Claude Chabrol

Claude Henri Jean Chabrol was a French film director and a member of the French New Wave group of filmmakers who first came to prominence at the end of the 1950s. Like his colleagues and contemporaries Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Éric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette, Chabrol was a critic for the influential film magazine Cahiers du cinéma before beginning his career as a film maker.

Chabrol's career began with Le Beau Serge, inspired by Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt. Thrillers became something of a trademark for Chabrol, with an approach characterized by a distanced objectivity. This is especially apparent in Les Biches, La Femme infidèle, and Le Boucher – all featuring Stéphane Audran, who was his wife at the time.