- Why are Nicole Horner (Simone Signoret) and Christina Delassalle (Véra Clouzot) such good friends? It's a question that anyone watching Henri-Georges Clouzot's utterly captivating Les Diaboliques for the first time should ask, and it turns out to be the central issue of the film. Two of their fellow schoolteachers (Jean Brochard, Pierre Larquey) seem amazed that the wife of Schoolmaster Delassalle (Paul Meurisse) and his mistress should get along so well. Confusing matters further is the abundant evidence that Delassalle abuses both women, with Nicole showing up to teach in sunglasses after a night of overheard screaming. Maybe misery loves company, but maybe there's also something deeper at play.
- After a few vague discussions, really little more than hints of a plan, Nicole and Christina flee to Niort for a long weekend. Once there, Christina phones her husband and demands a divorce. Predictably, he sneaks away from the boarding school to confront her. The little bottle that Nicole stole from a chemistry lab is poured into some wine. Christina hands her enraged husband a few drinks, and he soon grows drowsy, collapsing on the bed. The two women immerse Delassalle in a bathtub, holding him under until he shows no evidence of life. Finally, they are both free. Except that film is only half over, and "finally" isn't always as final as you might expect.
- I'll abide by Les Diaboliques' request to avoid spoiling a 65-year-old plot twist and switch focus to the film's tone. As is hardly surprising to anyone familiar with The Wages of Fear, Clouzot is absolute master of establishing and maintaining tension. Long before the drowning, a schoolwide dinner transforms into a disconcerting public scene as Delassalle loudly chides Christina for refusing to swallow her fish. It's an absurd and uncomfortable situation, but also just believable enough when coming from an abusive husband. And what about the scene featuring the nosy upstairs neighbor (Noël Roquevert ) who fails to extend his puzzle-solving skills to the fact that he is helping to move a body? Or the pool-emptying scene that might rightly earn a faint from anyone? As vivid as this imagery is, blurry faces in photographs and the tall tales of a child are equally haunting, proving that vagueness can be just as scary as detail.
- It would be remiss of me not to mention Les Diaboliques' towering influence on horror and suspense cinema. While many earlier films featured significant plot twists (film noir, for example, is rife with them), this is certainly one of the most famous films to go off in what I would describe as a completely perpendicular direction. It also famously served as a template for Hitchcock when he filmed Psycho and less famously provided the inspiration for the TV detective Columbo in the form of the charmingly astute police inspector (Charles Vanel). More striking, however, is the fact that Les Diaboliques holds up perfectly as a suspense thriller more than half a century after its release. How many other scary movies from the 1950's honestly still pack a punch today?
