Analysis on selected movie-Que la Bête Meure

Que la Bête Meure

Film poster. Que la Bête Meure (Claude Chabrol,1969).
Retrieved from http://movieposters.2038.net/movieid-640

Que la Bête Meure is a film directed by Claude Chabrol in year 1969. There is some element in this film which included the tense psychological thriller.

This story is starting with the male protagonist, Charles, when his young son died in a hit-and-run car accident, he is determined to find out the killer. Obsessed with avenging his son's death, he carefully records his thoughts in a diary. He travels to Paris and meets the female protagonist, Helene Lanson, who is a prime witness to the accident. After they start up a love affair, he discovers that the driver of the car was her brother-in-law, Paul Decourt. Paul also owns the auto repair shop that fixed up the car after the accident. Charles believes that Paul is the killer, so that he is friends with his son, Phillipe Decourt. As it happens, Phillipe also wants Paul dead for his own reasons. Charles manages to get invited to the family's seaside home in Brittany in order to finally get his revenge, but things don't work out according to plan.

In this movie, we found that there have some scene is using the most extreme form of elliptical editing which is jump cut in the movie. The montage of disjointed shots distances and disorientates the viewer as there is an ellipsis in time and place in between jump cuts. This challenges the naturalization, fragments the image and creates an uneasy sense of narrative progression. The jump cut involves the removal of whole parts of sequences, providing a sense of discontinuity and discordance.

Below there is the short clips that show the jump cut in the film.

Moreover, in the film we also can see many long take. Long takes are used commonly in French New Wave film to create an uninterrupted shot as in order to create an attraction among audience to let them having expectation on something.

 Figure 1.0

        

        

  Figure 1.1                                    

   

In addition, the setting of this film movement usually shoots on real or natural locations; therefore the films usually had a casual and natural look due to the choice of location filming in and around Paris. In this film, we know that some of the place is Quimper that shows in the film.

Instead of that, there are still many location setting in the film such as living room, restaurant, street, sleeping room and near by the sea.

Figure 2.1: Charles and Helen meet and start know each other.

Figure 2.2: Charles having dinner with Helen’s family and start planning his revenge.

                                                                                   

Besides that, the stronger female character we also can see it from Helen, she is always take serious with Charles when they are in love. Charles is persuading her to meet with her family and she also agrees with that. She is believe to Charles is love her and although Charles is slapping her just because of the teddy bear. In the end, Helen is cry after she is read out the whole letter written by Charles. That mean, she is really love the male protagonist Charles although in the end Charles was leaving.

On the other hand, this film also is an anti-authoritarian style of film. It is because Charles takes advantage of Helen to revenge. In the film show that he actually is a hypocrisy, jealousy and use unscrupulous divisive tactics in the process of revenges. The evil inside Charles’s heart can compare with the driver who bumps against his son.

References

David Bordwell, Kristin Thompson. (2008). "The French New Wave (1959-1964)". Film Art.The McGraw Companies: pp 461-463

Robert Kolker .(2005). "The French New Wave". Film, Form & Culture Third Edition. The HIL Publishing Compay:pp 274-279