deck of cards of life be so stacked against me that I will be guaranteed to lose the game of Russian Roulette?” If so, then everything he had been taught would be worthless, and life would hold no hope.

Such is Charles’s nightmare, but Chabrol is being ironic here. Charles, the innocent, is surrounded by ironically-named demons in this tale. There is the Mephistophelian Paul. The corrupt rogue Count Minerva’s name, “Arcangelo”, means “archangel” in Italian. The name “Clovis” has multiple symbolic references. It could refer to the ancient king who brought Christianity to the Franks. And of course a “cloven-footed” is a synonym for “satanic”. Also “cloven” is the past-participle of “cleave”, and certainly Clovis cleaves to Paul like a leech. Amid all the debauchery of these demons, the only angelic one is Charles. Florence senses this, even at the end, but Charles has lost his confidence.

One person full of confidence, though, was Claude Chabrol, himself. Though his aggressive mise-en-scène, he has presented the dystopic inverse of Charles’s idealistic world. Working with brilliant cameraman, Henri Decae, who was also the preferred cinematographer of Jean-Pierre Melville, Chabrol’s camera uninhibitedly moves about the room, promiscuously tracking everyone, and figuratively insinuating itself up close in order to get the best angle at every moment. For a more detailed examination of this style, see The Seduction of Florence in Chabrol’s Les Cousins. Filmmakers sometimes seek an opportunity to include in their films a 360 degree camera pan, a showy effect that in the days when significant lighting stands were required, was difficult to pull off smoothly. In Les Cousins, Chabrol brashly executes this effect three times (in each of the three group get-togethers): once in Act 1, once in Act 2, and once in Act 4, the last one of which appears to be a double circle. These kinds of things are perhaps a bit overly conspicuous, but they reflect Chabrol’s emotionally expressive mise-en-scène

Les Cousins was Chabrol’s early landmark and the first financial success for the New Wave. He would reach his peak a decade later with La Rupture.
★★★½ 

Claude Chabrol

About Claude Chabrol:

• The Seduction of Florence in Chabrol’s Les Cousins

Films of Claude Chabrol:

• Les Cousins - Claude Chabrol (1959)
• La Rupture - Claude Chabrol (1970)

The Seduction of Florence in Chabrol’s ""Les Cousins"

“. . . And also by Gégauff are one or two little things such as the scene where they talk about the erotic quality of their skin. The whole story depends on this, he would say: it’s a story about skin texture.”

– Claude Chabrol

“Chabrol has been able to pass with masterly skill from the theoretical beauty of a script by Paul Gégauff to its practical beauty – in other words, its mise en scene.”

– Jean-Luc Godard

The scene in Les Cousins (1959) referred to in the above quote by Claude Chabrol is the subject of the present analysis. This is the critical, disturbing scene that elevates the film to a nightmare and remains in the viewer’s memory. It begins innocently enough. The morning after a wild, orgiastic party, Paul’s cousin, Charles, arranges for a date with Florence, whom he had met the night before, to take place after his afternoon class is over. Florence mistakenly arrives at the apartment of Paul and Charles two hours too early, and the ensuing seduction of Florence is the essential event of this scene in the apartment.

In terms of film language, the scene is shot in a provocative fashion. It is nine-and-one-half minutes of continuous action – primarily a rhetorical conversation between Florence and first Paul and then Clovis, which takes place in a single room. Despite these elements which suggest stasis, the scene is propelled by Chabrol’s prowling camera which seems to trap the characters in fatalistic courses of action. It is as if the characters can walk anywhere but are condemned to confinement within the invisible cage of Chabrol’s fluid framing. The scene that follows takes place immediately after the telephone conversation between Florence and Charles.

Introductory Note:
The fourteen schematic floor plans included in this analysis provide a means to follow the character movements within the scene. The camera positions are denoted by encircled numbers with arrows, e.g.and give the direction of the camera angle at the beginning of the shot. Any tracks, pans, or tilts that take place subsequently are not shown on the diagrams but are described in the text. The camera position is given only to suggest the direction in which the particular shot was taken, not to show the exact physical location of the camera during shooting.

The individual characters are indicated by the capital letters of their first names. Thus “C” stands for Clovis. Character movements within the shot are denoted by solid lines, and movement that takes place off camera is indicated by dashed lines. Where several shots are shown on the same diagram (for example, floorplan 8), the mark,
is used to consign the movements to the separate shots.

Shot 1 (698 frames)
Paul is seen from profile in closeup, on the inside of his opened apartment door.

PAUL: “But he’s gone to class, Flo.”

The camera pulls back and pans to the left to form a two shot of Florence and Paul at the door. Florence is at the left side of the frame

FLORENCE: “He said we’d go together at three.”

PAUL” “You’re in a fog. He said five. Come have a drink.”

Florence shakes her head to decline the offer.

PAUL: “Come on. You’ve two hours to kill.”

Florence looks up at Paul and then moves screen right, passing in front of Paul and through the doorway into the apartment. With her movement the camera pans slightly to the right until Paul is in the center of the frame in medium closeup. After she exits the frame on the right, Paul is seen following her with his eyes, establishing a separation.

Shot 2 (94 frames)
Florence is seen in medium long shot moving to sit down in a rocking chair inside the apartment. She looks forward and to the left of the frame, returning Paul’s glance from shot 1.

Shot 3 (142 frames)
Paul is seen from the same position as he was at the end of shot 1, still looking at Florence. He then exits in the direction of his gaze (screen right). This return to Paul in shot 3 reinforces the initial separation and sets the tone for the rest of the scene.

Shot 4 (704 frames)
Florence is in her chair, viewed from the same angle as in shot 2. Florence’s eyes are following Paul, and the separation is resolved as Paul enters the frame from screen left, passes in front of Florence and goes to a table to the right of her chair where he picks up a drink. As Paul passes in front of Florence, the camera begins to pan rightward, following his movement, and tilts upward in order to frame Paul in medium shot. When Paul reaches the table, Florence is no longer visible in the frame, and a new separation is formed.

PAUL: “Tell me, kitten, what’s with you and Charles?”

Paul moves to the left and leans down to hand Florence (who is not seen) a mixed drink.

PAUL: “Playing a new game?”

FLORENCE: “Just playing.”

Paul walks away from her to another table in front of the wall where the guns are mounted. The camera has followed this movement, which is forward and to the right. Paul begins to prepare another drink and turns back toward Florence.

PAUL: “Such refreshing frankness. And what do you get out of it?”

The camera pans leftward back to Florence in her chair.

FLORENCE: “ A strange pleasure.”

She then looks forward and to the right, offscreen, at Paul.

Shot 5 (1636 frames)
Paul is seen in medium closeup, returning towards Florence.

PAUL: “With Charles? Impossible.”

He kneels down and the camera pans and tilts downward to form a two-shot with Florence. Florence is in the chair, and Paul is to the right of her in a squatting position. This resolves the separation begun in the middle of shot 2.

PAUL: “A great guy – honest – I’m mad about him. But . . . . well, you know what he’s like."

He looks at her and then continues.

PAUL: “I’m not getting through. And you look so bright. I can see you two at art exhibits – but once in bet. . . “

FLORENCE: “You’re not bright. With him I don’t think about that.”

PAUL: “What else is there?”

FLORENCE: “There are other things.”

The camera now begins moving forward, closing up the frame.

FLORENCE: “I want to be in love with him.”

PAUL: “Okay – let’s start with that. How old are you?”

Paul stand up and exits to the right of the frame. As he does so, the camera pans leftward to center the frame on Florence.

FLORENCE: “Twenty.”

Shot 6 (3636 frames)
Paul is in closeup, looking down and to the left (towards the still-seated Florence, who is offscreen.

PAUL: “So you’re in love with him.”

He turns to his left and begins walking away from Florence. The camera follows his movement (to the right), keeping him in closeup.

PAUL: “And, of course, he adores you. So what happens? You play house.”

Paul turns back to look at Florence.

PAUL: “He works like a dog. He’s that type.”

Paul now begins to walk back towards Florence (to the left), and the camera follows.

PAUL: “For two weeks you tidy up the place. Or someone else does the work, while you lie in bed and read books. . . “

Paul turns three-quarters of the way around and points at Florence as he continues with his argument.

PAUL: “ . . . . that he picks.”

Paul begins to walk away from Florence again.

PAUL: “Saturday night – movies. Sunday – I visit – invite you both for a drink.”

Paul again turns back toward Florence.

PAUL: “He’s too busy, and you won’t leave him. But I know you.”

Paul beings walking back towards Florence’s chair.

PAUL: “You’ll act like a sainted martyr. And I’ll die laughing.”

As he approaches Florence, the camera continues its motion until it reaches Florence in the chair. When Florence is centered in the frame, the camera moves in.

PAUL [offscreen]: “Wait. I forgot Mama. What’ll she say?”

Paul leans down and into the frame to form a two-shot. The camera pulls back at this point, and the composition is maintained by Paul’s straightening up and stepping slightly forward (so that the two characters continue to fill the frame).

PAUL: “He won’t dare write her, because he can’t lie.”

Paul again walks away from Florence’s chair.

PAUL: “What’ve we got? A good boy.”

The camera pans and zooms in so that P:aul is in medium closeup when he turns toward Florence.

PAUL: “Now let’s be practical, Florence.”

Paul begins walking back to her again.

PAUL: “He’s good looking. He’s not a simpleton. He’s quite smart.”

Paul kneels down beside her chair again to from another two-shot – Florence left and Paul right. That is, the camera follows Paul as he kneels down until Florence appears in the frame on the left.

PAUL: “He has a noble character. But you each speak a different language.”

The camera zooms in as Paul stand up and exits the frame. Florence is now seen in closeup

PAUL [offscreen]: “You’d both be miserable.”

Paul’s hand now appears in the frame and rips Florence’s head.

PAUL [offscreen]: “And you’d cheat.”

A doorbell is heard offscreen, and there is a continuity cut to shot 7.

Shot 6, which is over two-and-a-half minutes long, contains what amount to hidden cuts which break up the action. First Paul is seen in closeup, which begins a separation. He walks away from Florence until he is standing so that the apartment door can be seen in the background. When he walks back to Florence, the camera follows but not quite as closely, and Paul eventually is seen in medium shot. Then the camera pans to Florence (hidden cut) and then pulls back to form the first two-shot (another hidden cut). This sequence is more or less duplicated as Paul walks away again, comes back, and then approaches the chair to from the two-shot followed by the closeup of Florence. Thus there are six “quasi-shots” within shot 6.

Shot 7 (391 frames)
The doorbells is ringing, and Paul and Florence are seen from the position of the apartment entrance in long shot and looking toward the camera. Paul walks forward and exits screen left. Florence gets up and takes off her dress coat. She lays it across the couch.

CLOVIS: “I’m staved.”

Clovis and Paul enter the frame in medium closeup, Clovis from the left and Paul from the right, their backs to the camera as they walk toward Florence. Clovis is wearing a hat. He puts his arm around Paul just after he enters the frame.

CLOVIS: “Ah, best of pals. . . . “

As they walk towards Florence, she sits down, and the camera pans slightly to the left so that Florence is still visible on the right, and the two men are on the left of the frame.

Shot 8 (679 frames)
Action cut to Clovis and Paul seen approaching Florence from the front. Florence is closer up and to the right, seated in her rocking chair.

PAUL [looking at Florence but speaking to Clovis]: “She came up to see Charles.”

CLOVIS [drinking out of Paul’s drink]: “Whatever for?”

(Clovis had already known of the meeting with Charles, since he had seen Florence when she had made the appointment by telephone.)

PAUL [still approaching]: “She’s in love with him.”

CLOVIS: “Impossible! It can’t be true.”

Clovis removes his hat and approaches Florence’s chair. Paul turns and walks away, along the path he had taken for shot 6. Clovis and Paul are now separated and the orientation of the characters begin to get complicated at this point. Up until now, the scene has only involved two units – Florence, usually seated, and either Paul or Clovis-and-Paul (as a single unit) walking about her. From here on Chabrol must keep track of the three separate characters.

CLOVIS: “You can’t be serious. You two?! You’d be bored to death. In three days . . . [he spreads his arms out.]

Paul comes ack up to Clovis and grabs his arm.

PAUL: “I told her.” [he comes forward].

Florence, in medium closeup on the right side of the frame, has been learning forward in her seat. By leaning backward, she now exits the frame on the right just as Paul moves forward. Thus the three-shot transposes itself to a two-shot, with Paul on the right and Clovis on the left.

Shot 9 (43 frames)
A medium closeup of Florence looking forward and to the left of the frame. The separation is between Florence and the two men.

FLORENCE: “You don’t unders- . . . “

Shot 10 (174 frames)
A medium closeup shot of Clovis and Paul. Clovis on the left is leaning down and looking in profile to the right at Florence (who is offscreen to the right). Paul, who is standing straight up and is slightly behind Clovis, is on the right of the frame and is visible on between the neck and the waits.

PAUL: “There we go!”

Paul turns and walks out of the frame to the left.

CLOVIS [leaning towards Florence]: “The stupidity of it sickens me.”

Clovis walks to the right of the frame. Then he turns a round and looks down and to the left, indicating that he has passed in front of Florence. Florence is not seen in this shot at all, because the camera passes above her.

Shot 11 (78 frames)
Florence is seen in closeup, looking left in profile. This angle is from Clovis’s point of view.

CLOVIS [offscreen]: “The Can’t-Say-No Girl wants Choir-boy . . “

Shot 12 (56 frames)
The same view as in shot 10.

CLOVIS” “. . . . Presto! – she’s a virgin.”

Clovis begins to move left again. Notice the fact that since the entrance of Clovis, the length of each shot is much shorter. This reflects the change in mood that Clovis’s entrance has created, as well as the altered situation of having to establish the positions of three people in the room instead of two.

Shot 13 (145 frames)
The camera maintains a closeup of Florence while its angle changes. The camera is physically moving from right to left, and, since Florence’s eyes move with the camera so that they are always looking into the camera, we assume that this shot represents the point of view of Clovis (as did shot 11). This implied movement of Clovis enables Chabrol to execute a reverse shot in shot 14, since a new action axis can be established after shot 13.

CLOVIS [offscreen]: “Even I find that immoral.”

Shot 14 (200 frames)
Clovis is now seen in a medium shot looking down and to the right. He leans in the direction of his look and the camera pans and tilts in that direction, until Florence is brought into the frame to form a two-shot.

CLOVIS: “Don’t fool the boy. You can’t change. Sleep with him or drop him.”

Clovis stands up again, and the camera pans down to from a medium shot of just Florence.

FLORENCE: “Filthy swine!”

Florence is looking at Clovis, who is apparently walking away. This shot begins with Clovis in separation, moves into a two-shot, and finally ends with Florence in separation.

Shot 15 (826 frames)
A medium closeup of Clovis on the left and Paul in the background on the right. This reestablishment of Paul’s position indicates that he had walks only a little way after shot 10. Clovis sets his drink down on a table and turns back to Florence.

CLOVIS: “We adore you, . . . our own dear little Florence . . “

Clovis walks toward her (to the right), and the camera pans with him until Paul is no longer visible.

CLOVIS: “We’re only thinking of you.”

When Clovis utters this line, he turns and looks back in the direction of Paul. Then he turns back to Florence and kneels down next to her (Clovis is facing screen right).

CLOVIS: “Enjoy a few nights with him.”

The camera pans over to the right to form a two-shot of Clovis and Florence

CLOVIS: “Don’t confuse things by marrying him first.”

FLORENCE: “I might like that.”

CLOVIS: “And that would be very bad.”

Clovis’s simple movements in shots 14 and 15 maintain a dynamism to the visuals of the scene as well as create separations and resolutions thereof in an inconspicuous fashion.

Shot 16 (479 frames)
An action cut to a closeup (might tighter than shot 15) of Florence straight on.

CLOVIS [offscreen]: “Can you make him happy?”

The camera pulls back to take in Clovis, who is still at screen left. The camera also pans slightly to the left.

CLOVIS: “Touch your flesh. I’m an expert on flesh. Believe me. I’m an expert with a perfect score."

The camera pans down to her right arm.

CLOVIS: “Yours is so warm and alive.”

Clovis touches her arm.

Shot 17 (301 frames)
An action cut as Florence moves her arm away. The two are seen in medium shot.

CLOVIS: “Feel how it trembles. It reveals what you are, kitten.”

The camera itself moves to the right while maintaining the two-shot, so that the shot begins over Clovis’s shoulder and ends over Florence’s shoulder.

CLOVIS: “You were born to be fondled – not kept under glass.”

The camera is now looking more directly into Clovis’s face. The camera pans leftward now as Clovis turns and looks back in the direction of Paul.

Shot 18 (74 frames)
Paul is seen in medium shot. He is seen not to have moved from his position that he held in shot 15.

PAUL: “He makes good sense.”

Paul is looking forward and to the right of the frame. It is interesting to notice that the separation between Florence and Paul has only been linked by Clovis since his entrance.

Shot 19 (293 frames)
The same angle as at the end of shot 17.

CLOVIS: ‘She’ll listen to me. You will, won’t you, Florence?”

Florence turns away from him, towards the camera, but her look is downward.

FLORENCE: ‘Two hours . . . .”

CLOVIS: “Plenty of time . . . for what I want to prove.”

Shot 20 (835 frames)
Action cut to a reverse of the previous shot. This reversed position lasts only for a moment, for Clovis stand and walks in front of the seated Florence. Clovis quickly passes o ut of the frame on the right, revealing the seated girl, whose eyes follow the offscreen movement of Clovis until he reappears again on the right of the screen, but not at Florence’s left side (he had previously been on Florence’s right side). Clovis again leans down next to Florence.

CLOVIS: “Admit that, when you touch Charles, something terrific should happen. Be honest. What do you feel when you touch Charles?”

Florence looks at him but doesn’t answer.

CLOVIS: “Now you know how wrong you’ve been about this.”

Clovis looks down at her arms.

CLOVIS: “Here . . . touch me.”

Florence turns away.

CLOVIS: “No? . . . Then, Paul.”

Clovis looks up at Paul (forward and to the left of the frame.)

Shot 21 (70 frames)
A medium closeup of Paul looking at the two of them with a trouble expression.

Shot 22 (1258 frames)
A medium long shot of Clovis (right) and Florence (left), viewed from approximately the position of Paul. Clovis stands up and comes toward Paul (not yet seen), i.e. comes toward the camera. The camera follows his movement by panning right a bit.

CLOVIS: “What are you afraid of? Let her touch you, Paul.”

Paul enters on the left side of the frame in medium closeup and walks, or rather is led by Clovis, up to in front of Florence’s chair. Clovis bids Florence to stand up and holds her left hand. She removes her hand from his grasp, but he reaches for her right hand and places it on Paul’s neck. Paul and Florence are now standing in front of each other and staring into each other’s eyes. The camera begins to zoom in on them. Clovis is visible behind them and is now in closeup.

CLOVIS: “Well, how do you like it? The feel of such hidden strength . . . of flesh calling to flesh.”

Paul and Florence lean forward and kiss. Clovis turns and walks away from them (directly away from the camera). This shot finally resolves this scene’s separation between Florence and Paul, which had existed since the entrance of Clovis.

Shot 23 (186 frames)
A medium shot of Clovis still waking away from camera. He turns around and faces the camera. This shot is taken from the point of view of the couple, although they are presumably engaged with each other and not looking at Clovis

CLOVIS: “Yes, Florence, it will be Paul who’ll save you from Charles!”

Clovis takes a step forward, and his eyes shift slightly to the left and right, denoting the respective positions of the unseen lovers. This is the final and most striking use of facial glances to identify offscreen character position in the scene.

Shot 24 (300 frames)
A reverse closeup of Paul and Florence kissing ardently. This shot is taken more or less from Clovis’s position.

Shot 25 (272 frames)
Clovis is seen from the rear in medium shot. Behind him (that is, in the background of the shot) Paul and Florence exist screen left, walking arm in arm. Clovis watches them and walks forward and to the right to pick up a drink on a table. The camera pans slightly to follow him. Although the cut from shot 24 to shot 25 is presumed to be of continuous action, there is actually a break in the continuity between these two shots. Florence is now to the left of Paul at the beginning of this shot (she was on the right in shot 24), and the two of them have moved toward the door. Since, at the beginning of this shot, Paul and Florence are partially obscured behind Clovis, this break in continuity is not particularly noticeable.

This ends the scene.