Les Diaboliques (1955)
“A painting is always moral enough when it is tragic and it gives the horror of the things it traces.”
Barbey D’Aurevilly
From the opening music by Van Parys, you know you are in for something
different here. Especially when the film is largely empty of music,
allowing the sound effects to dig in. And yet, the film starts so
familiarly. A school overrun with children, a school master who could
easily be a Robert Donat type. The staff are on break, but with the
juxtaposition of children happily playing and snatches of dialogues
between staff, we quickly get the picture of dysfunctional relationships
and marriages among the teachers. Headmaster Delassalle is a complete
arse, not only as a tyrannical teacher, but with the fact that he
carries out an affair with the local blonde schoolteacher in front of
his ailing wife and expects everyone to be happy. Even the children
gossip about it! And so two women, thrown together, talk about divorce
and love and other means to find happiness.
And when our wife cannot leave her abusive husband, there is her friend,
his mistress, on her shoulder, like a fairy godmother or Iago, to offer
support laced with dare.
Indeed, even more than They Live, this could be a normal tale of misery
for a long period of time, before the horror begins to rear its head.
Yes, the two women bump off the husband, by drowning him. Then, they
drive him back to the school, and dump him in the swimming pool, as when
he floats to the top, it will look like a horrific incident. And then
he doesn’t resurface. The pool is drained. The body is missing… And then
Christina starts to hear voices where she shouldn’t, around the school,
following her…
Based on the story She Who Was No More by the crime writing duo of
Bolieau-Narcejac, this was an adaptation Alfred Hitchcock wanted to
make. You can see the recipe for a 1950s Hitchcock film in this style,
but it would have been more Dial M for Murder and less Psycho. (For
those in the dark, I rate Hitch as one of the greats, and both of those
films are brilliant, but the former is more of a thriller than a
horror.) However, Henri-Georges Clouzot saw it first, and nabbed the
film rights. An incredible director (look at the discretionary camera
trail as the headmaster beats his poor wife for defending the schoolkids
as one early example of the cinematic scope), Clouzot’s art shows an
incredible pragmatic approach to light, tone and movement to build
suspense and interest even in the long silent periods of film.
Unfortunately, his pragmatism also stretched to real life, where,
desperate for work, a man who was fired by UFA for his pro-Jewish
sentiments went to work for the Vichy Governments film company. A
lifetime ban on even approaching a film set, post-war, was abandoned
after a campaign by Sartre and Cocteau. And it helped bring us Wages of
Fear and this film. But his legacy has that asterix next to it, I guess.
So many great shots. The darkness with the sound of the train, it
shadowed so heavily it is indistinguishable from the ground before we
cut to the smirking Paul Meurisse (who is never failingly convincing as a
horrible person) inside. All the shots of water before it becomes
relevant to the plot. A mans footsteps on cobbled streets. This is shot
by cameras with an understanding of the framing of every element to keep
it dynamic, and every shot furthers plot, foreshadows or reveals
character.
“Don't be DIABOLIC! Don't destroy the interest that your friends might
have in this movie. Don't tell them what you saw. Thank you, for them.”
Says the film, so I shall spoiler warning the rest.
Of course, this film changes everything with the famous twist. Christina goes back to her rooms to escape the ghost, only to find her dead husband in the bathtub. He then sits up, causing the frail Christina to collapse from heart failure, her heart problems being well signified throughout the film. And it quickly becomes clear that we have been watching the wrong murder plot. We thought it was Nicole and Christina’s plot to murder Michel, but it was actually Michel and Nicole’s plan to murder his wife and get away with it. This turns every previous conversation between Nicole and Christina on its head, with near ever bit of dialogue Signoret utters having a double meaning to it. There are hints too – when they “kill” the husband, and Christina’s heart kicks off, Nicole completely ignores her to carry out covering up the crime. This being the 1950s, the villains can’t get away with the deed, so are swiftly caught by a nearby policeman, who has shades of Colombo to him. He twigs before the audience what is going on, but is unable to save the victim. And while the entire haunting of the story turns out a fabrication by killers, at the very end, the final shots suggest Christina is still in the school as a ghost, looking after the children she couldn’t protect in life.
And because of that, the twist which is known to all is a bit like It’s a Wonderful Life. Everyone remembers Jimmy Stewart running through the streets in joy and think of the film as a classic saccharine Christmas tale. They forget the whole previous 100 minutes where modern society and greed grind a good man down to the point where he snaps at his own kids and goes to commit suicide. He and the audience earn the happy ending (and Capra, being an iconoclast, uses it to complete disguise the fact that the villain gets away scot free!) Here, yes, man in bathtub is famous horror scene, but for the full impact, you have to last the previous 2 hours with Christina, to realise the full nastiness of what is going on in context.
I first saw glimpses of this film on Channel 4 in the late 90s, and was transfixed. Later, as I got older, I heard of its reputation, but an inability to afford the subtitled version prevented me seeing it. Now, finally, a mere 20 years on, a subtitled version appeared. Was it worth the wait? Oh yes. Very much so. This is a fantastic film.
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