By Susan Hayward
"Les Diaboliques" (The Fiends) used to be a best grossing movie in 1955. Clouzot shrouded his movie in secret, beseeching his viewers to not provide away the finishing. He additionally significantly replaced the unique tale of Boileau and Narcejeac's novel ("Celle qui n'était plus"), heterosexualising the unique lesbian plot. His movie demonstrates how you can suggest, instead of exhibit, horror, conserving the spectator in a nation of endured suspense, in simple terms freeing us within the few ultimate frames. Fifty years later, "Les Diaboliques" nonetheless intrigues might be because of its over the top ambiguities and various plot twists that make it a movie noir to finish all movies noirs, and never least the nice functionality of Simone Signoret. during this relaxing and tough Cine-File, Susan Hayward, top author on French cinema, units "Les Diaboliques" opposed to the political tradition of its time and demonstrates the significance of Clouzot as a grasp of the mystery style. She offers an illuminating in-depth textual research of the movie and offers a comparability with its US remake which, juxtaposed with the unique movie e-book, highlights the nice endurance of Clouzot's model, nonetheless a well-liked movie with foreign audiences part a century after its premiere.
Susan Hayward is Professor of French, collage of Exeter. Her books contain: "Luc Besson," "French nationwide Cinema" and co-author of "French movie: Texts and Contexts."
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Extra info for Les Diaboliques (Cine-File French Film Guides)
Sample text
To complicate matters further, in this context of trying to fix Nicole as the femme fatale – which, in a sense, we can do only when we have seen the entire film – there are times (as we shall see) when, even if she is supposed to be the femme fatale, she seems deliberately to evacuate that role. Rather than eliminate the femme fatale, however, Clouzot appears to fragment her at will: it could be any one of these three central characters. And it is this shifting uncertainty that is such a hallmark of Clouzot’s thriller/noir films and that keeps us, the audience, in such a state of unease.
At times the tracking shot gets interrupted, stopped in its tracks, as it were, before being able to pick up again. At other times this stop-start feel becomes almost a rocking back and forward, with a backtracking being almost immediately followed by a forward-tracking. This is particularly the case in the murder scene in Nicole’s apartment, especially if we measure from the moment Michel arrives until he is drowned. A quarter of the shots in that sequence are in tracking (21 out of 84 shots).
The only elements that hint at an iconicity of femme fatale are her sunglasses and her high heels, and even these she quickly shelves in favour of carpet slippers as soon as she can, as if disinclined to inhabit such a prescriptive space (as that of the femme fatale). Nicole’s evacuating of her role as femme fatale causes a disruption within the narrative and it is as if the strength of her characterisation permits the original text to bleed back in, permitting a queer reading. As an effect of heterosexualising the text, Les Diaboliques confronts us with sexualities that fail to run true to type or refuse almost to conform with the film noir generic narrative’s expectation of them.