CHABROL, CLAUDE

born June 24, 1930, Paris, Fr. motion-picture director, scenarist, and producer who was France's master of the mystery thriller. After attending the School of Political Science at the University of Paris, he was a critic and public relations man for 20th Century-Fox's French office. Le Beau Serge (1958; Handsome Serge, Bitter Reunion), written and produced by Chabrol, was an important film of the Nouvelle Vague (New Wave), a term applied in the late 1950s to a widely diversified experimental movement in French films. That same year he wrote, directed, and produced Les Cousins (1958; The Cousins) and later directed such pictures as Les Bonnes Femmes (1960; The Good Women), Landru (1962; Bluebeard), Les Biches (1968; The Does), Le Boucher (1969; The Butcher), Violette Nozire (1978; Violette), Le Cheval d'orgueil (1979; The Horse of Pride), Blood Relatives (1981), Poulet au vinaigre (1985; Chicken in Vinegar), Le Cri du hibou (1987; The Cry of the Owl), Une Affaire de femmes (1988; Story of Women), and an adaptation (1991) of Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary. Chabrol's fascination with the grotesque, his use of the irony of situation, and his commingling of tragedy and comedy reflect the strong stylistic influence of the English director Alfred Hitchcock. He was coauthor of a biography of Hitchcock in 1957.