Le Beau Serge movie storyline. In France, François Baillou 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 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. 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, who is the slut of the village, and he feels attracted by the teenager. Meanwhile he tries to help his friend.
Le Beau Serge, meaning “Handsome Serge”) is a French film directed by Claude Chabrol, released in 1958. It has been cited as the first product of the Nouvelle Vague, or French New Wave, film movement. The film is often compared with Chabrol’s subsequent film Les Cousins, which also features Jean-Claude Brialy and Gérard Blain.
Chabrol had originally intended to shoot Les Cousins first, but due to its Paris setting, it would have been twice as expensive to film. He chose instead to shoot in Sardent, a village where his mother lived before moving to Paris and where he often spent the summer with his grandmother.
The film was shot over nine weeks in the winter of 1957-8 on a budget of 32 million old francs. It was financed from his first wife’s inheritance. The film initially ran to 2 hours and 35 minutes, though Chabrol cut a great deal of quasi-documentary material to reduce the running time, a decision he later regretted.
Le Beau Serge (1959)
Directed by: Claude Chabrol
Starring: Gérard Blain, Jean-Claude Brialy, Michèle Méritz, Bernadette Lafont, Claude Cerval, Jeanne Pérez, Edmond Beauchamp, André Dino, Michel Creuze, Claude Chabrol, Philippe de Broca
Screenplay by: Claude Chabrol
Production Design by: Jean Cotet, Jean Lavie
Cinematography by: Henri Decaë
Film Editing by: Jacques Gaillard
Makeup Department: Lucette Deuss
Music by: Émile Delpierre
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Les Films Marceau (France), United Motion Pictures Organization (USA)
Release Date: January 10, 1959, January 24, 1959 (USA)
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