Vive la France! Blogathon – Les Diaboliques (1955)

Not only is Les Diaboliques (1955, dir. Henri-Georges Clouzot) one of the greatest psychological thrillers of all time, it is also one of the most unsettling. Georges van Parys’ terrifying score in the opening credits is enough to send shivers down your spine – and remind you of Cape Fear (1962, dir. J. Lee Thompson) in the process – but the steady pace towards the shocking ending is on a whole other level.

School teachers Christina Delassalle (Vera Coulzot) and Nicole Horner (Simone Signoret) conspire to kill Michel Delassalle (Paul Meurisse), a tyrannical school headmaster and their husband and lover, respectively. They carry out their carefully thought-out plan by sedating him and drowning him in a bathtub one night. They then throw his body in the school’s swimming pool, only to find it gone the next day…

The film’s bleak look and overall feel is perfectly suited for its plot and subject matter and what’s great about it is that it hits you straight away. From the beginning, we get this immense sense of dread and doom, so raw and unnapologetically out in the open, which is something I always found particularly brilliant about French cinema of the era. Here, Nicole and Christina’s first interaction sets the tone for the rest of the movie, as it reveals the violent nature of this three-way relationship, while also letting us know who’s in charge. Their scenes together set the plot in motion and the subsequent events are increasingly unnerving, particularly that gruesome murder in the middle of the night, after which, things get even spookier, if that’s even possible. The swimming pool sequence, especially, is a prime example of the ‘anticipation of the bang’ phenomenon that goes with psychological thrillers and it is perhaps the most significant moment in the film, as it changes the course of the narrative and shifts the dynamics between the main characters. This is where the cracks start to show…

Oh and if you’re sensing some Hitchcock vibes, there’s a reason for that. Apparently, Henri-Georges Clouzot beat him for the rights of the book (She Who Was No More by Boileau-Narcejac) by just a few hours and Hitch subsequently called it one of his favorite movies. Luckily, Boileau-Narcejac also wrote D’Entre Les Morts, which, of course, became Vertigo (1958), so…

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