Wednesday 19 September 2012

Travels With My Film-Life: Brittany 1969 - and Chabrol

Alors mes enfants. The other evening we do travel to Quimper in Brittany courtesy of Claude Chabrol and his 1969 thriller "Que La Bete Meure". Tis elegant, thoughtful and dashed clever this one. I very much enjoy it as do The Old Man. A grieving father seeks revenge on the "beast" hit and run driver who knocks down and kills his young son. Having located the man with obsessive cunning and a few coincidences, he do find a thoroughly unpleasant piece of work who bullies and terrifies everyone around him. There are twists and turns and the whole thing is very good. Not a thriller so much as a cool puzzler. Add a Brittany landscape that be very reminiscent of Cornwall....

I didn't know that the film is based on a British crime thriller written in the thirties by Nicholas Blake. Even more... I do not be aware that "Nicholas Blake" be the pseudonym of  Poet Laureate Cecil Day-Lewis. There's a thing.

You can read a Eurocrime review of the 1938  "The Beast Must Die" by Nicholas Blake, republished by Vintage earlier this year,  here.

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