Diabolique (1955)

The wife and mistress of a loathed school principal hatch a plan to murder him while having the perfect alibi. They carry out the plan...but then his body disappears. Les Diaboliques seriously missed the point that a very creepy film should have and it's sad cause the storyline was very interesting but the execution came out as cheesy and even stupid at times, the acting wasn't anything good either and the script not that well written as it seemed and it's disappointing because the movie had such an interesting plot but was ruined easily. (0/10)

There are three particularly striking things about ' Diaboique '.First, it is a masterpiece of black and white cinematography.I have never seen another film that made such good use of luminescence, reflections and shadows and which dared so much to use such dim lighting in some scenes but very effectively.Secondly, the acting is superb all round. Everyone plays their role so convincingly it is as if they were born to play these particular roles.Simone Signouret does an especially good job.She exudes brazenness simply with subtle facial expressions and the way she moves.Finally, the plot never bogs down.The tension is kept up at all times and you keep wanting to see what happens next. A great thriller and an intriguing time capsule of 1950's France.

I'm in two minds, however, about H.G. Clouzot's Les Diaboliques. It is certainly a movie that captured audiences in 1955. On a recent viewing of Criterion's excellent DVD, however, holes in the plot became more evident, and, even worse, the acting of Simone Signoret deteriorates badly. The similarities to Vertigo (which Boileau and Narcejac wrote for Hitchcock when Clouzot outbid him for the rights to Diabolique) are also a minus. Fortunately, the squalid boarding-school setting is still rich in atmosphere and veteran actor Pierre Larquey's impersonation of a put-upon schoolmaster rates as one of the finest of his extensive (well over 200 movies!) career. Charles Vanel, however, is wasted in a minor role as a last act, intrusive, yet ultimately miscalculating ex-policeman.

I'm not generally given to superlatives and was quite taken by the number of reviewers here who make the claim for "Diabolique" as the most suspenseful film of all time. I too actually thought it was very good with a caveat that comes with the finale of the story which I'll get to in a bit. Director Clouzot really did a masterful job in extending the long exposition of this mystery. If one is fully engaged in the story, it's like chomping at the bit to figure out what's going on with the missing corpse from the pool and unexplained sightings of Michel Delassalle after he'd been 'murdered'. One should probably be able to see the twist coming, and maybe you could in another film, but this is one that plays on one's imagination in a way that blinds you to the eventual outcome. I thought it was just magnificently done.The thing that bothered me about the ending are twofold. In the first instance, even if Michel (Paul Meurisse) and his lover Nicole (Simone Signoret) did manage to scare the frail Christina (Vera Clouzot) to death, what would be the basis for retired police commissioner Alfred Fichet (Charles Vanel) to arrest him for? Scaring someone to death to my mind seems more like conjecture than a chargeable crime. Who could prove it? Even though Fichet overheard the conversation between the conspirators, I don't see why a sharp lawyer couldn't put the blame on Christina's easily confirmed medical history and recent weakened condition.The other issue comes courtesy of the young boy Moinet (Yves Marie-Maurin) who was disbelieved by all who heard him state that he saw the school principal after he disappeared. When he says he 'saw' Christina after she collapsed and was presumed dead, there was no confirmation in the story to prove the point. I'll grant that it was a good hook to keep the viewer guessing, just as it was the first time with Michel's 'murder'. But with former cop Fichet on hand, and school personnel around who would have to have removed the body, wouldn't it have to be established that she was actually dead? If one presumes so, then the scene with Moinet is a moot one.One thought I had while watching was that this would have been a good film for Alfred Hitchcock to take under his wing, and was pleasantly educated by a handful of reviewers who stated that he missed getting the script for this film by a whisker. "Diabolique" was certainly worthy of a Hitchcock treatment, as I found it better than some of his venerated films like "Strangers on a Train" and "Shadow of a Doubt". If one disregards some of my earlier critique, I think it holds up as a pretty suspenseful thriller that keeps you guessing right till the very end.