Chabrol has not crystallised himself. On the contrary. Otherwise, in his later works, he would have developed more creatively François' perception at the end of Le Beau Serge that one must lend a helping hand. And thereby—honourably—he would probably have become a great film-maker. Now, with hindsight, the end of Le Beau Serge stands out as an artificially imposed, constipated Christian attitude. And Chabrol has not become a great film-maker—even though he has made many beautiful and successful films and even a few great ones.

Chabrol's viewpoint is not that of the entomologist, as is often claimed, but that of a child who keeps a collection of insects in a glass case and observes with alternating amazement, fear and delight the marvellous behaviour patterns of his tiny creatures…. His standpoint, in fact, varies. He doesn't investigate. Otherwise he could, and must, discover grounds for the brutality of existence and have more to say about it. Apart from the fact that there has to be a number of creatures who are less colourful than the others, less iridescent, in fact an overwhelming majority of colourless little creatures who provide the basis for the existence of the more beautiful ones. These, however, the child disregards; he does not investigate but merely glances at them, dazzled as he is by the glittering, strange ones. This prevents him from grasping the drawbacks of his preferred creatures. (p. 205)

Chabrol asks no questions, as his later films show; he advocates marriage. And marriage is first and foremost an establishment institution. Chabrol is opposed to the hypocrisy in marriage, opposed to the claims of ownership instead of being against marriage in itself. It is all cheap, both the feelings and the needs. No questions about the real needs and the real feelings. No indication that the needs one thinks one has are really only those expected of one.

In itself, everything seems to be in order. The disorders that arise for Chabrol are irrational, not inevitable deviations as they actually must be in such a system of society. Richard Marcoux (in A Double Tour), a badly brought-up son and murderer, does not become a murderer because of his upbringing but because he is weak-minded. And that is Chabrol's lie, a lie which prevents the spectator from taking the fairy-tale for reality….

Chabrol must have become aware of the blind alley he'd landed in with A Double Tour and from which he was to extricate himself so perfectly later—when he made Les Bonnes Femmes. And had trouble with it. Les Bonnes Femmes is the only Chabrol film which deals almost entirely with real people and not shadows. At last Chabrol reveals a trace of tenderness for his characters—a tenderness later only manifested towards isolated characters…. Here, he enters with his characters into the most hateful and repugnant situations but he stays with them; the child has put his hand inside the glass case with the insects. Naturally he gets bitten. Thereafter, he won't be so quick to put his hand inside to deliver his creatures. At any rate, he hasn't done so up to date. True, he has fished out some particularly glittering insects and cautiously stroked them. But he's gone no further….

Les Bonnes Femmes is a revolutionary film, for it provokes genuine anger against a system that leaves people so demoralised. It is a film which makes it quite clear that something must be done….

In Chabrol, France has no critic, no twentieth-century Balzac (the role in which these films indicate he would like to see himself); but France does have an embryo cynic in Chabrol, a cynic with enormous nostalgia for the naïve, for lost identity. And from this remarkable juxtaposition spring films like Marie Chantal contre Dr. Kha, La Ligne de Démarcation and La Route de Corinthe. Apparently naïve films with naïve heroes. That is tolerable with the detective films, Marie Chantal and La Route de Corinthe, because the detective film is a naïve genre, but it becomes farcical when it aspires to reality as in La Ligne de Démarcation. (p. 206)

Le Scandale, although made before La Route de Corinthe, led him into the fourth period of creativity which is generally associated with the name of Chabrol. One could say, as a generalisation, that from now on Chabrol aims to knock bourgeois values. The question is: is he knocking them in order to overcome them or to maintain them? I think the latter is more likely. Agreed, Chabrol is somewhat saddened that things are no longer so clear and orderly; sad that mankind is so bad. It is still not the conditions and the system which makes people the way they are that interests Chabrol but the result—as long as it is picturesque enough. And that is really inhuman.

Chabrol's films in this latest period are inhuman because they are fatalistic, cynical, and contemptuous of mankind. Exceptions prove the rule. Remarkably, in contrast to the earlier periods, it is the stories of Les Biches and La Rupture which, being non-realistically proposed from the outset, one can tolerate. And Le Boucher is a great film in which Chabrol consistently, and for the first time, develops a story dealing with real people. Alas, the only time. The only film where he doesn't pummel the audience into accepting senseless proceedings as inevitable. Otherwise, he knocks the public over the head and does so with such perfect form that one can hardly resist. That's why it's so dangerous. In itself, this universe seems all right. But it has nothing to do with the lives of those who pay for films at the box-office; it makes no connection with them, apart from Les Biches and La Rupture.

Both these films, remote though they are, are still to some extent accessible, and it doesn't matter that there are no people there, only shadows. Shadows with an elusive glamour whose tale will be well told. Chabrol controls his narrative art to perfection—even though the films become ever more slovenly in their form…. And two downright bad films: Dr. Popaul and Nada. Here we have complete fascism. Quite clearly. But it was always lurking there and had to come out one day. (p. 252)