By
Jean-Paul Garrieux
Le
Beau Serge (Ajym Films, 1958) – Director:
Claude Chabrol. Writer: Claude Chabrol. Cast: Gerard Blain,
Jean-Claude Brialy, Michele Meritz, Bernadette Lafont, Claude Cerval,
Edmond Beauchamp, Jeanne Perez, Andre Dino, Michel Crueze, &
Christine Dourdet. B&W, 98 minutes.
Have
you ever returned to your hometown after a lengthy absence to find
that, while the town is still the same, the people have changed to
the point where you now feel like a stranger in their midst? This is
the plot of Chabrol’s, Le Beau Serge, a plot that might
just as well come from the pen of Albert Camus. It is an excellent
exercise in existential alienation.
The
film begins on a quiet country road. The only sounds we hear come
from a bubbling brook in the foreground of the frame. It’s the
stuff of which picture postcards are made. The loud roar of an engine
suddenly interrupts the peace as a large bus crosses the frame. It’s
a harbinger of what is to come as Chabrol cuts inside the bus, and
after giving us a brief montage of the passengers, he settles on as
bespectacled, sickly-looking young man named Francois Bayon (Brialy)
who is returning to the hometown of Sardent for a lengthy rest after
years away in Paris (where he was a theology student) and
Switzerland, where he went for treatment. He is suffering from
tuberculosis, and has come back to his old hometown for the milder
winter.
Immediately
after arriving he is greeted by Christine (Dourdet), a friend of his
parents, and Michel (Crueze), an old friend from boyhood. They
exchange pleasantries, but soon Francois is distracted by the
presence of two men, one of whom he recognizes as his close friend
Serge. He calls out to Serge, but Serge keeps walking with the other
man, heading for a tavern. Michel tells Francois that when Serge is
“drunk as a skunk” he’s oblivious to everything. As Michel
carries Francois’ bag to the hotel, they discuss old times as
children and how the place has changed. But Francois can’t get his
mind off Serge and asks how he got that way. Michel explains that
Serge wanted to study architecture and passed his entrance exams, but
then impregnated a young lady, Yvonne (Meritz) and had to marry her.
The child was stillborn, a mongoloid. Yvonne is pregnant again and
Serge’s fear is that this next baby will be born the same way, so
he abandons himself into a liquor-hazed world, oblivious to most
everything but womanizing. The old man Serge was with is his
father-in-law and drinking buddy, Glomaud (Beauchamp).
The
most arresting part of the scene is that while the driver is fetching
Francois’ luggage on the roof of the bus, we see Serge and Glomaud
standing on the other side. Immediately after the camera espies them,
a sharp, dark sting of music punctuates their presence, and the way
they are framed in the scene makes them appear most sinister.
The
opening scenes also establish Chabrol’s mise-en-scene, which is
drab, barren, and suffocating. The bleakness of the late autumn
countryside blends with the stark claustrophobia of the village, with
its narrow roads and unwelcoming run-down buildings. The hotel where
Francois stays, with its granite walls, dark halls and stairways, is
more like a penal institution than a place to relax. This is not a
happy place, the townspeople are a reflection of their surroundings,
caught in the decay. For instance, an act of incestuous rape is
treated with a "ho hum" indifference by the village.
While
discussing Serge and what has happened to him while walking to the
hotel, Michel talks of Serge’s shattered dreams, telling Francois
that “at least I knew I would end up a baker.” The best way to
avoid pain and suffering is not to dream. But then, not to dream is
to abandon hope.
For
Francois, this state of affairs is intolerable. He sees out as up to
him to set things right and he’ll begin with Serge. At first the
two friends try to reconnect as they share memories and laugh as they
talk over the divergent paths their lives have taken and the recent
developments in those lives. But too much time has passed and their
superficial and disjointed conversations quickly take a bitter turn.
The unspoken conflict between the two is existential: Francois has
been to the city. He haas become worldly, exuding an air of
entitlement. Serge, on the other hand, has degenerated into a country
bumpkin trapped in a downward slide. At first excited about his
friend’s progress in escaping the village, Serge’s wonderment
quickly grows resentful as he is put off by Francois’s superior
attitude and his constant advice about how Serge can turn his
fortunes around.
What
began as a happy reunion has now become a quiet battle marked by
passive-aggressive volleys back and forth. Soon Serge’s wife Yvonne
and her slatternly sister Marie (Lafont) are drawn into the fray,
with every get together between them seeing as if it could easily
turn vicious. Serge has cheated on Yvonne with Marie, and the town
gossip has it that Glomaud isn't actually Marie's father. Marie,
for her part, is quick to jump in bed with Francois, who in turn is
not about to turn her favors down.
This comes back to
haunt Francois when Glomaud spots François in the hotel tavern and
asks him to buy him a drink. François refuses, to which Glomard
responds, “You won’t drink with me, but you’ll sleep with my
daughter?” Glomaud yells. François’s defense to the charge is to
repeat the unsubstantiated gossip that Marie is not his daughter.
Glomaud, though, calls witnesses to attest to François’ statement,
then stumbles off to rape Marie, whom he has reputedly lusted after
for years. François later finds Marie in tears and tries to comfort
her, only to be told that “You observe us as
if we were insects.” Francis then chases down Glomaud,
who is trying to escape through the local cemetery, and throws him to
the ground.
Bewildered by what
just transpired, François retreats to his hotel room, where Serge
finds him. They engage in a telling conversation, as François says,
“Everything’s so different here . . . You’re like animals, as
though you had no reason for living.”
Serge can only
respond that “The earth’s like granite; they can barely scrape a
living. They work because they’ve no choice . . . Come and look.
Miles to walk home, often in deep snow. Still, they want to learn.
We’re animals, but who cares? Everyone can’t simply leave. You
understand? It’s like a baby couldn’t walk if there were no one
to show him how.”
Later Serge will
make the observation, “Poor François. Always eager to do a good
deed.” Francois may have changed outwardly, but he’s still the
same judgmental person he always was, with Chabrol nicely emphasizing
Francois’s lack of understanding of the insults thrown his way.
Chabrol’s portrait
of Francois emphasizes his elitist outlook toward the economic and
existential challenges faced daily by the townspeople. For François,
the answer is simple: he must convince Serge to leave Yvonne, as she
is clearly responsible for the problems between them and contributing
to Serge’s fall from grace by getting pregnant and forcing him into
a shotgun wedding. Later, expanding his mission, he rebukes the town
priest (Cerval) for abandoning his mission to help the villagers find
redemption via religion. The priest’s response that
Francois doesn’t understand the situation and should mind his
own business only causes him to dig in his heels. Chabrol shows that
François has come to see himself a savior; it is up to him to save
Serge, Yvonne, and Marie. And how? Merely be being there for
them. “I think they need me, I think they need an example,” he
says. He has become a false prophet, thinking that can succeed
where the local institutions have failed in addressing and
alleviating the town's economic and moral stagnation.
The schism between
the former friends and François’ complete incomprehension of the
villagers reaches its conclusion at a local dance. Francois objects
to Serge’s callous treatment of Yvonne and begins dishing out
advice and admonishment. Serge walks out into the street, followed by
Francois, who gets a beating from his friend for his troubles. The
villagers look on, imploring Serge to “teach the Parisian a
lesson.” But instead of understanding François stubbornly remains
stays in the village, feeling he is still needed to redeem Serge.
The
film comes to its climax as Yvonne goes into labor. Serge is nowhere
to be found. Francois finds the family doctor, then goes out looking
for Serge. He finds his friend dead drunk in a barn and
literally has to drag him through the snow. Once home he awakens
Serge by rubbing snow in his face, just as his son’s first cries
break the silence. François, collapsing, utters his last words, “I
believed,” while Serge, hearing his healthy son’s cries, weeps
from joy.
Afterwords
No
matter how we look at it, the fact remains that Le
Beau Serge was an impressive
debut for the 27-year-old director. Yet. there was seemingly
something in the film to cheese of everyone: Some criticized
the blunt treatments of sexual material while others were bothered by
the overt Catholic moralizing. The town of Sardent, where Chabrol
grew up, was presented as somehow frozen in time; an incredibly
insular place not unlike the backwoods towns in some horror movies,
quietly threatening. Roland Barthes
attacked it for its “right-wing” and “static” image of man,
but on the other side it was championed by none other than
Francois Truffaut who said at the film’s opening that it “is as
masterly as if Chabrol had been directing for ten years, though this
is his first contact with a camera.”
The contrast between
François's holier-than thou attitude and Serge's self-destructive
actions reflects Chabrol’s Marxist view of the world as one of
class divisions that in themselves produce lasting social
consequences. Francois represents the well-to-do bourgeoise, who fail
to realize the real problems of the working classes, instead offering
platitudes instead of real solutions.
The film is also a
cross between a family drama and a murder melodrama, as Chabrol
was greatly heavily influenced by the films of his idol, Alfred
Hitchcock, in particular, Shadow of a Doubt, as it
announces the arrival of a dark presence in its opening scene. While
critic Tom Milne notes that “As mirror images of each other, the
two men reflect the interest in Hitchcockian themes of transference
later elaborated in Chabrol's work, but here expressed rather too
overtly in terms of Christian allegory (a transference not so much of
guilt as of redemption)” he is overlooking the fact that
the attempt at Christian redemption is self-serving and
superficial. Chabrol is at heart a
moralist, but not in the usual sense of lecturing people about right
and wrong. Rather, he is more interested in finding out how and why
people make moral decisions and how they come by strange beliefs.
Unlike Chabrol’s later films, thrillers that disguise their
morality beneath a veneer of bloody murder and tension, Chabrol goes
right to the core of this film’s morality by asking two important
questions: Why has Serge taken to drink, and why is Francois so
obsessed with redeeming him?
Chabrol
and cinematographer Henri present Sardent as both divided and
interlinked as Francois and Serge, using the mise en scene of the
town’s cramped layout to establish an atmosphere of alienation and
ennui. Emile Delpierre's music, with its sinister surges, is used to
foreshadow events. Throughout the movie Chabrol uses the music not
not merely as a mood enhancement, but also to clarify what is
occurring and anticipate what is to follow.
As
Serge, Gerard Blain comes across as a sort of Frenchified James Dean,
but without the histrionics that Dean often employed. Jean-Claude
Brialy hits all the right notes as Francois, a man torn between the
demands of the spirit and the pleasures of the flesh. And special
mention must be made of Bernadette Lafont, who while only 19 when the
picture was filmed, comes across with the intensity and presence of
an actress much older.
Le
Beau Serge is often regarded as the first of the French New
Wave, but in truth Agnes Varda beat him to the punch with her 1955
production, La Pointe Courte. Still, Le Beau
Serge is a fascinating film, made all the more so by the
fact of its being a first effort, and one that demands to be seen.
