The Champagne Murders

This was a movie that French director Claude Chabrol made just before the period considered his golden era in which he knocked out a number of excellent dramatic thrillers. It would only be fair to say that with this one he hadn't quite nailed the formula, as while it has a complex plot, it ultimately doesn't add up to all that much by the end. The story features a young couple who try to convince, Paul Wagner, the mentally unstable owner of a respected champagne business to sell his company to another corporation. Matters are complicated when on a trip to Germany, a girl Wagner meets is murdered while he experiences a blackout, while back in France the same thing happens once again. These events are used as leverage to blackmail him into giving up his company.

It's got to be said that this one takes a while to get going. It begins with a scene involving a gang attack, which kind of sits a bit awkwardly in the story, and it is only alluded to later on but left essentially adrift from everything else. After this, we watch some rich types involve themselves in a series of vaguely interesting activities but it is really only once the first murder finally occurs that the story becomes interesting. It sort of gets by after that but you would be hard pushed to say by the end that it was anything too out of the ordinary or inspired. Still, any film that features the incredibly alluring Stéphane Audran gets plus points from me basically from the get-go, and while she does have an admittedly smaller role than she would have in Chabrol's later films, it is an important one. Frankly, Audran was a huge reason that many of the films from Chabrol's golden era were so good and in this instance, even with limited screen-time she is still head and shoulders above everybody else. There was a neat disguise reveal later on which had me fooled and the movie does end on a commendably strange final shot. Ultimately, this is certainly worth a watch if you like Chabrol or Audran, although it is for sure one of their lesser collaborations.

French actor Maurice Ronet ("Purple Noon") is front and centre here as Paul Wagner, a free-spirited playboy. He is pressured by Christine Belling (Yvonne Furneaux, "Repulsion"), the wife of his good friend Christopher Belling (Anthony Perkins of "Psycho" fame), to sell his champagne business to American interests. (Represented by character actors Henry Jones ("The Bad Seed") and George Skaff ("Topaz").) But complicating matters is the fact that after Paul emerges from drunken stupors, dead female bodies are found in his vicinity. Since he hasn't been quite right since an incident in the films' opening business, he worries that he's losing his mind once again.

Critics weren't overly kind to this psychological thriller from French filmmaker Claude Chabrol, feeling that the plot was simply too convoluted. But, in truth, it's not all *that* complex, and it does have surprises in store for the viewer, including the ultimate identity of the killer, revealed to be a VERY ruthless sort. The film is extremely well shot in Technovision by Jean Rabier, and features a pleasant score by Pierre Jansen. It's noteworthy for being rather irreverent, and Chabrol gets an uncharacteristic, amusingly comic turn out of Perkins. This is the loosest that this viewer has ever seen the actor. Ronet, playing the one character in "The Champagne Murders" worthy of some sympathy, does a very effective job, but the film truly belongs to a fantastic Stephane Audran ("Babette's Feast") as the secretary.

Commendably, Chabrol may end this with the expected confrontation between principal characters, but dares to prevent the audience from feeling total satisfaction by ending the film without a true resolution.

Written by American film critic Derek Prouse and French screenwriter Claude Brule ("Barbarella"), based on an idea by William Benjamin; the dialogue for the French-language version was scripted by Paul Gegauff. This was the first of two pictures that Perkins acted in for Chabrol; the second was "Ten Days Wonder".

Seven out of 10.

Curiously uninvolving despite fine cast and several memorable scenes of bourgeois grotesquerie accompanied by vaguely Hitchcockian touches. The English dubbing didn't help.

Spoiler alert: this review is all spoilers. But this movie is so bad that I don't think it's possible to spoil it any further. A reviewer who has praised the movie asserts that the Anthony Perkins character, Christopher, is in cahoots with the character, or rather characters, played by Stéphane Audran: Audran is Jacqueline when disguised as Christopher's mousy maid and she is the flashy Lydia when not in disguise. Lydia commits a bunch of murders and tries to pin them on Christopher's friend, the character named Paul who is played by Maurice Ronet. Lydia's plan is to benefit financially from the deaths of her murder victims and then live happily ever after with Christopher (why the beautiful and intelligent, albeit ruthless, Lydia would kill in order to be with a loser like Christopher is beyond my comprehension). But if Christopher is in on Lydia's plan, then the scene where he makes a play for Jacqueline and she rejects him makes no sense. Perhaps he could be in cahoots only with Lydia, not realizing that she is also Jacqueline, but that would mean that all it takes for a woman to deceive Christopher is not much more than her wearing of a wig. Christopher's being in cahoots with Lydia would also mean that he would be delighted when he learns that his wife, Christine, played by Yvonne Furneaux, has been murdered, when in fact he is distraught. The entire movie makes very little sense. With the partial exception of Christine, all the main characters are unprincipled and obnoxious people, so it is difficult to have much sympathy for any of them.

This bizarre but intriguing opus from what is traditionally referred to as his 'fallow' period, turns out to be the template for most of Claude Chabrol's subsequent output. He is often compared to Alfred Hitchcock and ironically this film has been made for Universal Studios which accounts for the presence of Anthony Perkins from 'Psycho' and Henry Jones from 'Vertigo'. It is to be lamented that the dubbed American version has been cut by about seven minutes so as to blunt the sexual aspects, not least the homoerotic element between Christopher and Paul.

Although not quite as polished and well-crafted as his later films in this genre there are some stylistic flourishes not least the showy overhead final shot and is eminently watchable thanks to its talented and attractive leading players. Anthony Perkins in his first of two films for this director, employs his boyish charm and inherent quirkiness to fullest effect whilst Maurice Ronet's performance as the supposedly deranged Paul is a veritable tour de force and arguably one of his finest. On the distaff side is the fabulously feline Yvonne Furneaux whilst Chabrol's wife Stéphane Audran assumes a greater importance here in a double role and would soon take centre stage in his mid-period masterpieces. Slinky Suzanne Lloyd plays Sylvie whose lengthy scene with Ronet is one of Chabrol's most surreal.

Chabrol's 'A' Team is very much in evidence here in terms of the glossy cinematography of Jean Rabier, taut editing by Jacques Gaillard, incisive dialogue by Paul Gégauff and score by Pierre Jansen which on this occasion is alas somewhat intrusive.

This film, for this viewer at any rate, is very much 'work in progress' but displays a refinement of technique that over the next few years would establish Chabrol's reputation as an acknowledged master of the psychological thriller.