How dangerous it is to be a little devil. We all want to be precocious tykes getting into trouble for so long, but it comes back to bite us in the form of guilt and punishment.
“Diabolique” is a French thriller that makes us afraid of the dark, of ghosts and of taking baths all without being about any of those things. It’s essentially the story of an immature child who has done wrong and will drive herself insane trying to cover up her lie.
The star Vera Clouzot, the wife of “Diabolique’s” director Henri-Georges Clouzot, plays Christina, a delicate school teacher in a boarding school for boys. She’s the wealthy owner of the school, but it’s run with an iron fist by her vicious husband Michel (Paul Meurisse). She hesitantly hatches a murder scheme with a fellow teacher, Michel’s former mistress Nicole (Simone Signoret). The two are well aware of their rivalry, but they’ve been united in hatred of Michel and his abusive ways.
They intend to run off together over the school’s break, lure Michel there, drug him and drown him in a bathtub. They’ll sneak him back to school and dump him in the school’s pool to make it look like a suicide or accident. But the pool’s scummy water makes him go undiscovered for days, and when the pool is finally drained, the body has vanished.
It’s a wonderfully Hitchcockian, psychological caper, and had Clouzot not bought the rights to the novel first, Hitchcock was in fact next in line. Continue reading “Rapid Response: Diabolique”