TSPDT 643, highest ranking 444 in 2006; TSZDT 50, highest ranking 46 in 2018; Director: Henri-Georges Clouzot; Writer: Henri-Georges Clouzot, Jerome Geronimi, Rene Masson, Frederic Grendel, Pierre Boileau (Novel), Thomas Narcejac (Novel); Watched November 18th on the original Criterion DVD release (Spine 35) IMDB
116 minutes. If Clouzot’s other films are this good I’m going to start ringing the bell that Hitchcock is the second best at suspense.
I’m so annoyed this was my first time seeing Diabolique. It was a fantastic film. I guess the story credit goes to Pierre Boileau, the author of the novel, but Clouzot and team get a lot of credit here for bringing this twisty tale of machiavellian deceit to life. If you haven’t seen it, essentially there is an evil headmaster, real shithead. His wife and his mistress know each other and they plot his death because they both hate him. They manage to kill him - no spoilers yet - and bring him back to the school pool to dump his body in and make it seem like he drowned. One problem. When they find an excuse to drain the pool the body is gone! Who knows about this? What is being hidden from the two women? And can they find him before their evil plan gets discovered by the police?
The fun thing is, this is only the main plot, there are several twists in the denouement that are all equally delicious. With every turn, Clouzot just builds suspense so well. It’s really remarkable. He had complete control of my emotions and I was hooked as the mystery was solved and as new twists were thrown in all the way to the closing credits.
In addition to adapting the story well, Clouzot also got great performances out of all his actors. Simone Signoret was probably my favorite because she had every bit the magnetism as someone like Marilyn Monroe but she also could act. She had to carry the most complex emotions throughout the film and I think her performance really shines in retrospect.
If it’s not obvious, I really loved this movie and hope you get a chance to see it if you’re reading to this point.
Bienvenue dans ce tout nouvel opus de Thread Horreur ! Bonne Lecture !
Maintenant ce téléphone a été détruit. Vous vous demandez pourquoi ? Je vais vous expliquer...
Tout commence en 2019 où une personne nommé Romain achète son tout premier téléphone portable. Il était si excité de pouvoir l'utiliser donc lorsqu'il arriva chez lui il déballa rapidement le paquet et commença directement à l'utiliser.
Tout aller bien pendant 2 semaines, il utilisait son téléphone souvent, il communiquait souvent. Jusqu'à que le téléphone afficha une notification qui fait froid dans le dos : J7 avant Ta mort tu va mourir !
Romain a eu si peur qu'il a éteint son téléphone pendant 4 jours. Quand il le ralluma une nouvelle notification est apparue : Tu m'avais manqué ? Vu que tu ma éteint pendant longtemps je vais te tuer maintenant.
Aussitôt la notification reçue la porte d'entrée s'ouvrit. Il faut savoir que Romain était seul à ce moment là. Le plancher grincer et les bruits de pas s'approchés... Jusqu'à que le téléphone envoya la notification suivante :
Ne te cache pas j'ai ta localisation !
Puis nous n'avons plus aucune informations. On a trouvés le téléphone près du corps du garçon. Nous avons enfermés le téléphone et nous pouvons dire que : L'affaire est close.
So, I’ve just finished this film and even though it’s more of a thriller/drama, holy FUCK that ending unsettled me. I’m not going to spoil the ending as there is a disclaimer at the end to NOT ruin it for people who are yet to see it but holy shit....I feel quite disturbed.
I've also seen Rebecca, The Haunting, Eyes without a face, The innocents, Witness for the prosecution, most Hitchcock films...
Any language, thanks.
WARNING:
SPOILERS AHEAD
Just watched it for the first time and it completely blew me away.
I was legit terrified when the husband started coming out of the water and peeling back his eyes.
I thought it was damn near perfectly executed and would love to see more movies like it. Great plot that just has bigger and bigger question marks as it goes.
I think it and vertigo are my two favorite thriller/mysteries I’ve seen and would love to see some similar movies. I also got the vibe this may have inspired the writer of Thoroughbreds, though they are distinctively different.
This movie is a masterpiece in my opinion.
" I may be reactionary, but this is absolutely astounding - the legal wife consoling the mistress! No, no, and no!"
Be forewarned....this film is in French. I was able to find a copy on Amazon Video, and view English subtitles.
Les Diaboliques is a film with a very twisted love triangle. Christina has moved from Venezuela to the Paris metropolitan area, and has opened a boarding school. She is married to the headmaster, Michel Delassalle. Michel is a tyrant within the school. He is very quick to punish the children for their mistakes. He also physically and emotionally abuses, Christina. To top it all off, he begins an affair with another teacher, Nicole Horner. Michel also physically and emotionally abuses Nicole.
Rather than become mortal enemies, as the viewer may think they should, Nicole and Christina form a very close friendship, as they are both at the mercy of Michel. Nicole and Christina plan to murder the headmaster over a holiday break. The plan soon turns awry, leaving Christina and Nicole to live with the horror of their actions.
Trivia:
When director Henri Clouzot bought the film rights to the original novel, he reportedly beat Alfred Hitchcock by only a matter of hours.
An early example of a film featuring a disclaimer at the end, urging the audience not to give away any spoilers.
Simone Signoret hadn't read her contract closely before signing it and didn't realize she was to be paid for only eight weeks, regardless. After sixteen weeks and a wrap, she found out Clouzot was only going to pay her for the contractually obligated eight. She protested but the outcome didn't change.
Ours is a very exclusive club, and quite competitive as well. No mere affinity for haute cuisine could earn a person a seat at the table of Les Gourmets Diaboliques. To say we enjoy the darker side of white meat would be a gross understatement. In fact, I can only think of two members who had ever turned up their noses at exquisitely prepared long-pork. Those few soon found that they would only be making one more trip to our secluded chalet, and not on their own terms.
I had no reason to worry that my comrades and co-conspirators would object to the delicacy I would be serving tonight. Inspired by that great challenge of the lesser clubs, ortolan, I had drowned my subjects in armagnac just shortly before the line of luxury sedans pulled up the long drive. What gave me pause this night, however, was how I had sourced my meat. I loathed admitting that as I had strolled the streets of the nearest metropolis, I was drawn to a long cry coming from, of all places, a dumpster. Upon further investigation, my heart soared and my mouth watered to discover that it was not one, but two fine specimens that had caught my ear. How such fresh, fine cuts came to rest in the marketplace of “free-gans” was beyond my knowledge, but I could only think fondly on our anonymous patroness. Of course, in the name of honesty, I would have to admit these events to my associates, but how could they really mind? Even most of our number had never tasted flesh so pure.
We did not waste time, our lot, so after aperitifs, I gathered our assemblage around the table. I proceeded to introduce my triumph with an amuse bouche composed of my own interpretation of strained peas. I was feeling a bit mischievous, but as I said, we are competitive, and who doesn’t revel in victory? For reasons that I must imagine are now readily apparent, no staff was on hand, but I would not have allowed anyone else the joy of serving such savory morsels anyways, so that did not present any inconvenience.
Every plate came covered in a cloth, so that the diners may shield themselves as they consumed, and thus hide their shame from God. This assumes, quite humorously, that any of us were still capable of that plebeian feeling, but tradition is everything, after all. Upon stealing a glance at their helpings, my companions each took on a most outraged expression. This outrage was not directed at the meal itself, of course, but rather at my success. This apparent indignity, however, soon gave way to rapt anticipat
... keep reading on reddit ➡You can see the creator of kill la kill's stink all over this series.
#Introduction
The novel Celle qui n'était plus (The Woman Who Was No More) was written in 1952 by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac.
#Feature Presentation > Les Diaboliques, d. by Henri-Georges Clouzot, written by Pierre Boileau, Thomas Narcejac > > Simone Signoret, Véra Clouzot, Paul Meurisse > > 1955, IMDb > > The wife of a cruel headmaster and his mistress conspire to kill him, but after the murder is committed, his body disappears, and strange events begin to plague the two women.
#Legacy
This is one of the earliest examples of an anti-spoiler campaign, which Alfred Hitchcock would borrow for Vertigo (1958) and more famously Psycho (1960).
The success of Les Diaboliques sent Paramount scrambling to secure the rights for the next Boileau-Narcejac novel and led international critics to dub Clouzet "the French Hitchcock", however within a few years his career took a nosedive. The French New Wave, publishing in Cahiers du cinéma, attacked him as an uninspired commercialist and eventually he seemed to capitulate, stating in 1965 that he no longer thought Les Diaboliques important or interesting. The heart attack and death of his wife Véra in 1960 sent him into depression and for the rest of his life he struggled with poor health and finding funding for his projects.
In a 1983 interview, Psycho author Robert Bloch claimed this as his favorite horror film of all time.
Before watching this film for the first time I was completely unaware that it was a thriller film or had any knowledge of its outcome. Thus I was able to watch it first time without anything being spoiled.
There is a point somewhere in movie history when fantasy became naturalised. By this I mean that the idea that the fantastic beomes commonplace and almost expected. Les Diaboliques came from an age when this was not the case.
As I watched the film I was constantly aware of just how modern movies use fantasy as their schtick. Had LD been a modern film, the idea that a person had come back from the dead or that the film was a dream sequence or the result of an unreliable narrator would've been a serious consideration. Such an idea was not a consideration for Clouzet when making this film. Like (most) Hitchcock, the mystery had a logical solution.
Of course I was not aware of the problem until Michel Delassalle's body disappeared from the pool. Up until that point the film seemed to be about the tension of the protagonists in setting up Michel's murder and the disposal of his body. Double Indemnity comes to mind as a film whereby the protagonists are the bad guys trying to cover up their evil deeds and the interpersonal friction that causes.
But when the body disappears, the film turns from film noir to thriller and horror.
As I watched my mind was engaged. What had happened to Michel's body? Was there someone else involved that I hadn't seen yet? Had the body disappeared down a drain somehow? This was a delight to experience and shows just how important it is for filmmakers to engage the brains of the audience and trust in their intelligence. Moreover Clouzet didn't resort to the sort of obvious hints that Hitchcock used in Vertigo (a film I recently viewed). Clouzet seems to trust his audience more than Hitchcock did (think of the scene in Vertigo when the camera fixes upon Kim Novak's hair, and then pans upward to the picture, showing beyond any doubt the link between the two).
It was somewhere near the end when I finally understood what was going on. About 5 minutes before the mystery had been revealed I had worked it out myself. With a film like The Sixth Sense I was able to work out director Dingdong's mystery half-way through. Maybe we need more Clouzets and less Dingdongs directing thrillers?
Nevertheless I did find the solution itself to have problems. Like many of Hitchcock's films the solution itself relies upon too much that c
... keep reading on reddit ➡Dir- Henri-Georges Clouzot
One of the most influential horror/thrillers of its day, Diabolique pretty much set all the standards by which most thrillers often imitate. The movie is set in France at a boarding school where the tyrannical Headmaster maintains an iron grip on both his students and employees. His battered wife and his former mistress both conspire to murder him and get rid of his body during a student holiday. Over the many years since its release many films have imitated and ripped off the style of Diabolique. The style and overall technique are very reminiscent of an Alfred Hitchcock film, so much so that Hitchcock tried unsuccessfully to remake Diabolique. One of the most influential thrillers of the period, Diabolique remains a great film that would inspire so many films and directors for years to come. Remade several times over the years, most recently in 1996 with Sharon Stone, Isabelle Adjani, Kathy Bates and Chazz Palminteri.
