Le Beau Serge

Francois, just out of treatment for tuberculosis, returns to Sardent, the provincial town where he grew up. He finds his childhood friend Serge an alcoholic, stuck in the village with Yvonne, whom he had to marry after getting her pregnant. Francois sets out to save him, and something begins between him and Yvonne's younger sister Marie. The film ends with Francois exhausting himself through Yvonne's difficult labour and with a healthy child born. Claude Chabrol directed; it is his first film. It was shot over nine weeks in the winter of 1957. The location is Sardent, where Chabrol spent childhood summers with his grandmother. The financing belongs to the story too: the budget came from an inheritance received by Chabrol's first wife and came to 32 million old French francs. The film is generally counted the first of the French New Wave. Francois Truffaut found it technically as masterly as if Chabrol had been directing for ten years, noting that this was his first contact with a camera. It won Best Director at the 1958 Locarno Film Festival and the Prix Jean Vigo in 1959. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 100 percent. Who it is for: viewers curious about how the New Wave began and who like portraits of provincial life. Who it is not for: anyone expecting Chabrol's later thrillers. There is no crime here, only a slow unravelling.