Les Diaboliques (1955)

Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Les Diaboliques (1955) was based on Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac’s 1952 novel Celle qui n'était plus (translated into English as She Who Was No More).

The film was a huge hit in France and an international success and its critical reputation grew steadily.

In 1996 Jeremiah S. Chechik directed another adaptation, Diabolique. It has huge flaws and a trainwreck of an ending but a few interesting elements.

Hitchcock had been very keen to acquire the film rights to She Who Was No More but Clouzot beat him to the punch by a hair’s-breadth. A few years later Hitchcock adapted another Boileau-Narcejac novel, D'entre les morts, as Vertigo.

In his film Clouzot made major changes to the plot and further major changes were made in the 1996 film so if you’re familiar with any of the other versions do not assume that you knew exactly how the Clouzot film is going to end. I’m not going to talk about the plot at all since it does rely on a big twist and I don’t want to offer even the smallest hints.

Clouzot changed the setting to a private boys’ school. This works very well - a school has just the right hothouse atmosphere. Michel Delassalle (Paul Meurisse) is the headmaster. He’s a third-rate headmaster of a third-rate school. And the school belongs to his wife Christina (played by the director’s wife Véra Clouzot). She has all the money.

Michel is having an affair with one of the teachers, Nicole Horner (Simone Signoret).

Christina and Nicole are planning to murder Michel.

This is where the story starts to become strange and twisted. There’s a very odd relationship between the two women. They should hate each other. Instead there’s a weird bond between them. Modern critics and viewers will be tempted to assume they’re lesbians but they’re not and it’s nowhere near as simple as that. The bond is based on the fact that they are sharing a man. Both women love Michel and both women hate him.

There is a hint of sexual perversity. Michel bullies and humiliates both women but something has drawn both women to him.

This a story that deals with female sexuality and desire and emotion in ways that modern viewers might find disconcertingly grown-up, complex and subtle.

Véra Clouzot is extremely good as the neurotic Christina who is guilt-ridden before she’s even done anything. She’s probably been guilt-ridden her whole life.

The standout performer though is Simone Signoret as the ambiguous puzzling Nicole. Nicole thinks she has everything under control.

Les Diaboliques truly was a ground-breaking movie - a movie built entirely around a fiendish shock twist at the end. Since then countless crime and horror movies have employed this technique so a viewer watching this movie today is going to be on the lookout for such an ending. Even if you haven’t been told that this movie has a shock twist at the end you’ll be anticipating such a possibility because it’s become a tried and tested formula. But when Les Diaboliques came out in 1955 it knocked people’s socks off. They simply were not prepared for the possibility that the film had been playing games with them, leading them up the garden path. Sadly Les Diaboliques cannot possibly hit as hard today as it did then but that does not detract from its greatness and its originality or from its boldness.

The movie also benefits from some superbly atmospheric black and-white cinematography by Armand Thirard. This combines with the seedy setting that reeks of defeat and despair to create a superbly unsetting and uncomfortable air. There’s this all-pervasive feeling of wrongness.

The twist is the selling point but it’s the unhealthy emotional entanglements and the growing atmosphere of paranoia that really impresses.

Les Diaboliques is a crime thriller with some definite horror overtones and it’s a magnificent cinematic achievement. Very highly recommended.

The Criterion Blu-Ray looks great and the highlight of the extras is the interview with the always perceptive and entertaining Kim Newman.

I’ve also reviewed the Boileau-Narcejac novel She Who Was No More.