If Chabrol is to be believed, Les Noces Rouges … is the last film of his Balzacian comédie humaine of French society in the middle twentieth century. In this new film, written by Chabrol without the active help of his usual scenarist Paul Gegauff, the bourgeoisie are less charming, less discreet, less intelligent, and far more corrupt than Chabrol has ever before shown them….

The shape of Chabrol's plot is a classic triangle-murder, owing as much to the tradition of James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice as to press stories about the similar murders in Bourganeuf….

The characters and story, of course, no matter what their ultimate source, are pure Chabrol. His tone and manner are the aciform irony we have come to expect, tempered in (can it be said once again?) the hell of a Langian trap and the revelational—if not redemptive—Hitchcockian confessional...