La Rupture [The Breach] **** (1970, Stéphane Audran, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Michel Bouquet, Jean-Claude Drouot, Annie Cordy, Jean Carmet, Catherine Rouvel) – Classic Movie Review 12,183

Claude Chabrol’s 1970 domestic suspense thriller film La Rupture [The Breach] is based on American writer Charlotte Armstrong’s novel The Balloon Man, and stars his then wife Stéphane Audran, along with Jean-Pierre Cassel, Michel Bouquet, Jean-Claude Drouot, Annie Cordy, Jean Carmet, and Catherine Rouvel.

Armstrong’s novel offers an extremely useful, very typical plot for Chabrol.

Stéphane Audran plays Hélène Régnier, who beats her drug addicted, mentally ill husband Charles (Jean-Claude Drouot) to the kitchen floor with a frying pan when he injures their four year-old son Michel in a violent rage, throwing him against the kitchen wall. She flees and starts divorce proceedings. Charles moves back in with his wealthy, manipulative parents, who disapproved of his marriage to an uneducated woman from the lower classes and are determined to secure custody of the boy, who is recovering in a local hospital, where Hélène moves to a nearby low-cost boarding house.

The Régniers hire poor family acquaintance Paul Thomas (Jean-Pierre Cassel) to find damaging material on Hélène to help them gain custody. Paul moves into the same boarding house and, with the help of his girlfriend Sonia (Rouvel), plots to destroy Hélène’s reputation and more.

The material is fascinating and the casting is perfect, and both the actors and Chabrol are on inspired form, working at the top of their game. Audran is on fire as Hélène and Michel Bouquet is the film’s other outstanding actor as her wealthy father-in-law Ludovic Régnier.

It is a highlight film from Chabrol’s five-year run of successes in the late Sixties and early Seventies: Les Biches (1968), The Unfaithful Wife (1969), The Beast Must Die (1969), The Butcher (1970), The Breach (1970), Just Before Nightfall (1971), Ten Days’ Wonder (1971), Dr Popaul (1972), Red Wedding (1973).

Claude Chabrol has a director cameo as Un passager dans le tramway.

Chabrol later also directed Merci pour le Chocolat (2000) from Charlotte Armstrong’s novel The Chocolate Cobweb.

Charlotte Armstrong wrote 29 novels, as well as short stories, plays and screenplays, which include Incident at a Corner, episode of Startime, dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1959, plus three episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Sybilla (dir. Ida Lupino); The Five-Forty-Eight (adapted from the John Cheever short story) and Across the Threshold, 1960.

Four well-known films were also made from her work: Talk About a Stranger, 1952 (from the short story, “The Enemy”), Don’t Bother to Knock, 1952 (from the novel Mischief) (dir. Roy Baker), The Three Weird Sisters, 1948 (from the novel The Case of the Weird Sisters) (dir. Daniel Birt), and The Unsuspected, 1947 (dir. Michael Curtiz).

Stéphane Audran is also well known for Les Biches [The Does] (1968), Le Boucher (1970), The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), Violette Nozière (1978), The Big Red One (1980) and Babette’s Feast (1987). Chabrol directed her in 24 films, a TV movie and a TV episode. They were married from 1964 to their divorce in 1980.

Stéphane Audran (8 November 1932 – 27 March 2018) was born Colette Suzanne Dacheville.

Bouquet and Audran worked together in four Chabrol films.

Bouquet first worked with Chabrol in Le tigre se parfume à la dynamite [Our Agent Tiger] in 1965 and went on to act in Chabrol’s films La Femme Infidèle [The Unfaithful Wife], La Rupture [The Breach] and Just Before Nightfall, receiving wide acclaim for his performances.

French stage and film actor Michel Bouquet (6 November 1925 – 13 April 2022) appeared in more than 100 films from 1947 to 2020.

Films directed by Claude Chabrol: Le Beau Serge (1958), Les Cousins (1959), Web of Passion (1959), Les Bonnes Femmes (1960), Wise Guys (1961), The Third Lover (1962), Landru (1963), Ophélia (1963), Code Name: Tiger (1964), Marie-Chantal vs. Doctor Kha (1965), Six in Paris (segment La Muette) (1965), Our Agent Tiger (1965), Line of Demarcation (1966), The Champagne Murders (1967), The Road to Corinth (1967), Les Biches (1968), The Unfaithful Wife (1969), The Beast Must Die (1969), The Butcher (1970), The Breach (1970), Just Before Nightfall (1971), Ten Days’ Wonder (1971), Dr Popaul (1972), Red Wedding (1973), The Nada Gang (1974), Pleasure Party (1975), Innocents with Dirty Hands (1975), Death Rite (1976), The Twist (1976), Alice or the Last Escapade (1977), Blood Relatives (1978), Violette Nozière (1978), The Horse of Pride (1980), The Hatter’s Ghost (1982), The Blood of Others (1984), Cop au Vin (1985), Inspecteur Lavardin (1986), Masks (1987), The Cry of the Owl (1987), Story of Women (1988), Quiet Days in Clichy (1990), Dr. M (1990), Madame Bovary (1991), Betty (1992), The Eye of Vichy (1993), Hell (1994), La Cérémonie (1995), The Swindle (1997), The Color of Lies (1999), Merci pour le Chocolat (2000), The Flower of Evil (2003), The Bridesmaid (2004), Comedy of Power (2006), A Girl Cut in Two (2007), and Bellamy (2009).

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