Amid the glitz and glamour of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, a distinguished board of jurors presented 87-year-old director Alain Resnais with a special lifetime achievement award for his work and exceptional contribution to the history of cinema. The veteran Frenchman’s latest film, Les Herbes Folles (Wild Grass), was also nominated for the 2009 Palme d’Or, the most coveted award at the sixty-second annual festival.

Whether you believe age had anything to do with the award or not, it is hard not to admire Resnais’ persistence. He has developed an illustrious film career spanning more than seven decades, with many of his early films associated with the French Nouvelle Vague or New Wave film movement of the 1960s.

Along with Jean-Luc Goddard and François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol was one of the founding fathers of the New Wave movement — a remarkable trio of French film critics working for Cahiers du Cinema magazine who went on create one of the most influential movements in French filmmaking history.

The New Wave was influenced by the situation in post-war France, and the rise of existentialism, a philosophy often embodied by marginalized characters fighting conformity through individual action. In the same vein, the style was also driven by a desire to break from the norms of Hollywood cinema, while paying respect to the American directors whose work they admired, such as Nicholas Ray, Howard Hawks and Alfred Hitchcock. Indeed, in 1979, Chabrol co-authored a book (with Eric Rohmer, a fellow New Wave director) entitled Hitchcock: The First Forty-Four Films — perhaps an early indication of the parallels that would later be drawn between the two.

Each of the New Wave maestros appeal to different audiences: Goddard’s pictures attract the film elite through their attention to cinematic detail and focus on politics and philosophy. Many find Truffaut’s films more accessible because of a human side sometimes lacking in the intellectual vehicles offered by his peers. It is Chabrol, however, whose work consistently offers universal appeal.

For a long time, Chabrol was the lesser known of the New Wave creators and was not as highly regarded as his founding brothers. Claudechabrol.com professes: “The turning tide was marked by Les Biches (1968), his exquisitely composed Hitchcockian exercise in sexual transference and betrayal and the terrible fluidity of identity.” The film starred Jean-Louis Trintignant as an architect who gets caught up in a tragic love triangle with a wealthy playgirl, played by Stéphane Audran, and her latest fascination, a street artist portrayed by Jacqueline Sassard. Today, it is still regarded as one of the best ménage à trois explorations on film, exquisitely portraying the tension and jealously of the characters involved. “Hitchcockian” is an appropriate term, for the film demonstrates the ability to keep the audience in suspense, rather than simply shocking them; a trait exhibited in many of Hitchcock’s masterpieces.

The glorious Audran, who was Chabrol’s wife at the time, went on to star in over a dozen of the director’s films as he went on to explore the darker corners of the human psyche. Highlights include La Femme Infidele (1969), remade in Hollywood as Unfatithful (2002) starring Richard Gere and Diane Lane, and Le Boucher (1970), one of only two films that Alfred Hitchcock said he wished he had made.

Much like the wines their country is famed for, French directors have a habit of aging well; in addition to Alain Resnais’ recent success, Goddard, 78, is currently working on his latest project, Socialisme, and Chabrol, 79, released a picture, Bellamy, earlier this year. He may not have won a prize at Cannes, but Claude Chabrol can take comfort in the knowledge that many directors have attempted, and will continue, to imitate Alfred Hitchcock, but few have come as close to matching the original as him.

In a career that has spanned nearly 30 years, Mohamed Khan has been at the helm for some of the nation’s most memorable films and commanded some of the most prominent actors in the region. A regular Egypt Today columnist, he may be reached on his personal email at mokh43@gmail.com. et