Press Releases

KINO ON VIDEO AND KIMSTIM RELEASE THE CLAUDE CHABROL COLLECTION

Kino on Video and Kimstim are proud to make available for the first time on DVD*, five feature-films directed by French master Claude Chabrol, one of the founders of the French New Wave in the late 50s. With a prebook date of July 5, 2005, THE CLAUDE CHABROL COLLECTION will bring COP AU VIN (1985), INSPECTEUR LAVARDIN (1986), BETTY (1992), L'ENFER* (1994) and THE COLOR OF LIES (1999), each priced at $24.95. All films will be available to the general public on August 2nd.

Claude Chabrol (b. 1930) started his career as a film critic for the legendry publication Cahiers du Cinema, a magazine founded by Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and theorist André Bazin in 1951. While the overall writing published in Cahiers has shaped most of the contemporary, widespread notions of cinema as an art form, it was Chabrol and other future film directors (i.e. Eric Rohmer, Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette ...) who developed� through their filmmaking and magazine work�the tenets of the politique des auteurs (or auteur theory). Although better described as a frame of interpretation than a theory, the politique des auteurs privileges connections between director and film and was the one cinematic discourse which enabled the groundbreaking works of Chabrol, Godard, Truffaut and Rivette during the 1960s and 70s.

Often referred to as the French Alfred Hitchcock, Chabrol had penned a book (co-authored by Eric Rohmer) on the British master of suspense before commencing with his own filmmaking career in the late 50s� and later on, directing dozens of films strongly influenced by Hitchcock's oeuvre. His Le Beau Serge (1958) and Les Cousins (1959), financed by his first wife's inheritance, precedes Godard's Breathless (1960) and Truffaut's 400 Blows (1959); Chabrol is therefore seen as the father of the French New Wave, a cinematic movement which continues to influence filmmakers throughout the world.

During the earliest years of the nouvelle vague, Chabrol was one of its most critically and commercially successful directors. reaching his apogee in 1960 with Les Bonnes Femmes (1960), a picture that owes at least as much to Fritz Lang-Hitchcock's own master-as it does to the Anglo director himself. In the decades that followed, Chabrol remained the most prolific of the New Wave directors, continuing to scourge the French bourgeoisie in such well-regarded works as Les Biches (1968), Le Boucher (1970) and the late-period masterwork La Ceremonie (1995).

A strong sample of the late works directed by one of the most influential French film auteurs, THE CLAUDE CABROL COLLECTION showcases the patently Hitchcockian commitment to psychological depth and the thriller genre that marks Chabrol's cinema in the last two decades. Whether in the darkly comical policier subtype, as in the Inspecteur Lavardin (1986) cycle starring Jean Poiret, or in the subtle moments of intimate violence seen in L'Enfer (1994), this collection makes available five films as intellectually sophisticated as they are enticingly entertaining.
(* L'ENFER was previously released on DVD).

COP AU VIN (1985)
France / Color / 100 min
French w/ English subtitles

Cop Au Vin is a classic Claude Chabrol thriller set in the belly of a small town full of delicious secrets and multiple murders.

Stéphane Audran plays a cruel, wheelchair-bound mother who bullies her teenaged son Louis (Lucas Belvaux) into abject obedience. The pair is threatened by a conniving trio of �Äúupright citizens�Äù that want to buy her property as part of a deal for a lucrative development project. However, the two eccentrics, who are given to reading everyone's mail before it is delivered, will not sell the house. With neighbors dropping off in a series of gruesome murders, it requires the deceptively charming Inspector Lavardin (Jean Poiret) to get to the bottom of it all.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

• 16x9 Enhanced
• A Presentation by Film Scholar Joel Magny
• Original French Trailer
• Stills Gallery
• Optional English subtitles

INSPECTEUR LAVARDIN (1986)
France / Color / 100 min
French w/ English subtitles

Jean Poiret returns as the remarkably urbane detective from Cop au Vin. This time he arrives at a cozy, seaside village to investigate the bizarre murder of an eminent Catholic author. A "pillar" of society, the writer is found dead by shore, the word PIG scrawled across his naked body with lipstick and a huge stab wound in his back.

Stylish and charming, with lighthearted jabs at bourgeois conventions, Inspecteur Lavardin is a first-rate thriller from master filmmaker Claude Chabrol.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

• 16x9 Enhanced
• A Presentation by Film Scholar Joel Magny
• Original French Trailer
• Stills Gallery
• Optional English subtitles

BETTY (1992)
France / Color / 105 min
French w/ English subtitles

"Not to be missed... not since LA FEMME INFIDELE and LA RUPTURE has (Chabrol) so vividly demonstrated the anarchic powers of sexuality." �- Dave Kehr, The New York Daily News

A beautiful and drunken girl (Marie Trintignant) ends a disastrous evening at The Hole, a bar catering to the twisted and outcast. There she meets the recently widowed Laure (Stéphane Audran), an elegant retiree who lives alone in a luxury hotel. Laure takes Betty under her wing, and gradually, details of Betty's sad, sordid and, at times, sinister story of self-destruction unfold in flashbacks.

Adapted from the novel by Georges Simenon, BETTY shares many of the themes that made Chabrol's superb LES BICHES (1968, starring Audran and Jean-Lous Trintignant) so erotically suspenseful and Hitchockian: the exchange of identity and guilt between two women of different ages, both in love with the same man.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

• 16x9 Enhanced
• A Presentation by Film Scholar Joel Magny
• Original French Trailer
• Stills Gallery
• Optional English subtitles

L'ENFER (1994)
France / Color / 100 min
French w/ English subtitles

A picture-perfect bride and groom: Paul (François Cluzet) is charming and handsome; Nelly (Emmanuelle Béart) is beautiful, devoted and carefree. Both are madly in love and work hard to make their Eden-like lakeside hotel a success.

Unfortunately, Paul can't shake the nagging feeling that Nelly is having an affair with a local mechanic. Little by little, Paul's jealousy grows to insane proportions and he eventually plunges into an unfathomable purgatory of doubt and dementia. Working from a script by master French director Henri-Georges Clouzot (LES DIABOLIQUES), Chabrol presents a gripping thriller of pathological jealousy and madness.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

• 16x9 Enhanced
• Selected Scenes with Audio Commentary by Claude Chabrol
• Chabrol Discusses L'Enfer
• A Presentation by Film Scholar Joel Magny
• Original French Trailer
• Stills Gallery
• Optional English subtitles

THE COLOR OF LIES (1999) France / Color / 113 min In French w/ English subtitles

"A work of superior acting and quiet strength." - BBC FILM

When a young girl is found raped and murdered in a slumbering fishing community, the chief of police, Frederique Lesage (Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi), identifies René, a washed-up artist (Jacques Gamblin) as the primary suspect. His seemingly devoted wife Viviane (Sandrine Bonnaire) supports him in the face of rumors, while simultaneously conducting an illicit liaison with a celebrity writer. René and Viviane's lives come under close scrutiny, which puts further strain on their volatile relationship.

Meanwhile, Frederique becomes better acquainted with the eccentric residents of the town, including a self-important TV journalist (Antoine de Caunes), a small-time crook who fences stolen goods (Pierre Martot), and a curious pair of married shopkeepers (Bulle Ogier and Noel Simsolo).

SPECIAL FEATURES:

• 6x9 Enhanced
• "Moteurs Actions Indiscretions"
• A Making Of Documentary on The Colour of Lies
• A Presentation by Film Scholar Joel Magny
• Original French Trailer
• Stills Gallery
• Optional English subtitles

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Rodrigo Brandao, Director of Publicity
Kino International
333 W. 39th St. #503
NYC, NY 10018