Hitchcock’s chilling effect

CLAUDE CHABROL has been described as the French Alfred Hitchcock. He even co-wrote, with director Eric Rohmer, a book about the Master of Suspense before he began his own directing career in the late 1950s.

One of the founders of France’s New Wave cinema movement along with Rohmer, Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard and Jacques Rivette, the former critic for Cahiers du Cinema is still going strong at 76.

His latest U.S. release, “The Bridesmaid,” opens Friday at the Nuart in West Los Angeles. Based on the novel by Ruth Rendell, the eerie, atmospheric thriller stars Benoit Magimel as a young man who falls in love at first sight with a beautiful but aloof bridesmaid (Laura Smet) at his sister’s wedding. The woman’s life is shrouded in mystery; she keeps making up outlandish stories about her past. When she declares that the only way they can prove their love for each other is by killing a stranger, he must decide how far he is willing to take their relationship.

“Bridesmaid” is just one of many chillers that Chabrol has directed since making his film debut in 1958.

One of his best-known is “The Butcher” (1970), starring Jean Yanne as a lonely butcher in a small French village whose inner demons are unleashed when he meets an equally lonely school mistress (Stephane Audran, who was married to Chabrol at the time).

Ten years ago, the Los Angeles Film Critics Circle named Chabrol’s “La Ceremonie,” also based on a Rendell novel, as the best foreign film of the year. Jacqueline Bisset stars as the wife of an upper-class businessman (Jean-Pierre Cassel). They live on a large country estate with two children from previous marriages. But trouble creeps into their seemingly perfect lives in the form of an efficient but glum new housekeeper (Sandrine Bonnaire), who forms a friendship with a post office employee (Isabelle Huppert).

Chabrol isn’t the only French filmmaker who has tipped his hat to Hitchcock. Directors Henri-Georges Clouzot, Truffaut and Rene Clement are among those who have created masterful chillers. Here’s a look at some of the best:

“Les Diaboliques”: Five years before Hitchcock frightened viewers out of their showers with “Psycho,” Clouzot had audiences jumping out of their bathtubs with this 1955 film. Based on the Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac novel, “Celle qui n’etait plus,” the taut tale set at a French boys boarding school revolves around the vile headmaster (Paul Meurisse) who treats his pupils and his wife (Vera Clouzot) sadistically.

The headmaster is hated by his pupils and the teachers, including his former mistress (Simone Signoret), and the two scorned women decide to murder him.

The scheme: lure him to the former mistress’ home at a distant village, drown him in the bathtub, bring the body back to the school and dump him into the swimming pool. The macabre fun really starts when the body goes missing from the pool. Charles Vanel plays the inspector on the case.

“Purple Noon”: Based on Patricia Highsmith’s book “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” this 1960 movie from Clement casts a breathtakingly handsome Alain Delon as a charming psychopath who kills his rich friend (Maurice Ronet) and takes over his identity. Far superior to Anthony Minghella’s 1999 version with Matt Damon in the title role, “Purple Noon” was rediscovered in the 1990s when it was restored and re-released.

“The Bride Wore Black”: Like Chabrol, Truffaut was fascinated with the films of Hitchcock and published a book of interviews he conducted with the filmmaker in 1966. Truffaut’s delicious 1968 homage to Hitchcock, based on the book by Cornell Woolrich (writing as William Irish), casts one of Truffaut’s favorite leading ladies, Jeanne Moreau, as Julie Kohler, a young woman whose husband is killed on the stairs of the church just after their wedding by an arrow shot out of a hotel room. Julie seeks revenge by chasing down and murdering the five men responsible for his death.

Though it’s gained in reputation over the years, Truffaut’s next suspense thriller, “The Mississippi Mermaid” (1969), left American audiences and critics cold when it was released. Part of the problem was that 13 minutes were cut from the French original. In recent years, though, the film has been restored to its initial length.

Based on a novel by Woolrich, “Mississippi Mermaid” stars Catherine Deneuve as the mail-order bride of a tobacco farmer (Jean-Paul Belmondo) living on an African island. Though Deneuve’s character doesn’t look anything like the pictures of the woman he has been corresponding with, the farmer falls in love only to learn that she is a fraud who has emptied his bank account and fled the island.

Truffaut was always interested in exploring “amour fou” -- foolish love -- and “Mississippi Mermaid” is no exception. Though the farmer searches down his bride with the intention of murdering her, he ends up renewing their relationship after he discovers her working as a dance hall hostess in the Riviera.

susan.king@latimes.com