Henri-Georges Clouzot

Re-watching the Classics: Diabolique

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diabolique

Diabolique is a classic French film from 1955, loved by fans of foreign film, film noir and horror. This film is directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot based on a book by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac. This film revolves around three main characters in a love triangle.

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Christina Delassalle, played by Véra Clouzot, is a wealthy woman who owns a private school. She has a weak heart and is not going to live much longer.

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Nicole Horner, played by Simone Signoret, works at the school and is Christina’s confidant and friend.

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Michel Delassalle, played by Paul Meurisse, is married to Christina and is having an affair with Nicole. He beats both women and makes it well known to Christina that he wants her dead so he can sell the school and , her money.

When the two women cannot put up with Michel any longer, they plot his murder. Over a three day holiday they lure him away from the school, drug him and drowned him. They go back to the school, and throw Michel in the dirty pool. Everybody believes Michel has not left the school over the holiday. Everybody also has seen the two women leave the school for the holiday to go to Nicole’s home, hours away. Nicole has tenants who live up stairs to reinforce the alibi.

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This film is a slow burn and the tension increases with every passing scene. This has one of the best endings in all of film and will not be spoiled for those who have not seen it. The film actually tells you at the end not to talk about the ending so you do not ruin the film for everybody else. I guess spoilers where as common in 1955 as they are today.

This film needs to be seen by everybody who loves film. If you like suspense, thrillers, horror, or film noir, this is a must see.

The film got more notoriety five years later, when star Véra Clouzot died from a heart attack at 46, mirroring her character’s weak heart from this film. The film has made a number of best of lists, mostly in the horror genre, including Time Magazine’s Top 25 Horror films and Bravo’s 100 Scariest Movie Moments. This film has been remade 4 times, or at least used the same source material, over the years. The best know, is the remake starring Sharon Stone from 1996. This version pales in comparison to the original.

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Favorite Tidbit: If you think this film has a very Hitchcockian feel, you are not alone. Hitchcock himself tried to get the rights to the book, but was to late. This film was also a huge influence on Hitchcock when he made Psycho. It also influenced Robert Bloch when he wrote the book, and Bloch says Diabolique was his all time favorite horror film. In fact when Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac heard Hitchcock wanted to buy the rights to their book, they wrote their next book with Hitchcock in mind. Hitchcock did get the film rights to that novel, it became the film Vertigo.

 

Review: The Wages of Fear or Le Salaire de la Peur

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The Wages of Fear is an interesting film and very good, but is it a classic film noir?  While watching this I was on the fence and looked for other people’s opinion on the matter.  Wikipedia and AMC do not list it in their full list of film noir titles.  The Film Noir Foundation does, and John Grant has it in his “A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Film Noir.”  If you don’t know about John Grant check out his blog at https://noirencyclopedia.wordpress.com/ for a ton of noir information.

My argument for it not being a film noir is there really isn’t anything illegal going on here, sure our big American oil company is immoral and all about the mighty dollar.  Sure some of the things they did in this film would be illegal today, but in the 1950’s it was probably all legit.  There is no femme fatale to speak of, Vera Clouzot is almost the anti-femme fatale.  All she cares about is the safety of her main man.  The shooting of the film is not in the classic noir style except in a few key scenes.  Hardly any shadow play is used, being most of the film takes place in the middle of the day in the desert.

My argument for it being a noir story is quite simple, a handful of characters are put in a situation they have very little hope of getting out of.  When they see their chance, they take it, even though they know their chances are slim to none.  They will almost do anything in their means for a little hope.  They are average men put in an extreme circumstance like all good noirs.  The end isn’t exactly a happy one either, another trademark of a good noir.

This movie is based on the book by Georges Arnaud and is adapted for the screen and directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot.   It stars Yves Montand  as our main hero, Mario.  This is Montand’s first dramatic role and what a role!  He went on to make many great films and I look forward to watching more of his work.

This story starts with Mario and some other ex-pats in a small bar in an unknown village.  We see Linda, Vera Clouzot’s character, washing the bar floor and soon crawls over and purrs like a cat as Mario pets her.  A very interesting scene as we get an idea of Linda’s situation.

A new man flies into town on the plane by the name of Jo, played by Charles Vanel.  We soon find out how it is cheap to get to this village but there is no work and it is very expensive to get out.  We have a small group of guys stuck in the village, scraping by on odd jobs, just enough to get a meal and a drink at the bar on a good day.  The opportunity arises when the big oil company has a oil well blow up and they need some nitroglycerin shipped over 300 miles to the site to extinguish the well.  Knowing the unions would never send any of their own men to do the task, they get the group to compete for one of 4 spots on driving 2 trucks to the site.  Knowing they have a 50% chance of making it, do to the lack of the right equipment and the nature of the nitroglycerin, 1 of the 2 trucks should make it.  This only gets darker and more intense from here.

After watching this, you can see why America edited out over 50 minutes of footage so they would not look to bad.  The greed of the big corporation is nothing new, but it is interesting to see this from a French prospective.  This movie is an amazing movie, every film buff should see it least once, but is it a film noir?  What do you think?

Favorite Tidbit:  Vera Clouzot only appeared in 3 films, all directed by her husband Henri-Georges Clouzot.  One of her other two films is Diabolique.  Not a bad hitting percentage.