Editor

One of the founders of the New Wave, critic-turned-filmmaker Claude Chabrol (1930-2010) was instrumental in revolutionising French cinema in the 1950s. In an acclaimed career that spanned 6 decades, he made over 70 films and was renowned for his masterful thrillers and his incisive critique of class and society. In partnership with Ciné Lumière, Barbican Film celebrates Chabrol's contribution to cinema with a selection of his best-known films (1).

Sunday 6 March

4.00pm - La Cérémonie (15) (France 1995 Dir. Claude Chabrol 112 min)

Sophie (Sandrine Bonnaire) is a maid who keeps her illiteracy a secret from her employers and her true self hidden. However, when she meets the eccentric postmistress of the town (Isabelle Huppert), the two women begin an intense friendship that has terrifying consequences. Adapted from Ruth Rendell'sA Judgement in Stone, Chabrol's Golden Lion nominee La Cérémonie is a masterclass in how to keep the audience gripped and guessing to the last.

Saturday 12 March

4.00pm - Madame Bovary (PG) (France 1991 Dir. Claude Chabrol 143 min)

Chabrol is in his element with Madame Bovary, unraveling the values of the French bourgeoisie and lifting the mask of decency and control to reveal the lust, greed and tragedy just below the surface. Isabelle Huppert maintains an icy demeanour as a self-absorbed lower-middle-class woman trapped in a spiral of decay and debt, caused by her reckless consumerist appetites, fed to numb her personal pain.

Sunday 20 March

4.00pm - Les Biches (15) (France 1968 Dir. Claude Chabrol 100 min)

Chabrol's enigmatic, beautifully shot drama Les Biches explores the emotional effect of one person's personality consuming another. Regular Chabrol collaborator Stéphane Audran earned a Best Actress Silver Bear at Berlin for her role as Frédérique, an affluent, manipulative Parisian women in the centre of a sexually charged love triangle with jealous street artist Why (Jacqueline Sassard) and young architect Paul (Jean-Louis Trintignant).

Sunday 27 March

4.00pm - Le Boucher (15) (1969 Dir. Claude Chabrol 93 min)

Stéphane Audran stars again in Le Boucher as Hélène, an amiable schoolteacher who meets butcher Popaul (Jean Yanne). Both share complex and unpleasant pasts and are drawn together, but their platonic relationship is ruptured when horrible murders strike their idyllic rural town. Chabrol's intense psychological thriller is as much New Wave as Hitchockian, and a compassionate study of relationships and the emotional motivations behind murder.