This underrated and unsettling early Claude Chabrol film (1962) features Andre Jocelyn as a spoiled, bored provincial who goes to see Olivier’s Hamlet and gets the idea that it describes his own life and tortured family romance. The weird and neurotic figure cut by Jocelyn, similar to the character he played in Chabrol’s A double tour three years earlier, is at the center of this gloomy melodrama, which is more about the boredom of small-town life and what it drives some people to than anything elsealthough there are plenty of Shakespearean parallels to liven things up. Shot (very effectively) by Jean Rabier, with Juliette Mayniel, Alida Valli, and Claude Cerval. (JR)