Vera Clouzot and Simone Signoret in “Diabolique.” credit: framerated.co.uk
One of the unmissable classics of psychological suspense, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Diabolique (France, 1955) will still scare the socks off of most moviegoers 56 years later. The last frames of the film implore the audience not to reveal the final twists, and Clouzot’s trust has paid off – those who have seen it are, even now, reluctant to spoil the surprise, as oft-appropriated as that twist has been for later, lesser films. That’s how much respect movie fans have for this film – not just respect for the end, but respect for how much skill and art Clouzot committed to the overall enterprise.
As the film opens, we’re introduced to the principal of the Institution Delassalle, a once-prestigious boarding school for well-to-do children just outside of Paris. Michel Delassalle (Paul Meurisse), however, has opportunistically overseen the diminution of the promising school that his wife, Christina, had high hopes of nobly maintaining. The teachers are cynical layabout busybodies, and Delassalle feeds the students near-rotting vegetables and inedible leftover fish to save money. Even the kids know what a shameless womanizer he is – indeed, he’s even made one of their teachers, Nicole Horner (Simone Signoret), his mistress. When we first meet her, she’s conducting class in her sunglasses, disguising the results of her latest tryst with Michel. Christina Delassalle (Vera Clouzot) came from a monied Spanish family – it’s her money that the school exists on – and she has disgustedly witnessed her husband’s indulgent profligacy for over eight years of their marriage.
In this tawdry atmosphere, it’s no surprise that Nicole and Christina are already plotting Michel’s murder. Christina’s a little manic about it – her privileged upbringing and Catholic sensibilities are in conflict with her anger towards Michel’s humiliations, but it’s pretty clear that the anger has won that battle. Nicole has no such mitigating scruples – Michel has misused her, and he will pay. They understandably don’t much like each other, but they’re united in their wounded hatred of Michel.
It’s a vacation weekend at the school, and Nicole is returning to her hometown of Niort, four hours away. But unbeknownst to Michel, Christina surreptitiously accompanies her. When they arrive, they phone Michel to inform him that Christina is divorcing him, and the details will be worked out after the weekend. Of course, Michel pursues her there immediately, where she awaits to receive a few final abuses from him before she drugs him, and both she and Nicole drown him in the bathtub in one of the creepiest and chilliest death scenes ever committed to celluloid. They then bundle his body into a giant wicker trunk, return to the school in St. Cloud, and deposit his body into the school’s scummy and neglected outdoor swimming pool. With their visit to Niort alibied by their interactions with Nicole’s eccentric neighbors, and no existing records of Michel’s journey there, they are free and clear to resume their lives at the school, completely unsuspected, and wait a few days for Michel’s bloated corpse to rise to the surface.
The murder is certainly one of the most celebrated in all of filmdom, but the movie is not about the murder. The movie is about what happens after it’s discovered that there’s no body in the swimming pool. Whaaat?! Huuuhh?! What follows is what puts this movie in a whole other league of baffling intrigue, heart-pounding dread, and killer plot-twists.
The original novel, Celle Qui N’ Était Plus (She Who Was No More) by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, had its film rights ardently sought after by Alfred Hitchcock. Clouzot beat him to it by, reportedly, hours, and filmed this enduring classic. But the authors wanted to make it up to Hitchcock, so they gave him a great deal on another of their novels, D’Entre Les Morts, (loosely, ‘The Living and the Dead’) which Hitchcock made into…Vertigo.
Periscope In The Bathtub 