Claude Chabrol, the director and critic who helped give rise to the French New Wave and who went on to make a series of stylish, suspense-filled films like “Le Boucher” (“The Butcher”) and “La Femme Infidele” (“The Unfaithful Wife”) that were often compared to those of Alfred Hitchcock, died Sunday in Paris. He was 80.
The death was announced by Christophe Girard, the chief cultural affairs official in Paris. Chabrol had been hospitalized for “severe anemia,” his press agent, Eva Simonet, said.
President Nicolas Sarkozy of France said on television that Chabrol “took the finesse of his social depictions from Balzac,” and “his humor and vividness he got from Rabelais,” adding, “But he was most of all himself in his films, as in life.”