“It’s been insane since the beginning. Actually, it’s a kid’s game. You took off of your word problems with leaking taps, and tanks that fill up and empty, and you planned a murder from it. In real life this kind of thing does not exist. Taps that you open while closing another. Bathtubs that fill up and swimming pools that empty. That’s insane. And I was insane to listen to you.”
“Les Diaboliques” (1955) is one of my all-time favorite films. Gosh, I must have seen it more than twenty times by now. I love this psychological thriller so much that I own an original movie theatre lobby card that I proudly display across my desk. It urges you in red lettering “Don’t reveal the ending!” It’s an important warning because – by far – this feature has one of the most shocking denouements in film history. I loved seeing it again last night with someone who’d never seen it before and watching the disbelief on his face as the credits rolled and the tension dissipated from his shoulders. It is as taut and suspenseful as you can get, and its mystery will linger.
It is directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot whose mastering of suspense rivals Alfred Hitchcock. Hitchcock is worth mentioning, because according to legend, he wanted the rights to the novel “She Who Was No More” by the writing team of Boileau-Narcejac that “Les Diaboliques” is based on. Supposedly, he lost out to Clouzot by a mere few hours. Hitchcock later acquired another of their novels, “The Living and the Dead” and turned it into “Vertigo” (1958). The connection doesn’t end there, “Les Diaboliques” influenced Hitchcock’s “Psycho” (1960). The latter has a famous shower scene and the former has its own devilish bathtub sequence. Robert Bloch – the novelist of “Psycho” – named “Les Diaboliques” the ultimate horror film. Other tidbits about the relevance of this film include the fact that the seemingly inept investigator featured in it became the inspiration for Columbo – the famous TV detective created by Peter Falk. This was one of the first movies to use a tricky storyline and a twist ending that makes you reassess everything you’ve seen up until then – which has impacted many other filmmakers and novelists.
Clouzot creates a richly atmospheric setting – and stresses the psychological aspect of an icily planned crime, orbiting around greed, sadism, and a dark, macabre underpinning. We follow the point of view of the victims who find themselves deeply under pressure, and are impressionable and vulnerable. Like the protagonists, we find ourselves enveloped in a climate of apprehension, confusion, and fear.
It all starts with the camera looking at a puddle of murky water – and a paper boat being trampled by the wheels of a car. We’re on the grounds of the Delasalle boarding school in the suburbs of Paris – which we soon find out is named after its sadistic headmaster. In quick exposition, we find out that the school is owned by his wife, the frail Venezuelan Cristina who also teaches there. She has a heart condition. Nicole is another teacher – and she’s the mistress of DelaSalle, but she detests him. She’s wearing dark sunglasses because she has a black eye. “I don’t know how you can stand him,” she says to Cristina. “He wasn’t always that way,” the wife responds. Delasalle is both physically and emotionally abusive. He makes the staff and students enrolled eat yesterday’s fish. Unable to stand it any longer, Nicole suggests Cristina a plan to do away with him. “I’d like to die and not see him anymore,” admits the wife. They lure him to Nicole’s apartment in western France with Cristina’s threat of a divorce, sedate him and drown him in the bathtub. They will bring the body back to the school and dump it in the filthy swimming pool – to make it look like he accidentally drowned. That’s only the first half of the film – the exposition. Things turn for the worse when the body is not found and the suit he was wearing comes back from the cleaners. Detective Fichet shows up.
Clouzot’s direction is so assured. He uses the boarding school – a decaying building – which is a reflection of the protagonist’s psyche. There are these big windows and long hallways that Clouzot exploits to create a voyeuristic and confining feel. The rich black and white photography and the low-key lighting accentuate the shadows and darkness. The last thirty minutes is terrifically edited. You are at the edge of your seat.
The role of Cristina is played by his wife Vera Clouzot – a limited but effective performer. She’s aided by one of France’s greatest actors – Simone Signoret – who is astounding in the role of the mistress. Michel Serrault (Zaza in “La Cage Aux Folles) made his film debut in this film.
“Les Diaboliques” will give you chills.
Detective Fichet: “You dream about water too much in this house.”
Love,
Roger
Available to stream on HBO Max, The Criterion Channel and Kanopy. Available to rent on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes and Vudu.
Screenplay by Henri-Georges Clouzot and Jérôme Géronimi. In collaboration with René Masson and Frédéric Grendel
Based on the novel by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac
Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot
Starring Simone Signoret, Véra Clouzot, Paul Meurisse and Charles Vanel
117 minutes
About Director Henri-Georges Clouzot
Born to bookshop owners in Niort, western France, Henri-Georges Clouzot moved to Brest with his family in 1922 and there graduated from naval school. Unable to pursue a maritime career due to myopia, he moved to Paris, reporting for the Paris-Midi newspaper. While interviewing Adolphe Osso, the producer offered him translation and screenwriting work at Babelsberg Studio in Berlin, and there Clouzot remained—drinking in the expressionism of Murnau and Lang—until 1934, when he was sent home for associating with Jews. On his return, Clouzot was hospitalised with tuberculosis, spending the next five years in sanatoria. During his convalescence he read voraciously, honing his storytelling skills. Returning to Paris in 1938, he found the film industry devastated, as directors and producers fled the Nazi invasion. He joined the scriptwriting division of the German-operated Continental Films and was promoted to director with 1942’s “l’Assassin Habite au 21.” His second feature, the hit poison-pen thriller “Le Corbeau” (1943), was denounced by the right-wing Vichy, the leftist Résistance and the Catholic church. Although fired by Continental two days before its release, Clouzot was deemed a collaborator by the post-war government and banned from filmmaking for life, later reduced to two years after support from Sartre, Cocteau, René Clair and Marcel Carné.
By 1947, Clouzot was back in the game, his noir tale Quai des Orfèvres a critical and commercial triumph. He followed this with a Golden Lion at Venice for 1949’s “Manon,” but it was “The Wages of Fear” (1953) that really put Clouzot on the international map, winning the Grand Prix at Cannes, a Best Film BAFTA and the Golden Berlin Bear. Clouzot’s now-evident predilection for deception, betrayal and suspense provoked a rivalry with Alfred Hitchcock, and the two vied to film “Les Diaboliques” (1955), which history attests, Clouzot very successfully won. “The Mystery of Picasso” (1956), a documentary on his old friend, followed, then “Les Espions” (1957) which featured his actress wife Véra in her final role. He made the Brigitte Bardot thriller “La Verité” in 1960 (still her highest-grossing film) and his final film, “La Prisonnière” in 1968, attempting to parlay his skills to the nouvelle vague generation. One of France’s most consistently successful directors, Henri-Georges Clouzot, Master of Suspense, died in Paris, and is buried with first wife Véra in the Montmatre cemetery. (madman.co.nz)
About Co-Author Pierre Louis Boileau
Pierre Louis Boileau was born on April 28, 1906 in Paris. His studies prepared him for a career in commerce, but he had been passionate about detective fiction since childhood. He changed several occupations while also contributing short stories and novellas to various newspapers and magazines. Then he wrote a series of novels about André Brunel, a dapper private detective specialized in difficult cases. Boileau’s novel “Le repos de Bacchus” was awarded the prestigious Prix du Roman d’Aventures in 1938. He was drafted during World War II, taken prisoner in June 1940, and spent two years in a stalag, where he met Jean-Paul Sartre. Boileau was released from the camp due to his medical condition. He returned to Paris in 1942, and enlisted as a social worker for the Secours National, an organization helping the disadvantaged. His work involved visiting penal colonies and interviewing criminals. He resumed his writing career in 1945 with the novel “L’Assassin” vient les mains vides, and scripting a couple of successful radio series in 1945-1947…In 1947, Narcejac also published an essay titled L’esthétique du roman policier (“The Esthetics of the Crime Novel”) which drew Pierre Boileau’s attention. The two writers began to correspond and finally met at the awards dinner in 1948, where Narcejac was receiving the Prix du Roman d’Aventures for his novel “La mort est du voyage.” Two years later, they began writing together, with Boileau providing the plots and Narcejac the atmosphere and characterisation, not unlike Frederic Dannay and Manfred Lee (“Ellery Queen”).
Their first collaborative effort, L’ombre et la proie (1951), published under the name “Alain Bouccarèje” (the anagram of Boileau-Narcejac), went largely unnoticed. Their second novel “She Who Was No More” (1952), signed “Boileau-Narcejac”, became their breakthrough, and was later filmed by Henri-Georges Clouzot as “Les Diaboliques.” Their success was further sealed when Alfred Hitchcock adapted “The Living and the Dead” (1954) as “Vertigo” in 1958. Boileau and Narcejac often flirted with the fantastic and the macabre, most explicitly in their adaptation of the novel “Les yeux sans visage” by Jean Redon into the horror movie known in English as “Eyes Without a Face” (1960). In 1964, they published “Le Roman policier,” a theoretical study of the crime genre. In the 1970s, Boileau and Narcejac received the permission from the Maurice Leblanc estate to write new adventures of Arsène Lupin. They also wrote the “Sans Atout” series for younger readers, about a boy detective. Their collaboration ended with Boileau’s death on January 16, 1989 in Beaulieu-sur-Mer. Narcejac continued writing alone, still signing his works as “Boileau-Narcejac”. He died on June 7, 1998 in Nice. (peoplepill.com)
About Co-Author Thomas Narcejac
Born Pierre Ayraud on July 3, 1908, Mr. Narcejac taught philosophy and literature at a high school in Nantes and spent his spare time writing mysteries. He published his first manuscript in 1946, almost 12 years after it was written while he was serving in the French Army. ”The Midnight Assassin” was an immediate success. In 1948, his book ”Death’s on the Trip” won the prize for France’s best adventure novel. But Mr. Narcejac was reluctant to follow in the footsteps of American writers like Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, who were creating a new genre of detective thriller. Instead, he wrote a treatise on the detective novel, which he saw as following the style of Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. He met Mr. Boileau soon afterward, and the two eventually published 43 thrillers, 100 short stories and 4 plays. Mr. Narcejac was known as the literary master, while Mr. Boileau worked out the twists and turns of the plot. Their books were translated into 20 languages.
Among their best-known works was ”The One Who Passed Away,” rejected by French editors but finally published in 1954. Hitchcock wanted to make it into a movie, but Mr. Clouzot beat him to the rights and turned it into the 1954 thriller ”Les Diaboliques,” which starred Simone Signoret in a suspenseful tale about a murder victim who seemingly rises from the dead. The film was recently remade in Hollywood, starring Sharon Stone. Hitchcock used a Narcejac-Boileau novel, ”From Among the Dead,” as the basis for his 1958 film ”Vertigo,” in which James Stewart, as a fear-haunted detective, pursued Kim Novak through the scary heights of San Francisco. Mr. Boileau died in 1989, but Mr. Narcejac continued to write, producing three more novels. (nytimes.com)
About Simone Signoret
Born in Germany to French nationals, Signoret was reared from the age of two in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a suburb of Paris, where she led a sheltered middle-class existence. As a teenager she began to frequent the Café de Flore, a popular meeting place for leftist artists and intellectuals. There she befriended, among others, writer Jacques Prévert and film director Yves Allégret (whom she later married) and decided to become an actress. Unable to obtain an official work permit because her father was Jewish, she took her mother’s maiden name, Signoret, as her professional name and worked primarily as a motion picture extra during the Nazi occupation of France. After World War II she soon graduated to featured roles, typically portraying prostitutes and lovelorn young women in films such as Allégret’s “Les Démons de l’aube” (1945; “The Demons of Dawn”) and “Macadam” (1946). She became a star in France playing the title role, another sympathetic prostitute, in Allégret’s “Dédée d’Anvers” (1948; “Dedee”). Signoret’s career took a significant detour in 1949 when she met Montand, for whom she eventually divorced Allégret. She married Montand in 1951 and began limiting her projects in order to spend more time with him. Among the films she accepted were Jacques Becker’s “Casque d’or” (1952; “Golden Marie,” “Golden Helmet”), a romantic love story in which she portrayed the title role with sensitivity, warmth, and passion, and Henri-Georges Clouzot’s classic suspense thriller “Les Diaboliques” (1955), in which she played a cool, murderous schoolteacher.
She also branched out into the theatre, starring opposite Montand in 1954 and 1955 in an acclaimed Parisian production of Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” (as well as in the 1957 film version, “Les Sorcières du Salem” [“The Witches of Salem”]). Signoret secured her status as an international star with her intelligent, sensual portrayal of a jilted older woman in “Room at the Top” (1958), which won her numerous awards, including the British and American Academy Awards. After that success she appeared in a few Hollywood films but preferred working in France. In her later films, such as “Le Chat” (1971; “The Cat”) and “La Vie devant soi” (1977; “Madame Rosa,” “The Life in Front of You”), she often played a survivor whose battles were evident in her aging, beautifully ravaged face. She brought the same warmth and sincerity to these older characters that she had to her early roles as a radiant beauty, but she often received more attention for her decision not to conceal her age or glamorize her looks than for her actual performances. Signoret published her autobiography, “La Nostalgie n’est plus ce qu’elle était” (“Nostalgia Isn’t What It Used to Be”), in 1976 and also wrote two popular novels, “Le Lendemain, elle était souriante” (1979; “The Next Day, She Was Smiling”) and “Adieu Volodia” (1985). (britannica.com)