Diabolique
“Don’t be devils!” admonishes the closing caption of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s masterful 1955 murder mystery, Diabolique. “Don’t ruin the interest your friends could take in this film. Don’t tell them what you saw.”
If there’s a statute of limitations for film spoilers, half a century seems a generous time frame, but far be it from Torontoist to risk Clouzot’s posthumous wrath. Suffice it to say, Diabolique (also known as Les Diaboliques) is a certified classic, acknowledged by no less an authority than Hitchock himself as an influence on both Psycho and Vertigo, which, like Diabolique, is based on a novel by authors Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac. More widely acclaimed than even its 1953 predecessor, The Wages of Fear, Diabolique is a peerless exercise in cinematic suspense, and an enduring high-water mark among psychological thrillers.
Water, in fact, is the film’s key motif, serving as both the tool by which the meek wife (Véra Clouzot) and calculating mistress (Simone Signoret) of a tyrannical schoolmaster (Paul Meurisse) plot to effect the latter’s demise, and as a representation of the murky moral depths in which Clouzot’s characters are seemingly perpetually immersed. The notion of posthumous wrath, too, figures prominently amid a series of superbly conceived narrative twists, and in a brilliant, unforgettable conclusion, entirely worthy of its director’s exhortations of secrecy.
Rarely venturing beyond the grounds of the boarding school where its characters live and work, Clouzot transmits the conspirators’ psychological angst with great formal economy, employing spare but effective sound design and elegant but meticulously arranged compositions. The murder plot itself, by contrast, becomes implausibly intricate but remains devilishly satisfying—a credible contrivance, well suited to a setting pervaded by a vaguely sinister aura, and tinged with an air of the supernatural.
As the pulpier half of an astounding, mid-’50s one-two combination, Diabolique still packs plenty of punch, and is probably more accessible than the lengthier, overtly existential Wages of Fear. It’s an ingenious prototype that has rarely been bettered, and is a natural entry point for Clouzot neophytes, as well as a time-honoured delight for veteran cinephiles.