Claude Chabrol, a founder of the French New Wave movement in cinema, died Sunday at age 80. Though not as well known as his fellow New Wave auteurs, Chabrol produced movies the way Philip Roth produces novels — that is to say, at an astonishing pace and with an astonishing level of quality and originality. Le Beau Serge, released in 1958 (two years before Godard’s Breathless) is arguably the first movie of the French New Wave. Often overlooked, or worse, dismissed as mainstream — Hitchcock was perhaps his greatest influence — Chabrol’s films were always provocative, thrilling films that resisted the blanket, scornful term “thriller”. Chabrol’s best films — the greatest of which was Le Bucher — erased the boundary between victim and assailant, exposed the tension underlying seemingly idyllic families and towns, and skewered bourgeoise hypocrisy. His final film, Bellamy, was released in France in February of last year.