Diabolique

Nancy and I rarely watch movies in the theatre. Even when we rent them on video or DVD, we end up watching them in snatches over the course of two or three evenings. This is what we did with Henri-Georges Clouzot's classic Diabolique (1955). Based on a novel by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, it is a suspense thriller worthy of Hitchcock.

The plot revolves around three principal characters, played by Simone Signoret, Véra Clouzot and Paul Meurisse. Clouzot and Meurisse are wife and husband. She teaches and owns a boys' boarding school. He is the principal, who treats everyone badly, from his young charges and school staff to his own wife. Signoret is also a teacher and Meurisse's mistress. As the film opens Clouzot and Signoret have teamed up to murder the abusive Meurisse. We watch the murder take place -- by drowning in a bathtub -- but then strange things begin to occur. The body disappears and one of the boys claims to have seen the deceased alive. I will not, of course, give away the surprise ending.



Although Diabolique was made in the mid-1950s, it has the feel of one of the early "talkies" of the 1930s. The copy we saw had something of a grainy quality to it, but this may simply be due to age. I understand there is a restored version of the film, but this seems not to be what we viewed. The original was, of course, shot in French, but we saw the English-language dubbed version.

I mentioned Hitchcock. It seems that Hitchcock was, in fact, interested in purchasing the film rights to Boileau and Narcejac's novel, but was narrowly beaten to the punch by Clouzot. Hitchcock would eventually buy the rights to the pair's later novel, d'Entre les Morts, which would become the haunting Vertigo. As I was watching the film, I tried to imagine how Hitch would have shot the film. What sorts of camera angles would he have brought to it? How would he have directed the actors? Would the incomparable Bernard Herrmann have composed a score? Might he have accompanied the murder scene with a musical motif as memorable as the screeching violins in Psycho? (There is no score in Clouzot's film.)

By the way, I wouldn't bother with Jeremiah S. Chechik's ludicrous 1996 remake, starring Sharon Stone, Isabel Adjani and Chazz Palminteri. The plot is basically the same, but it simply does not work here.

I'll end with film critic Roger Ebert's telling of a humorous anecdote:

A man wrote to Alfred Hitchcock: "Sir, After seeing Diabolique, my daughter was afraid to take a bath. Now she has seen your Psycho and is afraid to take a shower. What should I do with her?" Hitchcock replied: "Send her to the dry cleaners."