Diabolique (Les Diaboliques) (1955)

A+

One cold morning this week I was sick and couldn’t sleep. After spending an hour and a half tossing and turning, I decided to go to my couch and watch a movie I had on my DVR. I thought I would watch a little TV to help me fall asleep. Unfortunately for my need to sleep, but fortunately for my movie-loving heart, the movie I chose was Diabolique . I have a lot of unwatched movies on my DVR and this was the oldest and getting close to being deleted.

I did not know anything about this movie before watching it except the premise. A man’s wife and his mistress plot his murder. As the film begins, I quickly see why the two women would desire this man’s demise. Michel Delassalle, the headmaster of the school Institution Delassalle, is abusive both physically and verbally to the women. We first see Nicole Horner, his mistress and teacher at the school for boys, wearing a pair of sunglasses to hide her latest gift from Delassalle. At dinner that night he forces his wife Christina to eat the bad fish he has served to all the children in order to set a good example for everyone else. You see the pain and torment across her face as he pushes her to eat it.

Nicole and Christina decide that night to go on with their plans to murder Michel. The plan seems perfect down to every detail. They drown him in Nicole’s bath tub in another town and bring him back to the school to dump his body in the murky swimming pool. I watched in suspense as several times, the body is nearly discovered. Because of his reputation with women, none of the other teachers, or students (who seem to know too much about their headmaster’s private life), find it odd that Michel does not return right away after the holiday. The next few days nearly drive Christina out of her mind as she waits for the body to be discovered. Nicole, the strong authoritative one, decides to shorten the waiting process by accidentally dropping Christina’s keys to the school into the pool. When a student is unable to find the keys at the bottom of the pool, Christina is forced to order the pool drained. We watch her unravel as the pool is drained just outside her classroom’s window, only to discover there is no body there.

This is where the movie begins to take on its twists and turns. As the women are seemingly haunted by the body’s whereabouts by several events, Christina’s health declines and Nicole seems to grow stronger.

Diabolique is a movie wonderfully acted by Paul Meurisse (Michel), Vera Clouzot (Christina), and Simone Signoret (Nicole) who all turn out thoroughly convincing performances. Henri-Georges Clouzot directs this film to its brilliant finish with possibly the most suspenseful ten minutes on film. With its black-and-white cinematography, the film is a shining, or more perhaps more appropriately shadowy, example of a film noir classic. If you see the ending coming it is only because of the influence that this film has had on many films that followed. Watch Diabolique and you won’t regret it!

Reviewed January 6, 2010