Customer Reviews

Diabolique - Restored Version [VHS]

5 star:		(54)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Based on the Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac novel CELLE QUI N'ETAIT PLUS, Henri-Georges Clouzot's 1955 DIABOLIQUE is easily among the most influential films of world cinema, leaving its mark on everything from Alfred Hitchcock's VERTIGO and PSYCHO to William Castle's THE TINGLER--but even so, and while Hitchcock's masterpieces can be said to at least equal the Clouzot original, few if any of the films spawned by DIABOLIQUE ever bested it.

Variously known as DIABOLIQUE, LES DIABOLIQUES, and THE DEVILS, the film presents a complex story. Christina Delasalle (Vera Clouzot, wife of director Henri-Georges Clouzot), is a remarkably beautiful and considerably wealthy woman who has the misfortune to suffer from delicate health, personal timidity, and brutish husband Michel (Paul Meurisse.) The two operate a boys' school that Christina owns, and among the teachers is hard-nosed Nicole Horner (Simone Signoret), who has become Michel's mistress but who finds Michel every bit as unpleasant as wife Christina. An unlikely alliance springs up between the two women, and together they conspire to murder Michel and thereafter run the school for themselves. But although the murder seems to go as planned, the body goes missing, and the two women suddenly find themselves taunted by mysterious notes and strange happenings. Has Michel survived the attempt on his life? Or has the murder been discovered and the stage is being set for blackmail?

In the wake of DIABOLIQUE's international success, the story has been told in so many variations that many may consider the original has lost some of the shock value it possessed when it first debuted, but even so the film has much to offer. This is particularly true in terms of style of performances. Director Clouzot endows the film with a sense of visual decay and a near-documentary tone that merge to create one of the most chilling atmospheres ever captured on screen. While Signoret's performance of the angry mistress is the more widely celebrated, she is equaled by Vera Clouzot, who has the more complex role and whose performance must carry the weight of the film's most disturbing moments; together they create a truly remarkable synergy of the most lethal kind.

I have seen DIABOLIQUE in several different releases, and while the Criterion DVD is somewhat glitchy it is easily the best version available; one should avoid all other releases, particularly the truly atrocious release by Madacy. Strongly recommended, particularly to fans of internation cinema and classic suspense.

Director Henri-Georges Clouzot's DIABOLIQUE is one of these movies we, in french speaking countries, have seen at least a dozen times on TV in our teen days. Always with pleasure. In part, because of the terrific cast but mainly because of the whodunit plot.

And now, a lot of years after (ten ?), I bought the DVD right after its release. I don't know exactly why, DIABOLIQUE being not the kind of movie you always put in your 10 best list. Maybe it was due to Vera Clouzot, the director's wife, who appeared only in a few movies with her spanish accent and who, in DIABOLIQUE, with her hair nicely combed, plays a character similar to the heroins of the fairy tales of our childhood. Or is it Simone Signoret who, with Anna Magnani and Bette Davis, is a star whose light hasn't faded with the years passing by. Paul Meurisse perhaps ? Or Charles Vanel, or Michel Serrault, already perfect in a comic role ?

What I know for sure is that I can watch DIABOLIQUE again and again without being tired of it. In my opinion, it is a classic movie in the most noble sense of the term.

No extra-features with the movie, sound perfect but a copy with some scratches and often grainy. Strange when one thinks of the quality of Criterion's work on, for instance, Ingmar Bergman's THE SEVENTH SEAL.

A DVD for your library.

I don't have too much to say, except to echo the accolades that your other reviewers have given this masterpiece of suspense from France. The few people who found it too tame or dull are perhaps those enamoured of films with characters named "Jason" or "Freddy" !

For anyone who reveals the surprise ending, this would be a crime even more atrocious than the one depicted in the movie, and should be punishable by a re-instated guillotine !

Simone Signoret and Vera Clouzot are unforgettable in the leads, each character playing beautifully off the other. One other comment--this is a 50s film, yet schoolboys are portrayed with brutal accuracy--they swear, act rudely, are preocuupied with sex--these are real children, not those that are found in Disney films.

The DVD is nice--some wear is visible here and there, but does not detract from your experience. Of course, the film is in French, but the subtitles are smooth. The absence of music is another plus. In some Hollywood suspense films, you can tell that "something is about to happen" because of the music--not the case here.

If you collect Hitchcock films and other suspense thrillers, your library is not complete without this true classic.

This film is far more than a potboiler with a clever twist at the end: the script, performances and photography are really very fine indeed. Clouzot paces the film briskly, so the murder is more or less afoot within the first 10 minutes: great stuff.

Paul Meurisse as the loathsome headmaster is excellent, as are Vera Clouzot as his frail wife and Simone Signoret as his mistress. The lesser roles (school staff etc) are also well taken.

As for the DVD, I was pleasantly surprised at the quality. Soundwise, don't worry about the rather constricted melodramatic music over the opening credits. That's the last music you'll hear, and the speech driven mono soundtrack sounds fine.

From an image point of view, the transfer was better than I was expecting, after reading other reviews of this DVD. It is correctly framed in 1.33:1, and the print used has little damage in terms of nicks or scars. Very occasionally there are more flecks than you might want, but nothing to worry about.

The image is reasonably sharp (and improves on some of the interiors, particularly the darker scenes), although occasionally it is a little soft with a touch of grain in the daytime exteriors. I also noticed that this slight softness coincided with Vera Clouzot being on screen, so perhaps it was deliberate on her husband the director's part. The lighting of this film is also superb: just check out some of the night exteriors which are superbly atmospheric.

So will this film `drive you up the wall' as the film guide says? Well, no, not really. The twist at the end is very well done, if not too surprising to modern audiences. There is at least one smaller twist after that, though, which will make you think.

A classic of the cinema which I recommend in its Criterion format.

There are countless reviews of this seminal film to be read on the internet, so I shall direct my focus away from the aspects with which most of them deal.

Consider, for example the backdrops. Have you noticed how detailed and intricate they are? Every cobblestone in a street is seen, every crease on a bedcover, every scratch on a door handle - every shot is crammed with detail. I cannot recall seeing a blank wall or a plain open space.

This richness of visual detail is usually missing in Hitchcock films. I also find a richer dialogue than Hitchcock at this period ever provided. Richer too is the cast of eccentrics, drunkards, neighbours, and bit players. The drunkard who attempts to secrete himself in the back of the van containing the body in the basket, once seen, is never forgotten.

Writers Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac wrote the novel and the film rights were obtained by Clouzot only hours before Hitchcock's bid was received. Never mind if Simone Signoret usually has a cigarette protruding from her mouth in the early scenes, never mind that she and Vera Clouzot are made to totter around on the absurdly high-heeled shoes women wore in the mid 1950s, this is a film that will look good and captivate audiences forever.

The story goes that a fellow told Alfred Hitchcock that after his daughter saw Psycho she refused to take a shower and that after she saw Diabolique she refused to get in a bathtub. Well, Hitchcock said, send her to the dry cleaners.

Diabolique is one of the most masterful scary movies you could hope to see. Even after 50 years, when the twist is probably well known, the movie is so well crafted and so well acted that it still carries me along. It takes place in a second-rate French boarding school for boys run by a sneering brute named Michel Delasalle (Paul Meurisse). His wife, Christine Delasalle (Vera Clouzot), who actually has the money in the family, is a weak woman with a bad heart, whom he abuses and humiliates. He openly has taken as a mistress a teacher in the school, Nicole Horner (Simone Signoret), whom he has smacked around one too many times. Christine and Nicole hatch a plan to lure Delasalle to Nicole's house some distance from the school. There, they will drug and drown him, then carry him back to the school and pitch his body into the unused, scum covered water of the school's swimming pool. When the body is discovered, it will be called a suicide or an accident. The two women pull it off...but when the pool is drained, there is no body. Then the suit Delasalle was wearing is delivered to the school by a laundry. A student is given a penalty and says it was the headmaster. A Delasalle appears to have registered at a local hotel. The two women don't know what is happening, and the strain begins to tell on them. They begin to bicker and blame each other. Nicole leaves the school. Christine must stay, but she is showing signs of emotional and physical collapse. Then the plot really begins.

So many elements, for me, really work. Everything in the film looks tawdry and worn. The swimming pool water is filthy and covered with slime. Every now and then small bubbles break the surface. The photography (and the film is shot in black and white) feature deep shadows, dark nights, candles. A shoe will appear, half hidden; a doorknob slowly turns; a bathtub looks like it could use a scrubbing. And there is no background music to speak of, just the quiet sounds of things moving and breathing. At the same time, the activities of the boys in the school are well developed and we come to recognize several of them. They bring us back a bit from the sense of something terrible happening, then we slip back into the movie.

Clouzot, in my opinion, has done a terrific job of building a sense of dread, but at the same time keeping us off balance by disguising what may be happening. Even though the "secret" of the plot is by now well known, Clouzot's craftsmanship keeps us (or at least me) watching. He spends whatever time he needs to build a scene or create an atmosphere. Watch how the serving of fish at the start of the movie is used to create whole stories about the school, the life of the boys, the situation of the teachers, and the characters of Michel Delasalle and his wife. Watch how Clouzot builds a creepy sense of dread when Christine goes to the morgue to identify what she thinks may be her husband's body. The sequence takes us from Christine trying to establish why she thinks the body is her husband's to the two attendants taking a cheap wooden casket from the basement of the morgue to the viewing room. At some point we realize that we are getting nervous ourselves about what might be in that box.

The end of the movie, when it was released initially in the United States, had people leaping three feet off their seats. That probably won't happen now to a new viewer, but the movie remains, in my opinion, a very fine piece of work. The Criterion edition is fairly bare bones, but the picture looks very good and there is an informative insert.

This is one of my favorite films, and of course, Criterion is now on board with the definitive version of this wonderfully complex thriller. No matter how many times you've seen it, you will never be able to guess where the twists and turns come from because they never let up. The story of a womanizing school headmaster who is brutal to both his wife and his mistress has shocked and influenced both filmmakers and audiences since it was first released in 1954. After the women decide to do away with the beast, the fun starts and bodies start disappearing and, well, to give anything else away to those who have not seen the film would be criminal on my part. Henri-George Clouzot's masterpiece will tickle anybody who loves intelligent horror. The film is expertly mounted, lit, and is accompanied by an eerie, smoky score that accompany the amazing images perfectly. Avoid the terrible Hollywood remake and get this incredible film in Criterion's deluxe edition, which is up to their usual excellent standards. In French with English subtitles.

It is no secret that this is a classic suspense film in every sense. It would seem only natural that Criterion would pick this film to be part of their revered collection. Most people who are willing to spend the kind of money that it takes to acquire a Criterion disc take comfort in the knowledge that they will experience the highest possible picture and sound quality possible for the particular film. Well, with the disc of Diabolique, that is just not the case. The film is loaded with dirt, grain, holes, tears, and even splices. At one point in viewing the disc I noticed a large circle flash by. I scanned back and paused on the frame to see that what appears to be a melted spot on the film had been circled, perhaps for removal later. It is still there, though. Also, the picture had a slight vibrating quality about it through the whole movie which was an annoyance. The picture is watchable, but for the price and the Criterion name, I expected much, much more. There are some serious issues with the sound as well. There is a constant low hiss on the soundtrack that can be distracting. The subtitles are pale and hard to read. I always enjoy watching the restoration demonstration on Criterion discs. I like seeing how huge picture defects can be erased just like magic. This movie obviously never recieved such treatment. I find it hard to believe that any restoration work at all was done to Diabolique before it was dumped on the market. Basically, the movie is definitely worth seeing, but do not assume anything simply because this is a Criterion disc. You could buy the same movie of the same quality on VHS for much less.

This review refers to the Criterion Collection DVD edition of "Diabolique"(1955 FR)....

Simone Signoret, Vera Clouzot, Paul Meurisse and Charles Vanel turn in chilling and outstanding performances in this fine French thriller. "Diabolique" AKA "Les Diaboliques"(The Devils) is a wonderful piece of filmnoir that will keep you on the edge of your seat throughout the entire story.

Christina Delassalle runs a provincial school for boys. Her husband Michel is the very stern pricipal of the school. He is abusing her physically and verbally, but she is timid, weakened with a heart condition and very much under his thumb. She is not alone though. Nicole, a teacher at the school, is having an affair with Michel, and although she has quite a strong presence, she also turns up with a blackened eye, now and then. The two very different woman form an alliance and plan the demise of the man who is making their lives so miserable. The plan is elaborate but full-proof, they have their alibis, and everything goes off without a hitch..until...the body has disappeared from the pool they dumped it in..oops! And so this very chilling mystery begins.

The film is hypnotic with its fine intrigue and suspense. Shot in black and white, the shadows and light add a mysterious feeling. The music by Georges Van Parys is haunting and pulls you into the web right from the start. It is artfully directed by H.G. Clouzot and one that even though you know the surprise twists and ending, you will want to watch often.

I was really glad to see this on DVD. I would always watch it whenever I saw it coming on Turner. The transfer is presented in the original theatrical aspect(1.33:1) It was "created from a 35mm fine-grain composite master. Made from a restored Negative" So how does it look?...
Considering this is a 50 year old foreign film, I'd say ..pretty darn good! It is not as crystal clear as some of the others of the era, there are some specks here and there, but mostly the picture was more then decent and the black and white images crisp. The DD Mono was clear and distinct at all times. There is a nice insert with notes,chapters, and credits.The film is presented in the original French language track and has optional English subtitles(very nice and clear).

A must have for your thriller or foreign film collection...
Merci....Laurie

also recommended:La Sentinelle
Dangerous Liaisons
and 8 Women / Swimming Pool ( François Ozon 2 pack)

I thought this "restored" version was subtitled in English - it says so on the jacket- but it's dubbed, and poorly at that. The audio in this particular version offered at $12.99 is often difficult to understand. The voices of some of the boys are too mature for their ages and the some of the other characters' voiceovers do not fit their physiques or personalities. The video quality couldn't be any worse in a six dollar version with white subtitles. KW, Melbourne, FL, USA