Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

The acting in this movie is really good.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

This is such a low key film, watched today, especially considering its importance in world cinema, being Claude Chabrol's first film and the film that is considered to have set off the Nouvelle Vague. It seems especially ordinary when compared to Godard's A Bout De Soufflé and Vivre Sa Vie, but then these were from 1960 and 1962, two and four years after this breakthrough film. Although this film is not city set and street wise, still harbouring melodrama and some theatricality it is not set bound, is made entirely within the village using the inhabitants within the drama and contains some bold camera-work, including long tracking shots and dynamic close-ups. It is also about the people we are introduced to, there is no historic event being reconstructed or alluded to, this is the here and now. Jean-Claude Braly plays Francois, the young man returning to the village after 12 years apparently a wiser man and Gerard Blain plays his old chum Serge who he feels could have done better for himself. Some great snow scenes at the end round off a thoughtful and involving piece.

In France, François Baillou (Jean-Claude Brialy) returns to his village to spend the winter as part of his treatment of tuberculosis. On the arrival, François sees his former best friend Serge (Gérard Blain) and greets him, but Serge is drunk and does not recognize him.François learns that Serge is a frustrated man since he had not gone to the Architecture University and has stayed in the village working as truck driver since he had to marry his pregnant girlfriend Yvonne (Michèle Méritz). When the baby was born, he was mongoloid and died. Now Serge is the drunkard of the village. François meets the seventeen year-old Marie (Bernadette Lafont), who is the slut of the village, and he feels attracted by the teenager. Meanwhile he tries to help his friend."Le Beau Serge" is the debut of the great French director Claude Chabrol that shows his talent to tell a simple and realistic drama. The performances are top-notch and the open conclusion is a trademark of Chabrol. It is weird to see a man treating tuberculosis smoking so many cigarettes along the story. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "Nas Garras do Vício" ("In the Claw of the Addiction")

The film that officially kick-started the "Nouvelle Vague" (interestingly, Chabrol was the only one in that talented crowd to have debuted with a full-length feature and self-financed to boot!) is, surprisingly, an "Angry Young Man"-type drama in a pastoral setting. The radical technique associated with this school of film-making is not really in evidence in this case, but nor is it needed – given that what we have here is essentially a character-driven piece.In this respect, apart from the director himself (who also wrote the film on his own), the film brought in an array of fresh talent in front of the cameras as well – namely Gerard Blain (evoking Montgomery Clift in particular), Jean-Claude Brialy (restrained in comparison to his other work for Chabrol that I have watched) and the waif-like Bernadette Lafont (already effortlessly exuding carnality in her second film – and the first of 7 with this director – she was also married to her co-star Blain at the time).Chabrol's realistic depiction of provincial France here, authentic both in the everyday detail of the locale and its characters' foibles (Blain is a hopeless drunk, Lafont is raped by her 'father', etc.), actually makes the much-later THE HORSE OF PRIDE (1980) not the odd-film-out it had at first appeared! One other atypical element is that of spirituality – especially when, towards the end, Brialy determines (albeit predictably) to reform Blain almost at the cost of his own life during one particularly blizzard-ridden night in which his friend is supposed to become a father! By the way, Chabrol gives himself a cameo in the film: with him appears assistant director Philippe de Broca (whose character is named Jacques Rivette, after another "New Wave" exponent, obviously!); unfortunately, the subtitles – in a small white font – were especially hard to read during this scene.

This is said to be the first film of the Nouvelle Vague. I don't see the Nouvelle Vague anywhere here. The distance between Le Beau Serge and The 400 Blows is not one year but an age. Chabrol's first film is like a melodramatic throwback to 19th century naturalism with a touch of redemption, that is, unnaturalized naturalism. Serge and his gang are enslaved by circumstances but his Parisian pal will work hard to bring them hope. It feels as if it had already been outdated at the time of opening and it doesn't look very chabrolian. Not that chabrolian always means "good".I've seen at least as many bad movies by Chabrol as good ones. How could this happen to me? Once upon a time… people used to say he was a legendary master, someone to keep track of. Maybe he was. He has indeed made some masterful pictures in the 1960s-70s and some think he's also made 3 or 4 very interesting films in the last 20 years.Anyway, that's no excuse for all the mediocrity he's churned out so complacently not only during the last 20 years but, as it turns out, since 1958 when he directed this shrill rural drama. There's even a mean priest and, of course, the saviour is a secularized priestly figure, he's devoted to his flock but has sex. As priests go, I'd rather have the uncanny Gerard Depardieu in that miracle Pialat borrowed from Bernanos: Sous le Soleil de Satan.