As one of the Cahiers Du Cinema critics who started the French New Wave in
the 1950s, Chabrol was instrumental in Hitchcock's re-evaluation as a
great auteur. His films, when he came to make them, followed Hitch's
example so closely that he was dismissed by some as a classicist, with
little of interest to offer compared to the likes of Godard. Yet he has
endured surprisingly well. Intense psychological and social studies
like Le Boucher and La Femme Infidele have become classics in their own
right; while his abiding fascination with bourgeois manners gives
even his more routine thrillers a distinctly French flavour.
