Henri-Georges Clouzot's film Les Diaboliques is the best film Hitchcock never made. Not that Hitchcock didn't try; the film is based on the book She Who Was No More by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, and apparently Clouzot beat Hitchcock for the film rights by mere hours. It certainly feels like a Hitchcock film, with the only things missing being two Hollywood stars as the leads, a Bernard Herrmann score, dry British wit and a dose a fetishism.
The film is about a murder plot between the wife and mistress of an asshole headmaster. He's drugged and drowned in a bathtub, with his body brought back to the school and dumped in the swimming pool. Part of their plot it to make it look like he drowned in the pool, so they ask the groundskeeper to drain it. Lo and behold, the pool's drained and there's no body to be found. Bit by bit evidence pops up that the headmaster is still alive, the women are terrified, a nosy detective gets involved, the film film ends with a fun twist that's only slightly ruined by the "law and justice prevails" angle at the end.
The story's fun, but the reason for watching is to see how Clouzot ties the viewer in knots, with a standout scene being the headmaster confronting his wife just before drinking his drugged-up liquor. The scene keeps playing with the viewer even though we know the outcome of this scene, even if we've never seen the film before. You know he's going to drink the liquor, but the way the scene goes back and forth, continually bringing the bottle into the frame, then the liquor being poured into the bottle, then the wife's change of heart knocking the glass away...it's magnificent. When the asshole finally chugs it down and asks for more it's entirely believable. The scene of the headmaster drowning feels cathartic after seeing him smack his wife around, and the bathtub scene later in the film is a brilliant shitting-in-your-pants climax. I normally spoil the shit out of the movies I review here, but if you've never seen this film I really don't want to ruin it.
The acting across the board is great, with Simone Signoret playing a great, cold blonde femme fatale. Vera Clouzot (the director's wife) does a great job playing the mousy, terrified wife of the headmaster, and her final scene is both heartbreaking a bit funny, at the same time. It reminded me of Marion Cotillard's final scene in The Dark Knight Rises. Finally, Paul Meurisse's turn as the dickhead headmaster (dickheadmaster?) is delicious, and really want this mother fucker to meet the worst possible end. I mean, he's feeding the kids at his school spoiled fish, for Christ's sake.
I've seen this film three times now and I still love it. It has a French bitchiness to it that I find delightful, and the fact that Clouzot doesn't go overboard with horror tropes makes this a subtler, vastly better film than what you typically get in the genre. It a bit hard to rank this one because as much as I like it I have to admit that there's a coldness to it, similar to what I get in Hitchcock's films. The emotional remove is a big deal for me, and I know that Clouzot can have both suspense and emotion working together (at least, that's what I remember from when I saw The Wages of Fear). It's a brilliant entry in the horror genre, easily one of the best, but because I didn't feel an attachment to any of the characters I feel like I have to rank this one lower than I expect most people would. I think #15, between Walkabout and The Killer is a fair ranking.
I mentioned yesterday that the size of the list was starting to get a tad out of control. Therefore I've created a separate blog to house just the list itself. Good thing Blogger lets me create as many of these fucking things as I want. Here it is:
The Master List
Next time: The Clouzot double feature ends with The Wages of Fear, which came out the year before this film did. Why the fuck does the Criterion Collection keep doing this? Assholes.
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