Les Diaboliques [1954] [DVD]

Les Diaboliques is an unsettling and beautifully-paced study of betrayal, mistrust and guilt. Set in a decaying boarding school, it shows the grim course of a peculiar relationship between two female teachers (Simone Signoret and Véra Clouzot) and its sadistic headmaster . Atmospherically shot in black and white, its murky tones hauntingly echo the moral ambiguity of its principals. Director Henri-Georges Clouzot expertly keeps the viewer gripped in a manner that recalls (or even prefigures) Hitchcock at his very best. The end caption of the film pleads with the audience not to reveal the ending of the film to any of their friends, and once you've seen it you'll understand why. This is a truly influential, intelligent, and unforgettable film.

The story goes that a fellow told Alfred Hitchcock that after his daughter saw Psycho she refused to take a shower and that after she saw Diabolique she refused to get in a bathtub. Well, Hitchcock said, send her to the dry cleaners.

Diabolique is one of the most masterful scary movies you could hope to see. Even after 50 years, when the twist is probably well known, the movie is so well crafted and so well acted that it still carries me along. It takes place in a second-rate French boarding school for boys run by a sneering brute named Michel Delasalle (Paul Meurisse). His wife, Christine Delasalle (Vera Clouzot), who actually has the money in the family, is a weak woman with a bad heart, whom he abuses and humiliates. He openly has taken as a mistress a teacher in the school, Nicole Horner (Simone Signoret), whom he has smacked around one too many times. Christine and Nicole hatch a plan to lure Delasalle to Nicole's house some distance from the school. There, they will drug and drown him, then carry him back to the school and pitch his body into the unused, scum covered water of the school's swimming pool. When the body is discovered, it will be called a suicide or an accident. The two women pull it off...but when the pool is drained, there is no body. Then the suit Delasalle was wearing is delivered to the school by a laundry. A student is given a penalty and says it was the headmaster. A Delasalle appears to have registered at a local hotel. The two women don't know what is happening, and the strain begins to tell on them. They begin to bicker and blame each other. Nicole leaves the school. Christine must stay, but she is showing signs of emotional and physical collapse. Then the plot really begins.

So many elements, for me, really work. Everything in the film looks tawdry and worn. The swimming pool water is filthy and covered with slime. Every now and then small bubbles break the surface. The photography (and the film is shot in black and white) feature deep shadows, dark nights, candles. A shoe will appear, half hidden; a doorknob slowly turns; a bathtub looks like it could use a scrubbing. And there is no background music to speak of, just the quiet sounds of things moving and breathing. At the same time, the activities of the boys in the school are well developed and we come to recognize several of them. They bring us back a bit from the sense of something terrible happening, then we slip back into the movie.

Clouzot, in my opinion, has done a terrific job of building a sense of dread, but at the same time keeping us off balance by disguising what may be happening. Even though the "secret" of the plot is by now well known, Clouzot's craftsmanship keeps us (or at least me) watching. He spends whatever time he needs to build a scene or create an atmosphere. Watch how the serving of fish at the start of the movie is used to create whole stories about the school, the life of the boys, the situation of the teachers, and the characters of Michel Delasalle and his wife. Watch how Clouzot builds a creepy sense of dread when Christine goes to the morgue to identify what she thinks may be her husband's body. The sequence takes us from Christine trying to establish why she thinks the body is her husband's to the two attendants taking a cheap wooden casket from the basement of the morgue to the viewing room. At some point we realize that we are getting nervous ourselves about what might be in that box.

The end of the movie, when it was released initially in the United States, had people leaping three feet off their seats. That probably won't happen now to a new viewer, but the movie remains, in my opinion, a very fine piece of work.

Based on a novel by Boileau & Narcejac. "Les Diaboliques" is a highly influential French psychological drama - the staccato music at the start has the monotonous tension which is generated at the beginning of 'Psycho', and the film was much enjoyed by Hitchcock himself.

Set in the Institution De Lasalle, a school for boys, the building itself is presented in silhouette, an ominous precursor of Hitchcock's Bates' hotel. The theme is that of the eternal triangle. The wife, Vera Clouzot, owns the school and wants rid of her husband, the school's tyrannical headmaster. The mistress, Simone Signoret, another teacher at the school, has tired of her affair and also wants rid of him.

The viewer is sympathetic. The husband is a brute of a man who beats his women, terrorises the school's staff, and rules the children like a despot. If ever a man needed killing! But how can two frail women hope to kill such a man and not be caught. Signoret has a cunning plan! The relationship between the women builds in intensity as they hatch their plot and lure him to the chosen killing ground. Will they succeed? Will they get away with it?

This is a superbly paced drama, tightly directed, the tension built layer by layer. It's a sophisticated plot which, despite its 1954 vintage, has lost none of its appeal - it was remade as 'Diabolique' in 1996 (with Sharon Stone and Isabelle Adjani). The themes are eternal. Red herrings litter the plot. False trails lead off in every direction. And yet you can watch it again and again and still enjoy the interaction between the characters and the confusion which seems to plague their existence.

A first class thriller, character driven with intense performances from the cast, taut direction and editing, and atmospheric black and white photography. A film which deserves a wider audience ... and which no self-respecting French teacher should fail to show to their class!