Shoot the Glass

Les Diaboliques (1955, Henri-Georges Clouzot)

Three weeks ago, I had no idea who Henri-Georges Clouzot was. Now, I’ve seen two of his movies and both are masterpieces. He made this right after Le Salaire de la Peur (read my review), yet it’s an entirely different kind of movie.

Unlike Le Salaire de la Peur, very little time is spent setting up the premise. Without giving us much background, Clouzot masterfully sets the scene. Michel Delassalle (Paul Meurisse) is the headmaster of a boarding school. He’s basically a sadistic jerk. His wife Christina (Véra Clouzot) hates him, and his mistress Nicole (Simone Signoret) has bruises on her face from his angry fists.

Both women work at the school, and they are friendly with eachother. Christina knows very well that Nicole is her husband’s mistress. The two women conspire to kill Michel, yet after the murder is committed, his body disappears and strange events start happening, driving the women to madness.

The plot is contructed so well. Within minutes, we know the premise, and the action kicks in. But unlike traditional suspense movies, the audience doesn’t know more than the characters. In fact, we are completely in the dark about what’s going on after Michel’s body goes missing, which lends this movie an extraordinary amount of tension. To say I was at the edge of my seat would be an understatement.

The movie bears a resemblance to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, and I don’t think that’s an accident. IMDb says that when Hitch phoned to buy the rights to the original novel for this, he was told Clouzot had phoned a mere half hour earlier. Hitchcock then, in turn, made Psycho with the purpose of beating Clouzot.

So yes, they are similar in some ways, yet not wholly so. Hitchcock, for example, always infuses his movies with quite a bit of humour. Clouzot is not so kind. There isn’t a giggle in the whole movie, it’s one forceful blow after another.

The acting is good, and I was pleased to see that Véra Clouzot didn’t annoy me as much as she did in the aforementioned La Salaire de la Peur. I especially enjoyed Meurisse’s sadistic and slimy headmaster-cum-murder victim.

Madness, suspicion, betrayal, murder… what more could you want? This movie is a masterpiece, through and through.

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