Les Cousins
Screening on Film
Directed by Claude Chabrol.
With Jean-Claude Brialy, Gérard Blain, Juliette Mayniel.
France, 1959, 35mm, black & white, 110 min.
French with English subtitles.
With Jean-Claude Brialy, Gérard Blain, Juliette Mayniel.
France, 1959, 35mm, black & white, 110 min.
French with English subtitles.
Chabrol’s exciting, stylish, and complex film has added value as a fascinating excursion into Parisian student life of the 1950s. In many respects the narrative converse of the director’s previous film, Le Beau Serge, and featuring the same lead actors, Les Cousins is the story of a student from the provinces who comes to Paris to live with his sophisticated, bullying cousin. Inevitably their rivalry leads them to compete for the love of the same woman. A major commercial success for its grim, clear-eyed look at the cynicism of youth, Les Cousins earned the Best Film Award at the 1959 Berlin Film Festival.
