After a speeding car kills his young son, Charles Thenier (Michel Duchaussoy) vows there and then that he will kill the man responsible. The police begin a frantic hunt for the killer, but Charles has little confidence in them and starts an investigation of his own. In a chance encounter, he discovers that the brother-in-law of actress Helen Lanson (Caroline Cellier) is the man he is looking for, and sets about seducing Helen under a false name. He eventually gets to meet Paul Decourt (Jean Yanne, who also stars in Godard's Weekend - one of my all-time favourite films), who is such a repulsive human being that even his own son also wants him dead. As Charles' struggles with the idea of killing him, he must deal with the fact that he may be falling in love with Helen.
The revenge film is a sub-genre that has been done to death. Lazy film- makers and the generally uninspired can see it as a relatively simplistic premise that can be tampered with and altered to an endless degree. They range from the genuinely brilliant (Memento, Oldboy, The Virgin Spring) to the genuinely horrific (Taken, Death Wish), and the exploitation genre made very grisly use of it (The Last House On The Left, Thriller - A Cruel Picture). The fact is that it's starting to get a bit boring. Which makes it all the more refreshing when you stumble upon a gem from the past that takes the idea and spins out something fresh. Que La Bete Meure (The Beast Must Die, or This Man Must Die to give it its US title) is one of these.
Claude Chabrol's existential drama plays out like a Greek tragedy. We are with Charles all the time and we are made to suffer like our protagonist, and suffer he does. When he finally meets Paul, he realises that he is the monster he hoped him to be, which fuels his determination. Paul is grotesque - his voice spews out loutish insults before we even see him, and then we join him at dinner where he sadistically humilities his own kin. But does this mean that he truly deserves to die? As Charles sets in motion his plan of murder, he becomes noticeably uncomfortable yet fiercely determined.
Chabrol's film-making style comes across as mixing the tension-building thrills of Alfred Hitchcock, with the philosophical ponderings of Ingmar Bergman, and the result is often astonishing. Charles almost mirrors the doomed film noir detective, with Duchaussoy putting in a fantastic performance. From this to La Femme Infidele, the other Chabrol film I've had the fortune to see, it seems that he is relatively uncelebrated compared to his French associates Godard, Truffaut, Renoir and Cocteau (amongst many others) which, on the basis of this film alone, is wholly unfair.
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