Themes: Mind Games, Perfect Crime, Treacherous Spouses
Main Cast: Simone Signoret, Véra Clouzot, Paul Meurisse, Charles Vanel, Pierre Larquey
Release Year: 1954
Country: FR
Run Time: 107 minutes
Plot
The greatest film that Alfred Hitchcock never made, Henri-Georges Clouzot's Diabolique is set in a provincial boarding school run by headmaster Michel Delasalle (Paul Meurisse). A ruthless lothario, he becomes the target of a murder plot concocted by his long-suffering invalid wife Christina (Vera Clouzot, the director's own spouse) and his latest mistress, an icy teacher played by Simone Signoret. A dark, dank thriller with a much-imitated "shock" ending, Diabolique is a masterpiece of Grand Guignol suspense. The simple murder plot goes haywire, and Michel's corpse disappears, prompting strange rumors of his reappearance which grow more and more substantial as the film careens wildly towards its breathless conclusion. Later remade as a greatly inferior 1996 Hollywood feature with Sharon Stone and Isabelle Adjani. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
Review
French filmmaker Henri-Georges Clouzot created enough pulse-racing suspense in just two movies to take his place in history next to Alfred Hitchcock as one of the finest thriller directors ever. Clouzot followed up his remarkable 1953 action film The Wages of Fear with the dark and mysterious Diabolique (Les Diaboliques). Wages has moments of almost preternatural tension and is arguably the more interesting film, but Diabolique most captured the popular imagination. That's probably due to the film's familiar yet strikingly fresh combination of chilling atmospherics, sexual intrigue, macabre pacing, and influential "horror" plot construction. Typical of many French films of the 1950s, Clouzot's style was influenced by American film noir; unlike the French New Wave films which followed it, Diabolique also revealed the German expressionist roots of noir. The film has been remade three times, as Reflections of Murder, House of Secrets and the pitiful 1996 Diabolique, and many of its plot twists have been recycled in countless other thrillers. ~ Brendon Hanley, All Movie Guide
Noël Roquevert - Herboux; Michel Serrault - Raymond; Jean Brochard - Plantiveau; Georges Chamarat - Dr. Loisy; Robert Dalban; Therese Dorny - Mme. Herboux; Jacques Hilling; Jean Lefebvre; Georges Poujouly - Soudieu; Roberto Rodrigo - Jose; Jean Temerson - Hotel Valet; Jacques Varennes - Prof. Bridoux; Camille Guerini; Henri Humbert - Patard; Yves-Marie Maurin - Moinet, a schoolboy
