Diabolique (1955)

Don't listen to the negative reviews

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Christina (Véra Clouzot) is the owner of a private boys boarding school and is one its teachers. Despite her ownership of the school, her abusive husband Michel (Paul Meurisse) is the headmaster. He is also abusive to the boys and the staff including his mistress Nicole (Simone Signoret), another teacher. Christina and Nicole devise a plot to kill Michel. From then on, everything goes awry.I believe that every film buff remembers how they felt during the last fifteen minutes of this brilliant thriller during the first viewing. This segment has to be one of the most frightening, nail-biting sequence in film history. As if this wasn't enough, it is followed by a shocking plot twist.The thrill of seeing this film the first time cannot be matched. But even knowing its conclusion, there is still much tension and suspense seeing it again. (This was my third viewing.) Director Henri-Georges Clouzot pays perfect attention to detail and from one second to the next, each moment seems to have the potential to veer into chaos. Whether it does so or not is the mystery.And of course, H-G Clouzot brings out the best in his cast. Signoret is at her signature best but it is Véra Clouzot who stands out especially in the climactic scene."Diabolique" (aka "Les Diaboliques") was written by director Clouzot and Jérôme Géronomi and based on the novel "Celle qui n'était plus" by Boileau-Narcejac.Unforgettable.OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT: Directing by Henri-Georges Clouzot

Film Review: "Les diaboliques" (1955) - Here comes the ultimate thriller of century, two women, one brunette, shy, over-thoughtful and carefully scared ever step of the way; the other, short-haired blonde, powerful, smoking-coolness striving to plot the perfect murder of the man in their midst. Director Henri-Georges Clouzot (1907-1977) exceeds himself in suspenseful motion picture entertainment after the already high-tension road-movie "The Wages of Fear" two years earlier to present a screen story that keeps its contemporary means, given the audience female characters of sharp-shapes and edges to perform the righteous kill of the business endeavoring male as machoistic, always hungry swine. Actresses Simone Signoret (1921-1985), gives face to the blonde character of Nicole with iconic sunglass interior wear-outs, who insists on the real-life director's wife Véra Clouzot as brunette character Christina to finish the occasional menacing, yet calmer life at countryside bordering school for boys, in order to bring the character of Michel Dalassalle, portrayed with french lifestyle-living ease by Paul Meurisse (1912-1976), to justice. If you are looking out for two hours of high octane, cinematic, needlessly written to the core, thriller entertainment, this is the film to indulge on; one of the international classics that never fades.© 2017 Felix Alexander Dausend (Cinemajesty Entertainments LLC)

Since the age of 6, I've lived in the village where the school scenes were shot (that castle was at the time abandoned and Clouzot wanted to buy it to get his studios inside, but it was too expensive, now it's the Town Hall since 1968). Each time I went to school (not the movie's one), I kept thinking of that horrific movie and when I saw it at 15, I was quite impressed, discovering Clouzot's Noir filmography.Like the townspeople watching at the shooting and how the beautiful castle had become sinister, full of mud all around. During the shooting since three weeks, all the team was completely sad and sinister, shooting night and day. They got more joyful when eating in the local restaurants. A lot of villagers came at the gate to watch with excitement all the famous team shooting one of the most well known classic thrillers. Clouzot never shot again in that village, and no other movie was shot there.

LES DIABOLIQUES is a spooky and intense classic from France, a psychological thriller in which a pair of women decide to kill a bullying and controlling school headmaster. One of them is his wife, the other his mistress, and both hate him for good reason. Their plot goes to plan but the psychological toll of what they have done weighs heavy on them, compounded by further mystery when the body goes missing.There's very little to dislike about this classic movie which has a sheen of quality to it. The expert direction draws out the suspense of the situation without resorting to jump scares or sinister music; the camera-work is very fine and the slow-moving nature of the narrative allows you to become fully immersed in the realism of the piece. The actors are exemplary, as you would imagine, and the film features some quite wonderful ghastly set-pieces involving corpses rising from baths and the like. That it is still frightening when seen today says plenty.LES DIABOLIQUES is also an influential movie; try watching Hitchcock's PSYCHO and in particular Kubrick's THE SHINING afterwards, you can see this film's fingerprints all over them. The Shaw Brothers studio even went ahead to make their own, even more involved spin on the story, the quite wonderful HEX which turns out to be very nearly every bit as entertaining as this film, albeit in a quite different genre. Horror and thriller fans will be in their element with this outstanding lesson in movie-making.