Les Diaboliques

2011 • 112 minutes

About this movie

After the success of The Wages of Fear (le Salaire de la peur) Henri-Georges Clouzot cemented his reputation with his masterpiece, Les Diaboliques, an acknowledged influence on Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick among others. Based on a novel by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac (who also wrote the novel on which Hitchcock's Vertigo is based), Les Diaboliques tells the story of a sadistic headmaster (Paul Meurisse) who brutalises his wife and mistress (Vera Clouzot and Simone Signoret) and their plot to murder him. Superbly edited with nail-biting suspense, the two women murder the headmaster and dump the body in the swimming pool, but when the pool is drained no corpse is found. An unsettling and beautifully-paced study of betrayal, mistrust and guilt, Les diaboliques is atmospherically shot in black and white, its murky tones hauntingly echo the moral ambiguity of its principals. Les Diaboliques is presented in a brand new transfer from a new High Definition restoration of the original film negative.

Ratings and reviews

5+ of course!