The remarkable and raw Le beau Serge heralded the arrival of a cinematic titan who would go on to craft provocative, entertaining films for five more decades.

You can’t get much closer to ground zero when it comes to the French New Wave than this first film by Claude Chabrol. Already suggesting a fascination for the Hitchcockian doubling motif that would be developed in his later work, Le beau Serge is a beautiful—if prickly—portrait of provincial life.