Unseen Claude Chabrol (and The Bench of Desolation)

Another long movie watching session this Saturday. Museum of Modern Art is holding a retrospective of little seen films of prolific French director Claude Chabrol, well known for his cerebral psychological thrillers. I was in two minds about going initially but finally decided to go since I had nothing else to do other than (re-)reading The Magic Mountain (not as boring as I found it the first time). The three films on show were all initially made for television and are minor works in every sense. The village voice article has some details.

I have really liked the other Chabrol films that I have seen. It has been a long time since but I remember being frustrated by the endings, the way he refused to get into his character's motivations and psychology and his distanced, cold approach towards the story but may be it was because of this only that his films get under your skin and continue to itch for long, even after you may have disliked them initially. My favourite Chabrol films (I think these are only ones I have seen):

Les Biches
Le Boucher
La Femme Infidele
Une Affaire de Femmes
Madame Bovary
La Ceremonie

I also love the two actresses who are most associated with him. Stephane Audran, who was also his wife for some time, is in the first three and Isabelle Huppert is in next three. They are both very good though I have always found Audran's feline sexuality essentially comic. As if she is just going to break into a laughter in the midst of look-how-cool-and-sexy-I-am routine. May be it is The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie effect. (She is great in that too.)

The most interesting of the three films on show at the moma was an adaptation of a Henry James story The Bench of Desolation. (It deserves a few stars just for the title!) The emotional terrain of the story will be familiar to readers of Chekhov. The same gentle melancholy, weary resignation towards hostile external forces, the same weakness of the spirit, all inexorably leading towards slow death of all hope, desire and life itself. Coming back home the first thing I did was to find more about the story. Now Henry James has always been a writer I am already prepared to admire and love even before reading him. I have read only two small works of his -- the astonishing ghost story The Turn of the Screw (very highly recommended) and The Aspern Papers which is a small masterpiece too. These two are really small works, not even hundred pages I think but are really tough to read. James doesn't write a sentence, he constructs them.

And now I am trying to read The Bench of Desolation and find this opening sentence. (The story is here)

She had practically, he believed, conveyed the intimation, the horrid, brutal, vulgar menace, in the course of their last dreadful conversation, when, for whatever was left him of pluck or confidence – confidence in what he would fain have called a little more aggressively the strength of his position – he had judged best not to take it up. But this time there was no question of not understanding, or of pretending he didn’t; the ugly, the awful words, ruthlessly formed by her lips, were like the fingers of a hand that she might have thrust into her pocket for extraction of the monstrous object that would serve best for – what should he call it? – a gage of battle.

I am already tired after the first paragraph.