Claude Chabrol Week 6/7 : Nada!

NADA !

(France/Italy 1974) Directed by Claude Chabrol

After the string of great films he made between 1968 and 70, Claude Chabrol got access to bigger budgets and bigger projects. Those would prove to be fatal to the delicate balance the French director had managed to find between a crew of regulars, a "family" of actors and topics intimate enough to remain in the limits of his visual flair. After "Ten Days of Wonder" a disastrous adaptation of Ellery Queen in 71 with a stellar cast that announced the limitation of the director's formula, Chabrol would once again go for a multi lingual cast for "Nada" in 74 possibly the most ambitious film of his career. The movie would again prove to be a failure, but an interesting one, nonetheless.

On paper, "Nada!" is certainly one of the most exciting project made in Europe that year. The film is an adaptation of the third novel by Jean-Patrick Manchette, the most important "noir" writer in France at the times. Published in 72, the book follows a group of far left activists who plan to kidnap an American ambassador. Brilliant and sharp, it is a very disillusioned look at the far left revolutionary movements at a time when they fell into violence and terrorism all over Europe. Summing up Manchette's thinking, his character Buenaventura Diaz says : " Ultra Leftist terrorism and State terrorism, although their mobiles are not comparable, are the two jaws of the same dumbasses's trap". At a time when most of the New Wave had turned to Maoism, it was evident that Manchette pessimistic and ironic vision of revolution gone wrong could only appeal to Chabrol, himself probably very disillusioned by the political climate of the times.

Manchette worked on the screenplay and although it follows the book's story quite accurately, the result is disappointing both in terms of political vision and film excitement : just a semi-caricature of political combat turned into a mundane terrorist thriller. The fault is mainly Chabrol's, who is clearly not at ease at all when he needs to direct action and tension (the kidnapping, the chase and so on) and truth is, he is not more inspired here in the intimate political talk scenes. That said, the film is a very interesting curiosity for all fans of seventies cinema, if only for the great international cast that was gathered, including Italian hunk Fabio Testi as Diaz, Maurice Garrel, Lou Castel, Chabrol's regular Michel Duchaussoy and Michel Aumont. Film fans will also notice here the presence of Viviane Romance, the vamp of thirties French cinema, wasted here in the small part of a Madam. This is the last film she made before retiring.

Enjoy, comrades.