Nada | |
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Directed by | Claude Chabrol |
Screenplay by | Claude Chabrol |
Based on | Nada by Jean-Patrick Manchette |
Produced by | André Génovès |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Jean Rabier |
Edited by | Jacques Gaillard |
Music by | Pierre Jansen |
Production companies |
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Distributed by |
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Release date |
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Running time | 110 mins. |
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Nada (Spanish : nothing), also titled The Nada Gang in the US, [1] [2] is a 1974 Franco-Italian political thriller film directed by Claude Chabrol, based on the novel of the same name by Jean-Patrick Manchette. [3] It follows an anarchist group who, after kidnapping the United States Ambassador to France, is hunted down by the police, showing in detail the uninhibited violence used on both sides.
The anarchist group "Nada" decides to kidnap the United States Ambassador to France and demand a ransom for his release. Although some group members are reluctant to the plan, teacher Treuffais alone refuses to participate in the venture. During the operation, carried out in a brothel which the Ambassador regularly visits, a police officer and an undercover agent are killed. The Minister of the Interior orders Commissioner Goémond to find the hideout of the group, implying that the death of the hostage could be useful to the state as it would turn the public's opinion against the Left. During the attack on the group's refuge, all members except Diaz are killed, who executes his hostage before he flees. Goémond, who had arrested and violently interrogated Treuffais, waits for Diaz in Treuffais' apartment, convinced that Diaz will show up sooner or later. During the final shootout, both Goémond and Diaz are killed. Treuffais rings up a newspaper, offering to tell the full story of the Nada group.
The initial reaction of French critics towards Nada was reserved. [4] While Jacques Grant of magazine Cinématographe called it a "poor film", Chabrol's former colleagues of Cahiers du Cinéma simply ignored it (as they had already done with Chabrol's three preceding works). [5] Louis Chauvet of Le Figaro considered the scenario weak, but saw a maturation of the director's talent in purely cinematographic terms. [5]
Upon the film's opening in New York on 6 November 1974, The New York Times critic Nora Sayre titled Nada a "muddled yet sometimes rewarding movie" with "impeccable camerawork" and "several good performances", but one that "grasps at clichés" in its portrayal of the Nada group, concluding that Chabrol "has chosen a milieu that's just too alien for him, as the absurdity of the film's conclusion proves". [1] Writing for The Village Voice , Andrew Sarris was even less sympathetic of the film, in which "stylistics prevail over thematics". Although rating it superior to Costa-Gavras' two years earlier State of Siege , Sarris called Nada a "spectacle of joyless unimaginative smugness", being "relentlessly rhethorical" and counselling "a revolutionary patience of Christian duration" when it argues that "terrorism is counterproductive in terms of the desirable end of a revolution". [2]
Contrary to Sayre's and Sarris' opinion, Tom Milne in British magazine Time Out regarded Nada as "one of Chabrol's best films" and a "chillingly cool political thriller", which juxtaposes the "absurd ideological confusions" of the Nada group with an authority which is "even less concerned with human life than the terrorists". [6]
In her 1999 book May 68 in French Fiction and Film: Rethinking Society, Rethinking Representation, Margaret Atack sees Nada as Chabrol's exploration of the "weakness of the bourgeoisie" [7] [8] through the suspense format of the social thriller, [9] which overlaps with film noir in Chabrol's obsession with the "very fine line between good and evil, morality and madness". [8]
Claude Henri Jean Chabrol was a French film director and a member of the French New Wave group of filmmakers who first came to prominence at the end of the 1950s. Like his colleagues and contemporaries Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Éric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette, Chabrol was a critic for the influential film magazine Cahiers du cinéma before beginning his career as a film maker.
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie is a 1972 surrealist film directed by Luis Buñuel from a screenplay co-written with Jean-Claude Carrière. The narrative concerns a group of bourgeois people attempting—despite continual interruptions—to dine together. The French-language film stars Fernando Rey, Stéphane Audran, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Paul Frankeur, Delphine Seyrig, Bulle Ogier, Julien Bertheau, and Milena Vukotic.
French New Wave is a French art film movement that emerged in the late 1950s. The movement was characterized by its rejection of traditional filmmaking conventions in favor of experimentation and a spirit of iconoclasm. New Wave filmmakers explored new approaches to editing, visual style, and narrative, as well as engagement with the social and political upheavals of the era, often making use of irony or exploring existential themes. The New Wave is often considered one of the most influential movements in the history of cinema.
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Bulle Ogier is a French actress and screenwriter.
Jean-Pierre Cassel was a French actor.
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Mariangela Melato was an Italian cinema and theater actress. She began her stage career in the 1960s. Her first film role was in Thomas e gli indemoniati (1969), directed by Pupi Avati. She played in many memorable films during the 1970s, a period which was considered her golden age, and she received much praise for her roles in films like The Seduction of Mimi (1972), Love and Anarchy (1973), Nada (1974), Swept Away (1974), Todo modo (1976), Caro Michele (1976) and Il gatto (1978). Melato also starred in several English-language productions as well, notably Flash Gordon (1980). She died from pancreatic cancer at the age of 71.
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This Man Must Die, also titled Killer! in the UK, is a 1969 French–Italian psychological thriller film directed by Claude Chabrol. It is based on the 1938 novel The Beast Must Die by Cecil Day-Lewis, writing as Nicholas Blake. The story follows a widower who, obsessed with revenge after his only son is killed in a hit-and-run incident, tracks down the driver with the intent to kill him.
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Merci pour le Chocolat, also known as Nightcap, is a 2000 French psychological thriller film directed by Claude Chabrol and starring Isabelle Huppert and Jacques Dutronc. The film is based on the novel The Chocolate Cobweb by Charlotte Armstrong.
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Pierre Georges Cornil Jansen was a French film scores composer. He was in particular the permanent collaborator of Claude Chabrol for whom he composed the music for many films.