Juste avant la nuit [Just Before Nightfall] **** (1971, Michel Bouquet, Stéphane Audran, François Périer, Jean Carmet, Celia, Clelia Matania) – Classic Movie Review 9553

The 1971 French movie Juste Avant la Nuit [Just Before Nightfall] is a resonant, meticulously made, richly satisfying Claude Chabrol psychological crime thriller.

Michel Bouquet stars as the slimy and pathetic advertising executive Charles Masson, who strangles his mistress, Laura (Anna Douking). But, conscience stricken, he confesses to his wife Hélène (Stéphane Audran, then Chabrol’s wife) and best friend François Tellier (François Périer), who is also the victim’s husband. However, neither of them accepts that he is guilty and will not go to the police.

Made in Chabrol’s self-conscious Hitchcock style, with superb performances by the star trio, this is a delicious lesser-known companion piece to Chabrol’s 1968 masterwork La Femme Infidèle [The Unfaithful Wife], also with Bouquet playing a murderer married to Audran.

Chabrol’s screenplay is based on the novel The Thin Line by Edouard Atiyah.

Also in the cast are Anna Douking, Dominique Zardi, Marina Ninchi, Henri Attal, Clelia Matania, Pascal Gillot, Brigitte Périn, Paul Temps, Daniel Lecourtois, Pascal Gillot, Marcel Gassouk, Anna Douking, and Roger Lumont.

Stéphane Audran was married to Claude Chabrol (4 December 1964 – 1980) (divorced) (one child). She died at the age of 85 on March 27, 2018.

Juste avant la nuit [Just Before Nightfall] is directed by Claude Chabrol, runs 107 minutes, is made by Cinegai, Cinemar and Les Films de la Boétie, is released by Columbia (1971) (France) and Columbia-Warner (UK), is written by Claude Chabrol, based on the novel The Thin Line by Edouard Atiyah, is shot in Eastmancolor by Jean Rabier, is produced by André Genoves, is scored by Pierre Jansen and designed by Guy Littaye.

Michel Bouquet (6 November 1925 – 13 April 2022) appeared in more than 100 films from 1947 to 2020. He worked for the first time with Chabrol in Our Agent Tiger in 1965 and went on to act in several Chabrol films and received wide acclaim for his performances in The Unfaithful Wife, La Rupture [The Breach] and Just Before Nightfall.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 9553

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