OCTOBER 31, 2019
Les Diaboliques (1955)
Movie #32
Director: Henri-Georges Clouzot
Length: 117 minutes
Platform: Criterion Blu-Ray (own collection)
And here we have it, the final film of Schlocktober, a bonafide classic, "Les Diaboliques". The only other Clouzot picture I had taken in was "Wages of Fear", another masterpiece. Perhaps, I should check out more of his shit. This is the story of Christina (Cricri as her husband, not so lovingly refers to her) and Nicole (same husband's mistress) who plot his murder, carry it out, and then have to deal with the complications involved with carrying out, and covering up, that murder, including "wait, is he actually dead?" All capped off by a shocker of an ending (and the scene that probably catapults this thing into the realm of horror).
So, this husband (Michel) is a real piece of shit from the beginning. He married Christine after she inherited a boarding school, even appointed himself Principal. Christine (wonderfully played by Clouzot's actual wife, Vera) is a sickly sort, prone to agoraphobia, coughing fits, and feinting. Nicole (an incredible femme fatale turn by Simone Signoret) is the too-cool-for school type. She's a teacher, smokes wherever, wears sunglasses indoors and is the only one willing to put Michel (she's having an affair with him, after all) in his place. One thing I loved about the picture is that Christine is no dumb dumb. She knows about the affair. In fact, Nicole knows she knows about the affair. They both can agree on one thing, at least: Michel is a real fucking asshole. There's a scene that takes place during a school dinner where Michel, in the span of a few minutes, prevents Mr. Drain (he's like another teacher or something) from having another glass of wine ("you've already had two") and also, to the discomfort of his entire table forces his wife to swallow her food, even though she appears to be taking ill. So, this is just a taste of his shittiness. The murder plot now makes sense.
The murder plot itself? Well, it's weird. Nicole and Christine leave the school, by car, and head out to Niort (a city hundreds of miles away -- the school is located in the outskirts of Paris) where Nicole has access to an apartment. From there, Christine calls Michel and informs him she wants a divorce. They bank, rightly, on him saying "fuck that shit, I'll be there tomorrow" and then hopping the first train, bound for Niort. Upon his arrival, Nicole makes herself scarce while Christine and Michel "hash out" their differences. He drinks some doctored brandy (I assume it's brandy, it's always brandy) becomes dizzy, takes a nap. Nicole, now in the bathroom, runs a bath. Michel gets carried into the bathroom, placed in the full bathtub (the scenes of the upstairs neighbors complaining about the rattling pipes..."who runs a bath at this hour?"...wonderfully break up the tension). He drowns, they weigh him down with a statue. Let the fun begin.
I'm sure we all have nightmares about disposing of a body, am I right? Well, our murder related anxiety might be a little easier if we committed that murder before forensics became a big thing. Like, get the body outside in the middle of the night, dump it in a river, leave town. And...done. Well, these woman decide to put the body into a large wicker basket, put the wicker basket in their car and drive it all the way back to the fucking boarding school, hundreds of miles away. Once there, a few tense scenes along the way, dump it in the school pool...and make it look like a suicide I guess. I suppose he must have told no one he was off to Niort for the day, paid for that train ticket with cash (I mean, duh...1950s).
I said Vera Clouzot was wonderful as Christine and I wasn't kidding. Overcome with anxiousness pre and post-murder, Christine reaches her breaking point when the body won't surface from the pool (the pool is filthy, visibility a mere inches beneath the surface). She demands, of the caretaker, that it be drained, tells Nicole "my heart is going to explode". Hell, most of the tension arises from the body not turning up. It's not in the pool. After reading a headline about a body found in the Siene River, Christine heads to the morgue to hopefully make a positive identification. Here's a tremendous scene where we follow a coffin making its way up from the bowels of the mortuary to a room where Christine, always breaking, waits impatiently. This is not the kind of scene, the mundaneness of a couple of guys simply doing their job (moving a coffin from point a to b, up an elevator, etc) that is typically terrifying, or at least dread inducing but, alas, here we are with some edge-of-your seat stuff.
I never had this picture spoiled for me, thankfully skipped the 90s remake so I had no idea what I was in store for. The last 20 minutes or so, an absolute masterclass in building dread, terror through shadows, sounds, and various ghostly shit. I'll heed the disclaimer that appeared prior to the end credits "please don't spoil this for your friends" (it went on and on but that was the gist). Apparently, Hitchcock was a couple hours away from having optioned the rights to this one himself. I'm not sure it works as well with a guy we're familiar with in the Michel role, we can't take the extra baggage. He needs to be a fucking asshole, not that Jimmy Stewart or Cary Grant can't play fucking assholes. They can, for sure, but they'd be likable fucking assholes. Check this one out. See you next year, I hope.
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