An upstart critic for Cahiers du Cinema in the 1950s and a financial force behind early French New Wave films in the early 60s, Claude Chabrol himself became a key director of the movement, Chabrol's filmmaking career spans nearly 35 years and some 45 films. They range from uninspired commercial projects (1964's "Marie-Chantal Contre le Docteur Kha"), to costly financial flops (1962's "Bluebeard"), to some of the darkest and most penetrating studies of obsession and, especially, murder ever to reach the screen.

Chabrol had just co-written, with Eric Rohmer, his celebrated monograph on