Of all the filmmakers who emerged in the first flush of the French nouvelle vague during the mid-1950's, none has remained more of a problem to critics than Claude Chabrol: mainly because there seems to be no problem. All the rest who belonged to the group of writers on film gathered around the intellectual magazine Cahiers du Cinéma and its inspirer and spiritual leader, André Bazin, were immediately recognizable as, in conventional critical terms, "serious" filmmakers…. But Chabrol, after what seemed like a decent if relatively conservative start in the same direction with Le Beau Serge and Les Cousins, drifted off into films that were taken as eccentric, baroque, marginal, camp, and then, horror of horrors, downright and unashamedly commercial. (p. 8)

Then came Les Biches, and a hasty reevaluation process began. A revival of talent was postulated, or a change of heart, or the triumph of...