no body there
by
Douglas Messerli
Henri-Georges
Clouzot and Jérôme Géronimi (screenplay), Henri-Georges Clouzot (director) Les Diaboliques / 1955
One
of the reasons that Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1955 film Les Diaboliques remains so compelling today is that it lies to its
audience, masquerading as a simple murder film while actually being a kind of
toxic horror film / mystery.
If Venezuelan-born Christina Delassalle (Véra Clouzot) is a wealthy heiress whose dream had been to run a boarding school just outside Paris, she is also a weak woman, who has let her husband, Michel (Paul Meurisse), abuse her, evidently for years. She is also naïve in her beliefs, allowing her husband’s current mistress to engage her in something close to a lesbian
alliance wherein the two plan to kill Michel. And, although,
she resists going through with the convoluted plot several times, ultimately
she does successfully drug him (so she believes) and participates in his
drowning in a bathtub.
Despite the deviousness of Christina’s
and Nicole’s (Simone Signoret) plan, in which they supposedly lure Michel to
his lover’s apartment after his wife has demanded a divorce, the director
somehow manages to allow his audience to side with their behavior, particularly
given the fact that Michel has not only been brutal towards them but abuses the
school children and his other colleagues as well. Indeed, it is a wonder that
the whole school doesn’t, as the children do at one moment, rise up in utter
rebellion against its official Principal.
Clouzot manages, accordingly, to convince
his audience that a murder is justified, making us cohorts, as it were, who
continue—despite a few possible slip-ups—to hope that the women get away with their
dirty deed; and, in fact, we are led, like the naïve Christina, to believe they
have carried it our successfully.
Gradually, however, the movie shifts to
a kind of ghost-story as we wait for the body which they’ve thrown into the
dirty swimming pool, to rise and be discovered. When some boys
accidentally kick their soccer ball into the poll, threatening to send some
into its waters to retrieve it, Nicole finally orders its draining. No
body is discovered, and soon after, a young boy declares that the
Principal—missing for several days—has confiscated his sling shot. A group
school photo, showing us a shadowy figure above peering through the window,
finally convinces us that something is horribly awry.
The sudden appearance of a private
detective shifts the film again, at first convincing us that he is on to the
actions of the two women, but finally forcing us to question our basic assumptions,
just in time for Michel to appear in the flesh, resulting in Christina’s heart
attack and death.
Like her, too late we realize we have
been tricked, that indeed Michel and Nicole have plotted her death.
In many senses, this rather clumsy plot
twist is almost comic; in fact, Sidney Lumet used a similar plot in his comic
film of 1982, Deathtrap. But Clouzot
ends his film with almost mock-seriousness, warning viewers not to reveal the
ending.
That Clouzot’s Brazilian born wife, Véra,
died of a heart attack only five years
later, much like her character in this film, brought the film new attention,
while sending its director into a deep depression.
Los Angeles,
November 20, 2016
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