Chabrol's career began with ''Le Beau Serge'' (1958), inspired by Hitchcock's ''Shadow of a Doubt'' (1943). Thrillers became something of a trademark for Chabrol, with an approach characterized by a distanced objectivity. This is especially apparent in ''Les Biches'' (1968), ''La Femme Infidèle'' (1969) and ''Le Boucher'' (1970) — all featuring his then-wife, Stéphane Audran.

Sometimes characterized as a "mainstream" New Wave director, Chabrol remained prolific and popular throughout his half-century career. In 1978, he cast Isabelle Huppert as the lead in ''Violette Nozière''. On the strength of that effort, the pair went on to others including the successful ''Madame Bovary'' (1991) and ''La Ceremonie'' (1996).

Biography

In 1958, Chabrol made his feature directorial debut with ''Le Beau Serge'' (1958), a Hitchcock-influenced drama starring Jean-Claude Brialy partly funded by his wife's inheritance and among the first films of the French New Wave. A critical success, it won Chabrol the Prix Jean Vigo and was followed the next year by ''Les Cousins'', one of the New Wave's first commercial successes, and Chabrol's first color film, ''À double tour'', starring Jean-Paul Belmondo. The most prolific of the major New Wave directors, Chabrol averaged almost one film a year from 1958 until his death. His early films (roughly 1958–1963) are usually categorized as part of the New Wave and generally have the experimental qualities associated with the movement. Beginning with his "Golden Era" films (1967–1974) he established what would be his signature "Chabrolesque" style, usually suspense thrillers in the tradition of Alfred Hitchcock. His 1987 film ''Masques'' was entered into the 37th Berlin International Film Festival. In 1995 he was awarded the Prix René Clair from the Académie française for his body of work.

His first marriage to Agnès Goute (1956–1962) produced a son, Matthieu Chabrol, a French composer who scored most of his father's films from the early 1980s. He divorced Agnès to marry the actress Stéphane Audran, with whom he had a son, actor Thomas Chabrol. They remained married from 1964 to 1978. His third wife was Aurore Paquiss, who has been a script supervisor since the 1950s. He had four children.

Chabrol died on 12 September 2010.

Filmography

TV work

Actor

References

External links

Category:1930 births Category:2010 deaths Category:European Film Awards winners (people) Category:People from Paris Category:Film theorists Category:French film directors

A protégé of Flaubert, Maupassant's stories are characterized by their economy of style and efficient, effortless dénouement. Many of the stories are set during the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870s and several describe the futility of war and the innocent civilians who, caught in the conflict, emerge changed. He also wrote six novels.

Biography

After the separation, Le Poittevin kept her two sons, the elder Guy and younger Hervé. With the father’s absence, Maupassant’s mother became the most influential figure in the young boy’s life. She was an exceptionally well read woman and was very fond of classical literature, especially Shakespeare. Until the age of thirteen, Guy happily lived with his mother, to whom he was deeply devoted, at Étretat, in the Villa des Verguies, where, between the sea and the luxuriant countryside, he grew very fond of fishing and outdoor activities. At age thirteen, he was sent to a small seminary near Rouen for classical studies.

In October 1868, at the age of 18, he saved the famous poet Algernon Charles Swinburne from drowning off the coast of Étretat at Normandy. As he entered junior high school, he met the great author Gustave Flaubert.

He first entered a seminary at Yvetot, but deliberately got himself expelled. From his early education he retained a marked hostility to religion. Then he was sent to the ''Lycée Pierre-Corneille'' in Rouen where he proved a good scholar indulging in poetry and taking a prominent part in theatricals.

The Franco-Prussian War broke out soon after his graduation from college in 1870; he enlisted as a volunteer and fought bravely. Afterwards, in 1871, he left Normandy and moved to Paris where he spent ten years as a clerk in the Navy Department. During these ten tedious years his only recreation and relaxation was canoeing on the Seine on Sundays and holidays. Gustave Flaubert took him under his protection and acted as a kind of literary guardian to him, guiding his debut in journalism and literature. At Flaubert's home he met Émile Zola and the Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev, as well as many of the proponents of the realist and naturalist schools.

In 1878 he was transferred to the Ministry of Public Instruction and became a contributing editor of several leading newspapers such as ''Le Figaro'', ''Gil Blas'', ''Le Gaulois'' and ''l'Écho de Paris''. He devoted his spare time to writing novels and short stories.

In 1880 he published what is considered his first masterpiece, "Boule de Suif", which met with an instant and tremendous success. Flaubert characterized it as "a masterpiece that will endure." This was Maupassant's first piece of short fiction set during the Franco-Prussian War, and was followed by short stories such as "Deux Amis", "Mother Savage", and "Mademoiselle Fifi".

The decade from 1880 to 1891 was the most fertile period of Maupassant's life. Made famous by his first short story, he worked methodically and produced two or sometimes four volumes annually. He combined talent and practical business sense, which made him wealthy.

In 1881 he published his first volume of short stories under the title of ''La Maison Tellier''; it reached its twelfth edition within two years; in 1883 he finished his first novel, ''Une Vie'' (translated into English as ''A Woman's Life''), 25,000 copies of which were sold in less than a year. In his novels, he concentrated all his observations scattered in his short stories. His second novel ''Bel-Ami'', which came out in 1885, had thirty-seven printings in four months.

His editor, Havard, commissioned him to write new masterpieces and Maupassant continued to produce them without the slightest apparent effort. At this time he wrote what many consider to be his greatest novel, ''Pierre et Jean''.

With a natural aversion to society, he loved retirement, solitude, and meditation. He traveled extensively in Algeria, Italy, England, Brittany, Sicily, Auvergne, and from each voyage brought back a new volume. He cruised on his private yacht "Bel-Ami," named after his earlier novel. This feverish life did not prevent him from making friends among the literary celebrities of his day: Alexandre Dumas, fils had a paternal affection for him; at Aix-les-Bains he met Hippolyte Taine and fell under the spell of the philosopher-historian.

Flaubert continued to act as his literary godfather. His friendship with the Goncourts was of short duration; his frank and practical nature reacted against the ambience of gossip, scandal, duplicity, and invidious criticism that the two brothers had created around them in the guise of an 18th-century style salon.

Maupassant was but one of a fair number of 19th-century Parisians who did not care for the Eiffel tower; indeed, he often ate lunch in the restaurant at its base, not out of any preference for the food, but because it was only there that he could avoid seeing its otherwise unavoidable profile. Moreover, he and forty-six other Parisian literary and artistic notables attached their names to letter of protest, ornate as it was irate, against the tower's construction to the then Minister of Public Works.

Maupassant also wrote under several pseudonyms such as Joseph Prunier, Guy de Valmont, and Maufrigneuse (which he used from 1881 to 1885).

In his later years he developed a constant desire for solitude, an obsession for self-preservation, and a fear of death and crazed paranoia of persecution, that came from the syphilis he had contracted in his early days. On January 2, in 1892, Maupassant tried to commit suicide by cutting his throat and was committed to the celebrated private asylum of Dr. Esprit Blanche at Passy, in Paris, where he died on July 6, 1893.

Guy De Maupassant penned his own epitaph: "I have coveted everything and taken pleasure in nothing." He is buried in Section 26 of the Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris.

Significance

Taking his cue from Balzac, Maupassant wrote comfortably in both the high-Realist and fantastic modes; stories and novels such as "L'Héritage" and ''Bel-Ami'' aim to recreate Third Republic France in a realistic way, whereas many of the short stories (notably "Le Horla" and "Qui sait ?") describe apparently supernatural phenomena.

The supernatural in Maupassant, however, is often implicitly a symptom of the protagonists' troubled minds; Maupassant was fascinated by the burgeoning discipline of psychiatry, and attended the public lectures of Jean-Martin Charcot between 1885 and 1886. This interest is reflected in his fiction.

Criticism

Friedrich Nietzsche's autobiography mentions him in the following text:

"I cannot at all conceive in which century of history one could haul together such inquisitive and at the same time delicate psychologists as one can in contemporary Paris: I can name as a sample – for their number is by no means small, ... or to pick out one of the stronger race, a genuine Latin to whom I am particularly attached, Guy de Maupassant."

Bibliography

Novels

Short-story collections

Travel writing

Poetry

References

External links

Category:1850 births Category:1893 deaths Category:People from Seine-Maritime Category:French novelists Category:French short story writers Category:French fantasy writers Category:19th-century French writers Category:French military personnel of the Franco-Prussian War Category:Légion d'honneur refusals Category:Deaths from syphilis Category:Burials at Montparnasse Cemetery