The Story: A man is killed
by his wife and mistress, but his body disappears.
How many
films can claim to have inspired the great Alfred Hitchcock? When
Hitchcock saw Diabolique, he reportedly was so awed by its style and
power that he wanted to remake it in English. He eventually decided
to make a similar film based on a book by Robert Bloch instead,
reasoning that any remake of the original could only be inferior.
The result, Psycho, was to become Hitchcock's most popular and well
known film. There are quite a few similarities in style, but
Hitchcock's film (as befits a film aimed toward the American market)
was a lighter, more entertaining and quick-moving film than this
French masterpiece of mood and dread. According to legend, Hitchcock
in the end preferred Diabolique to his own undeniably triumphant
tribute. This is a point to be argued, but both sides would have
plenty of ammunition.
Diabolique begins by introducing its main characters: The vicious
headmaster of a boys' school (Paul Meurisse), his weak-hearted,
mousy and downtrodden wife (Vera Clouzot, the director's wife) and
his beautiful, conniving mistress (Simone Signoret). Signoret and
Clouzet conspire to murder Meurisse in a tense scene that Hitchcock
was to pay homage to in his later film. They dump the body in the
school's swimming pool and wait for events to take their course.
However, when the pool is drained no body is found and the
murderesses find themselves haunted not only by Meurisse but by an
absentminded, rather rumpled-looking detective (Charles Vanel)
trying to piece together the mystery. The inspiration for a later
popular television detective in the U.S. is amusingly obvious here.
The film, which had been building rather slowly for the first half,
then begins tightening its screws to become a quite tense chiller
with a classic shocking ending. The ending may seem to be less of a
surprise these days, considering the huge number of thrillers and
remakes that have copied it over the years, but this is the original
and has yet to be bettered in style and class.
This film was director
Henri-George Clouzot's biggest American
success (a quite huge success in fact, by foreign film standards),
even more well-known than his suspense masterpiece, Wages of Fear,
released in 1953 and starring Yves Montand and Vera Clouzot. While
not horror, that one is also not to be missed though it is generally
harder to find. It is even more highly respected in critical
circles, and not without cause.
Clouzot's sense of timing style is masterful here, as it is in
his earlier film, and it is easy to see why Hitchcock was so
impressed and influenced by it. The film begins quietly and builds
almost imperceptibly, coiling tighter and tighter until it all
finally springs loose and all the questions and mysteries become
shockingly clear and brought to light in
just a few minutes' time. This is a film to be savored and intently
watched and drawn in to, not a dumb special effect or wise-crack
laden teenybopper flick to be background entertainment in a party
atmosphere. There is a place for that type of film also, to be sure,
but this film is most satisfying to treat as one would treat a great
horror novel, allowing the filmmaker to draw you into his creepy
little world and spring his surprises with his own inexorable
timing.
I pity those unfortunate souls who have been subjected to the
remake with Sharon Stone a few years ago, because in true 1990s
trashy commercial form the delicate surprises and shocks are all
telegraphed and muted in what can only be described as artistic
desecration and abomination. This is the version to see; accept no
substitutes. I would place this atmospheric, intelligent and
surprisingly dark masterwork among the ten best fright films of all
time. However, those without a taste for subtlety and quietly
building mood and chills need not
apply.
From Zombie
Keeper
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