This post is part of The Best Hitchcock Movies (That Hitchcock Never Made) Blogathon, running from July 7th through July 13th, 2012. On July 7th, please wish Sir Alfred Hitchcock's lovely and talented daughter Patricia Hitchcock O'Connell a very happy 84th Birthday!
Henri-Georges Clouzot, the director of French suspense films such as
The
Wages of Fear and
Le Corbeau, premiered his 1955 thriller
Diabolique in New York City at what was then
The Fine Arts Theater. How ironic that this premiere was doubling as a benefit
for the
Herald Tribune Fresh Air Fund, considering the moviegoers found
themselves gasping for breath from terror! Produced by Vera Films, named after
Clouzot’s leading lady in real and reel life, Vera Clouzot
(The Wages of
Fear; Les Espions), Diabolique continues to haunt audiences not only because
of its fear factor, but also for its moving characterizations and performances.
Diabolique’s title translates variously as
Les Diaboliques; The
Fiends; and
The Devils, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s one of
cinema’s most suspenseful films in any language! (For those of us who don’t
speak French, distributor Janus Films provided subtitles.)
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You're witnessing a rare sight:
Christina DeLassalle smiling! |
It’s been said that no less than Team Bartilucci’s favorite fearmeister Alfred
Hitchcock was itching to get the rights to the source material, the French
suspense novel
She Was No More (
Celle qui n'tait plus) by Pierre
Boileau & Thomas Narcejac, only to find Clouzot had just beaten Hitch to the
punch. Either way, Hitchcock made darn sure he got the rights to another Boileau
& Narcejac thriller pronto:
D’Entre Les Morts, translated as
From
Among the Dead—or as Hitchcock and company
more intriguingly titled
it,
Vertigo. In any
case, for
Diabolique, director Clouzot worked with co-writers
René Masson,
Frédéric Grendel, and
Jérôme Géronimi to adapt
Diabolique for the big
screen.
Over
Diabolique’s opening credits, there’s a tight close-up of
already-brackish water, accompanied by a quote from French author
Barbey D’Aurevilly, who specialized in tales of
mystery and suspense exploring hidden motivations, hinting at evil without being
explicitly concerned with anything supernatural:
“A painting is always quite moral when it is tragic, and it gives the horror of
the things it depicts.”
D’Aurevilly is starting to sound like the French granddaddy of
film noir
to me! Heck, even Armand Thirard’s saturated black-and-white cinematography
plunges us viewers into a sense of eerie foreboding without even trying. Just
watching a lady walking with an open umbrella primed me to get ready to flee, or
at least duck!
Our story begins at Institution DeLassalle—or as the subtitles I.D. it,
DeLassalle Boarding School, which has clearly seen better days. It’s bad enough
that Headmaster Michel DeLassalle (Paul Meurisse of
Army of Shadows; The
Truth; is sadistically
cruel to his lovely but sickly wife, Christina (Ms. Clouzot)
, who has a
serious heart condition. Michel’s idea of kindness and sympathy is to cruelly
tease Christina about being a “cute little ruin.” But Michel doesn’t stop there;
he even mistreats his mistress and fellow teacher Nicole Horner (Simone
Signoret, Oscar-winner for
Room at the Top and nominee for
Ship of
Fools, among her other triumphs
). Indeed, when we first meet
teachers Christina and Nicole, they’ve long since bonded over their mutual
love-turned-hatred for Michel, to the amazement of the rest of the school’s
mostly male staff. On top of that, Christina is paying for the school in every
sense; she’s not only footing the bills (it’s clear Michel married Christina for
her money), but she’s also paying in emotional abuse, including her sorrow for
the way the schoolboys have to eat lousy food, and how she has to beg for every
little thing, as if she was some kind of servant instead of being the head of
the school. No wonder she and Nicole have joined forces to put Michel’s lights
out—and we’re not talking about the school’s electric bills! The murder plot has
poor Christina even more jittery than usual, since she’s a staunch Catholic, and
she takes the whole “Thou shalt not kill” thing seriously. (Sadly, those were
the only three films Vera Clouzot made; ironically enough, it turned out that
like the character she played in
Diabolique, she really did have a weak
heart, and she died in 1960.)
 |
Anyone can have a love triangle,
but these three have a hate triangle! |
Although Christina is glum and/or fearful more often than not, when she’s
walking and talking with her fellow teachers early in the film, we briefly see
her as the bright, happy young woman she must have been before Michel wormed his
way into her heart and bank account in her native Brazil. The holiday weekend
has begun, and Christina is wearing a perky little outfit and twirling her
parasol. Her lovely smile almost breaks my heart, because life with Michel
gives her so few things to smile about. Let this be a lesson, all you headstrong
movie romantics: Get to know your sweeties
before you decide to make a
life with them! Heed the lessons learned the hard way by Christina, Audrey
Hepburn as Reggie Lampert in
Charade, and
so many others!
Oy!
You know, if the DeLassalle Boarding School was a real place and its shabby
conditions were discovered today, some hotshot news team would make it a cause
célèbre even before anyone got wind of the murder plot Nicole and Christina are
hatching! I can see it all now: muscular, no-nonsense Robert Irvine of The Food
Network’s
Restaurant: Impossible storming in to kick the entire staff’s
collective butt while overhauling the menu big-time, then force-feeding Michel
DeLassalle his own disgusting rotting fish. Meanwhile, the equally
tough-as-nails Anthony Melchiorri of The Travel Channel’s
Hotel Impossible
would overhaul the kids’ shabby dorms, too! Do the boys’ parents ever actually
visit this neo-hellhole? If
Diabolique took place today, there
would be lawsuits galore! By the way, fans of Michel Serrault, perhaps best
known to us Yanks as the star of
La Cage Aux Folles and its two sequels,
as well as
Nelly & Monsieur Arnaud and
Deadly Circuit, plays one of the
teachers, Monsieur Raymond. He and the other teachers mostly put-up and shut-up;
I guess they figure a job in a crummy boarding school with a nasty headmaster
and unappetizing food is better than no job at all. And don’t get me started on
that nasty, brackish swimming pool; the best use for it would be for a remake of
Creature from the Black Lagoon…or an ingeniously wicked murder plot which
ultimately pulls our gals into a murderous game in which death is only the
beginning of their nightmare! I can say no more!
 |
Nobody will be seated during
the disgusting rotting fish scene! |
As is the case with Hitchcockian thrillers such as, say, Stanley Donen’s 1963
thriller
Charade, Clouzot’s
Diabolique is one of the (say it with me,
people)
Best Hitchcock Movies that Hitchcock Never Made! The crucial difference is that
Charade and other playful
Hitchcockian thrillers (as opposed to genuine Hitchcock films by Big Al himself)
recall Hitchcock’s polished, soignée-yet-cheeky side
a la
North by Northwest, while
Diabolique
is more like a precursor of Hitchcock’s darker, more sinister thrillers such as
Psycho; Shadow of a Doubt; The Wrong Man; Strangers on a Train; or
Frenzy. I’ll admit it would have been fascinating to see how Hitchcock would
have approached
Diabolique. Darkly magnificent as
Psycho is,
Diabolique’s gloomy, misogynistic take on the story sinks into your gut and
haunts your dreams, especially with the film’s taunting suggestions that perhaps
there’s a touch of the supernatural in all this that nobody can escape. Even
Diabolique’s opening credit sequence immediately makes us uneasy with that
merciless close-up of the rainy, run-down DeLassalle Boarding School’s murky
swimming pool, accompanied by children shrilly singing Georges Van Parys’ music
off-key and off-screen. The film starts out at a leisurely pace, but as it goes
along, the tension tightens like a noose, helped by skillful use of shadows and
light. Without giving away its twists, I’ll only say that
Diabolique
gives new meaning to the phrase “cruel to be kind.”
 |
| “First I add a generous portion of gasoline. Then some nitroglycerine… a
goodly amount of gunpowder…some Uranium 238…shake well, strike an ordinary
match, make Michel drink it, and voila!” |
 |
| "Do you have Prince Albert in the can?" |
 |
Has
Michel come back to life just for
the school picture? Now that’s school
spirit! |
 |
| "Here's looking at you, kids!" |
Vera Clouzot and Simone Signoret are electrifying as partners in suffering and
murder. As the women plot to kill the bastard, Ms. Clouzot’s delicate loveliness
and her anxious air plays beautifully off Signoret’s sexy, smoldering intensity
and streetwise demeanor. As Christina and Nicole try to act like nothing is
wrong after Michel takes his final dip in the DeLassalle School’s pool, weird
things keep happening that make them wonder if Michel is somehow still alive
after all their efforts. Michel’s suits unexpectedly turn up from the local
cleaners, and in the school picture, there’s a shadowy figure who looks
unnervingly like Michel! Is the creep still alive and messing with the women’s
heads, or is it karma, or could there really be something supernatural going
on?
(*GULP!*)
On top of that, Inspector Fichet (Charles Vanel of
Clouzot’s
The Wages of Fear and Hitchcock’s
To Catch a Thief, as
well as several
Tintin movies!)
has been trying to help Christina
in his kindly Columbo-esque way, but is this likable shaggy dog of a man
actually a bulldog hot on the scent of the women’s guilt?
That’s not to
say there aren’t touches of comedy, albeit of the pitch-black variety. I
especially got a kick out of of the scenes earlier in the film, when Nicole and
Christina come to town for the next phase of their murder plot. As Christina and
Nicole lure Michel to come to town for a permanent dip in the bathtub, their
upstairs neighbors, Monsieur and Madame Herboux (Noel Roquevert and Therese
Dorny) are unable to hear whether or not they won a prize on the radio show,
because the tub the women use to weigh Michel down gets noisy when they have to
drain the tub!
Diabolique is even darker than Hitchcock at his darkest!
Which is scarier, the water sports in
Diabolique or in
Psycho?
Watch them and decide for yourselves! :-)
I won't spoil the big shocker ending for you; I'll just repeat the request from the filmmakers:
"Don't be devils! Don't ruin the interest your friends could take in this film. Don't tell them what you saw. Thank you for them."
Trust me, your patience will be rewarded!
