Les Diaboliques

I saw Diabolique, the 1996 version of the same story that inspired Les Diaboliques (1955) when it came out. The film had been shot in Pittsburgh, the city where I spent the first ten years of my life, and I knew one of the schoolboy extras, which is why I happened upon a film that I probably shouldn't have seen at that age. Then again, I saw a lot of movies I shouldn't have seen as a child. Who knows the irreparable damage all of that movie viewing did? But I digress...Having not revisited Diabolique, I remember little of it -- except the climax which involves some seriously awesome contact lenses.

The climax unravels the plot twist, which is the same in Les Diaboliques as in Diabolique so I won't divulge any more details about it. But I bring it up because I can't help but wonder if Les Diaboliques would have had a different effect on me had I not known the twist ending. After all, it is a pretty well-crafted story on its own merits, hence the twist would not have felt cheap or forced. And the ending credits have a specific plea not to spoil the film. I guess I'll just have to wring my hands and wonder "what if?" forever while contemplating the qualities of Les Diaboliques irrespective of the shock I didn't experience.

Les Diaboliques looks like it was shot in the 30's. The film stock is grainy and imprecise, the sound muffled. Compare it to the lush modernity of Elevator to the Gallows which I also just watched recently, and they look like two films from a very different era rather than made at the same time in the same country.

The antiquated look and sound of the movie contrast sharply with how provocative so much of the content is. This is a film that has no reservations in demonstrating the cruelty of its main antagonist, M. Delasalle (Paul Meurisse) one of the most evil characters ever depicted onscreen. When he forces his ailing, suffering wife, Christina (Vera Clouzot) to eat rotten fish, it's certainly disturbing on its own merits, but it's also undeniably loaded in the subtext, made explicit when Delasalle's mistress, Nicole (Simone Signoret) says "some things are hard to swallow. and I'm not talking about fish."

The film wholeheartedly sympathizes with Christina's plight as an abused wife. When Christina talks of divorce attorneys, the recourse of the law seems paltry, ineffectual, and distant compared to Delaselle's freight train of hostility and violence. That is why the plan hatched by Christina and Nicole to kill him seems like a moral option and Christina's further doubts and anxieties about the murder, prior to and after the murder, reveal the moral depth of her character.

Weak-willed, fragile, victimized heroines usually bug the shit out of me. Joan Fontaine in Rebecca is the classic case. David Lynch has a tendency to rely too much on these weak, disenfranchised heroines (Sue, Laura Dern's character in Inland Empire being one particularly obnoxious example). But there's a fire in Christina, an acknowledgment of fate and responsibility that makes her plight endlessly intriguing. This is a woman whose purity and religiosity prevent her from protecting herself- the talk of angels and demons is no coincidence: she is a wounded angel. Clouzot's performance is truly breathtaking- technically accomplished and soulful.

Henri-Georges Clouzot, the director (and the husband of the star) fills his script with choice lines and valuable character information. His directing keeps the action moving at a clipped speed. However, the film errs in its resolution which is hurried and scattershot. Clouzot builds a beautiful house of cards and shows no relish in its inevitable implosion. By the film's conclusion, the violence and inhumanity of Delasalle which colors the film with its tone of depravity and doom seems lost, washed away, perhaps at the bottom of a murky pool.