Les Diaboliques: Murder with a Twist

Vera Clouzot and Simone Signoret.

Michel Delassalle, the headmaster at a second-rate French boarding school, is not a nice person. He treats his frail wife Christina with disdain, openly engages in an affair with fellow teacher Nicole, and buys bad fish because it’s cheap. He even waters down the wine served to the staff at dinner!

The strong-willed Nicole, who wears sunglasses to hide her recent black eye, is fed up with her abusive lover. She convinces Christina that murder is the only way to get rid of Michel permanently. The two women devise a seemingly foolproof scheme that provides them with solid alibis. And everything works according to plan—except, of course, that Michel’s corpse disappears.

Made in 1955, Les Diaboliques is the forerunner to the twisty psychological thrillers, like Psycho and Homicidal, that became prevalent in the 1960s. Even Hitchcock was interested in adapting the novel She Was No More by Boileau-Narcejac. However, filmmaker Henri-Georges Clouzot purchased the rights after his wife Vera recommended the book.

Simone Signoret as Nicole.

Vera Clouzot also stars as Christina, infusing the role with vulnerability and timidity. Even the boys in her classes recognize her fragility (though she is easily the most popular teacher). Filled with doubt from the outset, Christina needs a strong conspirator and finds one in Nicole. Simone Signoret plays the role with authority and an almost masculine flavor. While her fellow teachers struggle with unruly boys, Nicole’s students march out of their classroom in single file. (The very nature of Nicole’s personality provides a clue to the twist ending.)

Paul Meurisse as Michel.

Henri-Georges Clouzot, whose previous film was the acclaimed Wages of Fear, directs with a sure hand. He fills his frames with shadows and furtive looks. He builds tension effectively, especially in a scene in which a frightened Christina watches from her classroom as a swimming pool—which should contain Michel’s corpse—is drained. Clouzot also adds a touch of dark humor, such as when some upstairs neighbors complain about the noise in Nicole’s apartment, not realizing that a bath tub is being filled to drown a drugged Michel. 

Les Diaboliques has been remade multiple times. Curtis Harrington’s Games is a loose variation starring Simone Signoret again. Tuesday Weld, Joan Hackett, and Sam Waterston appeared in a 1974 TV adaptation called Reflections of Murder. Another notable version was the 1996 theatrical film Diabolique with Sharon Stone and Isabelle Adjani.

We recommend just sticking with the original, though. Clouzot's taut direction, combined with strong acting by the lead actresses, make Les Diaboliques an influential thriller that has stood the test of time. That said, if you're a fan of twist endings, don't expect to be blown away. It's really not that surprising by today's standards, but that's only because the format has been replicated so many times since its release.

William Friedkin's Sorcerer Warrants a Second Look

Remakes face the inevitable fate of being compared to the original version--even when they're not a remake, but rather another interpretation of an existing novel, play, or factual incident. Therefore, it is unfortunate for William Friedkin that Henri-Georges Clouzot adapted the novel The Wages of Fear into a 1952 international film success and almost-instant classic. Sorcerer can't stack up to Clouzot's masterpiece, but it deserves a second look. Once Friedkin overcomes a disjointed first half, he transforms his film into an astounding rollercoaster ride where death stands in plain sight around every corner and across every bridge.

Roy Scheider.

The film can be divided into two parts. The first half traces how three men--a French business executive, a terrorist, and an insignificant gangster--wind up down on their luck in a squalid Latin American town. Desperate for money, they agree to drive two trucks, each loaded with three boxes of nitroglycerin-leaking dynamite, over 200 miles of jungle, bumpy roads, sharp ravines, and temporary bridges. An oil company needs the explosives to "blow out" a raging oil fire. The men need the $40,000, of course.

The second half of the film focuses on the gripping, tension-filled journey--the highlight being the crossing of a dilapidated swinging bridge during a savage storm. Friedkin brilliantly combines visual and aural elements to create a chaotic mixture of howling winds, booming thunder, creaking timbers, and slashing torrents of rain. The trucks look like bizarre wingless dragons, with their grills for teeth, hood vents for nostrils, and headlights for eyes. However, in terms of visual power, nothing can match the mesmerizing image of Roy Scheider's truck tilted at an uncanny 45-degree angle as it inches across the crumbling bridge.

The edge-of-the-seat bridge sequence.

The film's only American star, Scheider, plays a man with no meaning in his life. He wants the money--to the point that he gets excited about his share increasing if the other drivers die on a swinging bridge. But the money really means nothing, for Scheider's character has nowhere to go and no one who cares about him. He already is dead emotionally, so his eventual destiny is just a formality.

With its downbeat tone and unlikable characters, Sorcerer looks as if it was made in the late 1960s or early 1970s when films like Easy Rider dominated the theaters. It's easy to see why it did not appeal to the same moviegoers who made Star Wars the biggest hit of 1977. It was pronounced dead on arrival on its original release as critics labeled it a disappointing remake. But it has since found a second life with movie buffs who admire Friedkin's virtuosic direction of the explosive truck trek and are drawn to his existential approach to the tale.