In those ferocious discussions over Form and Content that shake the film world (well, bits of it) from time to time, in which the lunatic fringe on one side maintains that it doesn't care twopence what a film-maker says so long as he says it beautifully, and on the other that it doesn't care twopence how he says it so long as he's got something to say; and the rest of us, non-lunatics to a man, hover somewhere between the two, feeling craven, the name of Claude Chabrol springs to mind, or at least to my mind, in no time. For if there was ever a skilful film-maker with precious little to say, here, as one thin, vivacious, well-arranged nullity after another has proved, he is….

Individualists like Truffaut, Demy and Godard have gone their own way, each a separate, unallied artist, quickly diverging from any 'norm' there...