Nada (1974) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

This the the last of the Claude Chabrol collection with any significant nudity, so you'll probably be relieved to know that I won't be talking about him again for a while. To be fair, two of the films which I didn't write about, The Butcher (le Boucher) and This Man Must Die, (Que la bête meure) were actually quite good. They were both made in 1969, as was The Unfaithful Wife, the story which later became Unfaithful with Richard Gere and Diane Lane. That's quite amazing, when you think about it. Chabrol has 30 films with enough votes for an IMDB score, spanning more than 40 years of filmmaking, and three of his top six films were made in one year. Another of his top eight, La Rupture, was made just a few months later. He was on quite a roll there for about 18 months:

1. (7.46) - Boucher, Le (1969)
2. (7.33) - Une affaire de femmes (1988)
3. (7.24) - Cérémonie, La (1995)
4. (7.11) - Femme infidèle, La (1969)
5. (6.96) - Cousins, Les (1959)
6. (6.94) - Que la bête meure (1969)
7. (6.74) - Enfer, L' (1994)
8. (6.72) - Rupture, La (1970)

The ones in yellow are in the boxed Claude Chabrol collection, along with: Nada, Les Biches, Innocents with Dirty Hands, and Ten Days Wonder. (The last two feature English-speaking actors, Rod Steiger and Orson Welles, respectively, but neither film is any good.)

Nada is not like the others in the collection. It's not a personalized story of murder or revenge, but a political tale of international intrigue, comparable to a Volker Schloendorff or Costa-Gavras movie. A group of anarchists/terrorists capture the American ambassador to France and demand a ransom to finance their cause. The terrorists comprise brutes, drunks, cowards, and alleged idealists with no specific ideals. The police match the stupidity of the terrorists and add brutal over-reaction to the mix. Everyone bungles every possible move on both sides until every major character is dead except the higher-up politicos with "deniability".

If the movie has any point, which I doubt, it seems to be that we are all conniving, corrupt, brutal, and cynical fools, irrespective of the politics we embrace. The film has some of the elements of a political thriller, and some elements of a black satire ala Dr Strangelove, but is not especially good at either, and is completely lacking in nuances.

• some very naked and very beautiful anonymous woman

• Mariangela Melato, who is neither very beautiful nor very naked, but was a fairly big star. She played the Madonna part in the original version of Swept Away.