Diabolique [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray]

Director: Henri-Georges Clouzot Henri-Georges Clouzot

Overview

Henri-Georges Clouzot's taut, hair-trigger suspense thriller features Simone Signoret and Charles Vanel in two classic screen performances. At the end of the film, Clouzot begs the audience, "Please do not reveal the ending to those who have not yet seen the film!" So what follows is just the set-up. The film takes place at a French boys' boarding school run by headmaster Michel Delasalle (Paul Meurisse), who is hated not only by his students but by also by his wife Christina (Vera Clouzot) and mistress Nicole (Simone Signoret). Michel has a propensity for beating the women in his life; Nicole first appears wearing sunglasses to hide a black eye she received from him. Nicole speaks to Christina about a plan to murder Michel: Nicole will convince Michel to come to her home in a distant village, where he will then be drowned in a bathtub. Returning to the school, his body will be dumped into a swimming pool and it will look like an accident or a suicide. The two women succeed with the murder and throw the corpse into the pool. But then the body disappears from the pool and the mystery begins. Arriving on the scene is the rumpled police inspector Fichet (Charles Vanel), who investigates the disappearance of Michel and comes to some startling conclusions.

Product Details

Release Date:	05/17/2011
UPC:	0715515070812
Original Release:	1954
Rating:	NR
Source:	Criterion Collection
Presentation:	[B&W]
Language:	English
Time:	1:57:00
Sales rank:	9,168

Special Features

Selected-Scene Commentary by French-Film Scholar Kelley Conway; New Video Introduction by Serge Bromberg, CoDirector of Henri-Georges Clouzot's "Inferno"; ; New Video Interview with Novelist and Film Critic Kim Newman; ; Original Theatrical Trailer; PLUS: A Booklet featuring an Essay by Film Critic Terrence Rafferty

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Simone Signoret	Nicole Horner
Paul Meurisse	Michel Delasalle
Véra Clouzot	Christina Delasalle
Charles Vanel	Inspector Fichet
Jean Brochard	Plantiveau
Noel Roquevert	Herboux
Therese Dorny	Mme. Herboux
Pierre Larquey	Drain
Michel Serrault	Raymond
Yves-Marie Maurin	Moinet
Georges Poujouly	Soudieu
Jean Temerson	Hotel Valet
Georges Chamarat	Dr. Loisy
Jacques Varennes	Prof. Bridoux
Roberto Rodrigo	Jose
Jean Pierre Bonnefous	De Gascuel
Michel Dumur	Ritberger
Henri Humbert	Patard
Robert Dalban	Actor
Camille Guérini	Actor
Jacques Hilling	Actor
Jean Lefèbvre	Actor
Georges Van Parys	Composer

Technical Credits

Henri-Georges Clouzot

Jerome Geronimi

René Masson

Frederic Grendel

Henri-Georges Clouzot	Director,Producer,Screenwriter
Jerome Geronimi	Screenwriter
René Masson	Screenwriter
Frederic Grendel	Screenwriter

Editorial Reviews

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.

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