Les Diaboliques.

Review #2462: Les Diaboliques.

Cast: 

Simone Signoret (Nicole Horner), Véra Clouzot (Christina Delassalle), Paul Meurisse (Michel Delassalle), Charles Vanel (Alfred Fichet), Jean Brochard (Plantiveau), Thérèse Dorny (Madame Herboux), Michel Serrault (Monsier Raymond), Georges Chamarat (Dr. Loisy) Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot (#2337 - The Wages of Fear)

Review: 

Sure, let's go for another movie with plenty of horror and thriller in it. The movie takes its inspiration from the novel She Who Was No More [Celle qui n'était plus], as originally written by the writing team of Pierre Boileau and Pierre Ayraud in 1952. Apparently, Clouzot was informed about the potential of making a movie of the book by his wife Vera, who read it and told him immediately to read it, sleep be damned. Supposedly, Clouzot purchased the rights to the book just before Hitchcock could do so (just as well, Clouzot took over a year to actually get down to filming). Clouzout and his brother Jean (who for whatever reason went by Jérôme Géronimi for credit) are credited with the screenplay while René Masson and Frédéric Grendel were given a "with the collaboration of" in the credits. There were a few changes, mainly because it dealt with a travelling salesman teaming up with his mistress to murder the spouse (with one big thing in the climax being particularly different). Narcejac once stated that while the film does not resemble the book, the combination of the suspense, pacing and unfolding action were effectively in line with what they wanted, while Boileau noted that the film had an "immersion of the character in a collective universe was the best equivalent to the solitude we described in writing." At any rate, Hitchcock got his chance to adapt a Boileau-Narcejac novel later in the decade with Vertigo (1958). The movie was quite the hit at the time and even had an American release (which apparently trimmed the runtime of 114 minutes to 107), which is where it was known as "Diabolique". Robert Bloch, who wrote the novel Psycho that became its own film by Hitchcock (with its own warning about spoiling the movie), said that Clouzot's film was his favorite horror film of all time.

Apparently, Clouzot was tense during production, even once stating to Signoret that he shouldn't have let her read the end of the script. The tension is palpable for the movie, which practically boils it down to a science with a worthwhile group to lead it. It is the kind of movie that allows you to participate in a game of watching a trap spring all the way to its logical conclusion with the dread of knowing that it is all so believable in motive and the horror of wondering just what is going to happen next in the clear-cut way things are shot. The atmosphere by Clouzot with a boarding school is particularly spooky to consider because of the fact that it probably could be considered as an off-kilter fairy tale (in fact Clouzot aimed to do both a sinister atmosphere and "a somewhat fairytale universe"). The Clouzots married in 1950, the same year Vera worked as a continuity assistant on the film Miquette. This was the second of three movies she appeared in as an actress, which started with The Wages of Fear (1953) and ended with Les Espions (1957); she died in 1960 at the age of 46. Her performance of seemingly aiming for a martyr is fine in her defeated outlook towards it all, even when she gets into the eventual scheme involving a body in the bathtub. Her drawn out nightmare is our drawn-out nightmare, for which Signoret (a future Academy Award winner) excels in drawing the knowing fear that comes with people that know who they are and what they have done in diabolical nature and like it. Of course, it helps that Meurisse makes for a worthwhile lout to set all of this up in unsavory timing. The questions we ask about the movie aren't because we are grousing but because we want to know how the trap will spring.

Now, as for the ending: 

Don't be DIABOLICAL!

Do not destroy the interest that your friends may have in this movie.

Do not tell them what you have seen.

Thank you, on their behalf

Yes, it may be a movie that is seven decades old, but you just have to see it to believe it, really. There is just something so swiftly diabolical in its rug-pull that could only come from someone expressly interested in making everything snap into place. Do I love the ending? Well, it is fine in that final snap of the real trap, but I will say that the part right after it is a bit, well, convenient (which also is changed from the novel). You can only do so much with authority figures that show up now and then, I guess. As a whole, it is the kind of suspense horror movie you just have to watch just as it is. 

Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.

Yes, it's time for the seventh rendition of having horror movies from November 1 to November 7 with 7 Days of the Week After Halloween

The Wages of Fear.

Review #2337: The Wages of Fear.

Cast: 

Yves Montand (Mario), Charles Vanel (Jo), Folco Lulli (Luigi), Peter van Eyck (Bimba), Véra Clouzot (Linda), William Tubbs (Bill O'Brien), Darío Moreno (Hernandez), and Jo Dest (Smerloff) Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot.

Review: 

Time really does mean some directors and films stand tall after death. Henri-Georges Clouzot actually attended Naval school before his myopia made his interests turn elsewhere. He studied political science and eventually found work in writing, which soon led him to work in a Berlin studio involving translation and writing (with his first short film coming in 1931). He was fired from his studio job with the rise of Nazism in 1934 and soon became plagued by tuberculosis that had him sick for several years. He eventually found himself in a precarious place where Continental Films was his own place to get work in France...a German-operated company established after Germany invaded France. Clouzot wrote for the studio. He made his directorial debut with The Murderer Lives at Number 21 (1942). His second effort was Le Corbeau (1943), loosely based on an actual case of strange letters sent to people, and it managed the strange feat of being scrutinized by both the Vichy regime and anti-Nazi resistance members that led to Clouzot being fired from Continental. When France was liberated, Clouzot was tried as a "collaborator" that initially had him banned from filmmaking. A few years later, he was allowed to direct again, and he returned with Quai des Orfèvres (1947). Clouzot's reputation had peaks and valleys that really happened with both The Wages of Fear (1953) and Les Diaboliques (1955). Marred by health problems and a few public critiques from filmmakers of the "French New Wave" that he took to heart, Clouzot made just one film after 1960 with La prisonnière (1968). Clouzot died at the age of 69 in 1977. The Wages of Fear is based on the 1950 novel Le Salaire de la peur by Georges Arnaud Clouzot co-wrote the screenplay with Jérome Geronimi. The novel has been adapted a handful more times: Howard W. Koch's Violent Road (1958) took inspiration from the book without saying as such, while William Friedkin made his own adaptation of the novel with Sorcerer (1977). In 2024, a Netflix "film" was released, as directed by Julien Leclercq.

It really is a gripping time to watch tension play out in slow burning essence. The 153-minute runtime basically feels like a gliding motion, one that looks upon its four leads in all the nerves possible for a trip through hell. There are four pillars of doom one eventually sees all get dropped into a figurative board that seemingly favors nothing but random chance.  They are comrades only in the sense of being united in an insane mission that is grinded away by the immovable hand of fate, complete with a capable quartet to carry the film along in grimy patience of warped sensibilities in some way. Singer-turned-actor Montand is particularly effective in selling the sorrow that comes in too much time for leisure in a dead-end space. Vanel and his illusory bravado that comes with an actor confident enough to let the role breathe without turning it into false pity that is undeniably gripping in the same sense that arises with seeing him and Montand when compared from the first half of the film to afterwards. Lilli and van Eyck might seem normal when compared to those two, but their warped sense of self is still pretty easy to see through just seeing them as either a buffoon or machine-like efficacy that only makes their pursuit all the more curious. Incidentally, this was the last film for Tubbs, who died in 1953 from a heart ailment at 45; he pulls off a worthwhile performance in blithering American type of grime that works with such a tight amount of screentime. One can cite quite a few sequences fit for feeling that tension firsthand, such as the timber platform sequence or the scene with explosive rocks or that illuminating (in more ways than one) scene in the oil. By the time the movie closes itself out in an ideal type of way when it comes to the price of fears and fearlessness, one has seen a pretty good experience in terms of tension.  Admittedly, trying to compare the film with Sorcerer is pretty futile, mainly because both are pretty interesting movies in distinctive visions for the source material that one won't go wrong with watching either movie in terms of tension. As a whole, what you get here is a worthwhile film on the unravelling nature of fear in a journey of terror that makes the most of its atmosphere and tension for quite the curiosity. 

Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.