Skip to main content

Forgotten Film Friday (on a Thursday): Les Diaboliques

  A retrospective by Brooks Rich

This is one of those that is only forgotten because it's not known as one of the greatest suspense films of all time. In 1955 Hitchcock was the reigning master of suspense but French filmmaker Henri-Georges Clouzot gave him a run for his money with this brilliant film noir with a supernatural twist. In fact, Clouzot beat Hitchcock to optioning the film rights. If this film had been made by Hitchcock, it would be considered in his top five films. Not that the film Clouzot made is bad. This is a masterpiece. But Hitchcock's name no doubt carries more weight than Clouzot's. 

The plot is very film noir. Two women, one the wife of the headmaster of a Paris boarding school and the other his mistress, conspire to murder the headmaster for revenge for his mistreatment of them and the children at the boarding school. However, when his body disappears, strange events start to occur. That's all I can say without possibly ruining any twist or turn this movie makes, especially the twist ending. 

The noir and supernatural elements play well together. It is essentially a noir film interrupted by a ghost film, that turns into a treatise on paranoia and guilt. It brilliantly builds an atmosphere fit for a ghost film but doesn't take away from the noir elements that really make the story work. If you're looking for something spooky but with a little class this Halloween season, check this film out. It's on HBO right now. 



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Forgotten Film Friday: Absolute Power

Clint Eastwood stars as Luther Whitney, a jewel thief who works in the Washington DC area. One night while he is stealing from a mansion he is forced to hide in a secret compartment with a two way mirror. From there he observes a sexual rezendevous with the wife of a powerful man and the President of the United States Alan Richmond (Gene Hackman) Suddenly the president gets aggressive and while defending herself the woman is shot to death by two Secret Service agents. Luther manages to get away with a letter opener the woman stabbed the president with. At first Luther plans to flee the country. But when he is disgusted by a statement the president makes, Luther decides to expose the crime. I miss these kind of films. The nineties was a great time for thrillers exactly like this. They are not the flashiest films but they are also not obsessed with big action scenes. It's all plot and character with them. Sure this plot might be a little out there but Eastwood makes it work. He's...
1 comment
Read more

John Candy month

 What can you say about John Candy? He was a comic genius who was taken from us too soon. There were a lot of comedic heavyweights of the eighties and nineties but Candy stood above most of them. If there is a Mount Rushmore of comedy I imagine John Candy would be on it. For the month of July we are honoring this comic genius. 
Post a Comment
Read more

Oscar bait month

 The Academy Awards. That time of the year when everyone debates what movies are truly the best and there is never a consensus and no one is ever happy. A movie can be incredibly popular and then it wins a bunch of Oscars and suddenly it's overrated and not very good or downright bad. It happens every year. But for the month of April let's take a look at those films that had Oscars on their mind and instead fell flat on their faces. Now Oscar Bait is a term that can also be applied to winners or films that did score a bunch of nominations. For example Bradley Cooper's film Maestro is very much an Oscar Bait movie even though it had a decent awards season. I want to talk about the films that did nothing. That were early contenders then either faded away eventually or just plain crashed and burned. Oscar Bait's biggest failures. What wrong here with these? Was the movie poor? Did something else just have a dominant run? Or were politics involved? Maybe all of the above. S...
Post a Comment
Read more