wpkrip There are three particularly striking things about ' Diaboique '.First, it is a masterpiece of black and white cinematography.I have never seen another film that made such good use of luminescence, reflections and shadows and which dared so much to use such dim lighting in some scenes but very effectively.Secondly, the acting is superb all round. Everyone plays their role so convincingly it is as if they were born to play these particular roles.Simone Signouret does an especially good job.She exudes brazenness simply with subtle facial expressions and the way she moves.Finally, the plot never bogs down.The tension is kept up at all times and you keep wanting to see what happens next. A great thriller and an intriguing time capsule of 1950's France.

hellholehorror Good shot selection and editing. Solid picture and sound quality for the age. I can't fairly rate this movie as it is subtitled and I wasn't really paying attention. Seemed like a very good idea and the ending is excellent. Slow-building psychological suspense well executed and somewhat timeless.

sharky_55 The twist ending to Les Diaboliques has been imitated and ripped off so many times that by now modern audiences can pinpoint its existence fairly easily, but back in 1955 it was ripe and fresh in the imagination. If great movies stand the test of time, then Les Diaboliques may not fit that particular criteria. Henri-Georges Clouzot, dismissed by his New Wave compatriots, dealt predominantly in thrillers and is most known for his previous feature before this one, The Wages of Fear. In Wages he allots nearly half of the film in setting up his protagonists and their dead-end setting of Las Piedras, connected to the rest of the world not by plane or road but jungle pathways, tar pits and precarious wooden supports atop rocky cliffs. The film in its full, uncut version (the censors correctly guessed his intent) however is less a character study and more an allegorical jab at the capitalist system that forces the workers into their corners. Clouzot spends the first hour defining them, but the next holding them at arm's length because of the broader message - William Friedkin's remake, Sorcerer, allocates each strand of the story its own separate introduction but falls to the same error. The ending, a deeply ironic sequence juxtaposing the merry waltz of the naive lover and the askew existentialism of Mario is a cheap parting shot at the low hanging fruit of Hollywood. But the scenarios beforehand show Clouzot to be a master of constructing tension, even for characters with fuzzy and undefined pasts. His scenes rightfully are not scored, leaving only the natural sounds of the environment to be magnified and exaggerated in the minds of those who traverse them. Each chilling incident in Les Diaboliques relies on the paranoia of Christina to elevate curiosity into fear; elsewhere the tone is casually cheery as the rest of the school's inhabitants discuss the events in passing. Clouzot's objectiveness, then, is justified. He doesn't dip into the sub-conscious like Hitchcock might; everything is shot matter-of-fact, with no POVs, and the selective closeups merely show what is there to be seen. Though a few moments reveal noir and expressionist imagery, it scarcely reaches the heights of puzzles such as Vertigo (the intensity of associative colour and the dizziness of the dolly zoom) or Rebecca (the overwrought set design and the camera tracing ghostly movement). All its elements are able to be rationalised by Fichet, who enters jarringly as the pipe-wielding Holmes figure, also possessing similar levels of superhuman deduction. If the retired police chief carries himself with amusement and seems to relish watching them squirm, it is a symptom of Christina's guilt closing in on her own conscience. The building of the mystery follows this same line of thought: we don't see the splotchy clue in the picture that might be a resurrected Michel, but merely her horrified reaction. When she sits up in bed in her white nightgown like a tucked-in child, a slimy hand reaches out from the shrouds of darkness to grab at her - it's merely Fichet, who has more questions and queries for her. Everything is inferred through her mind, and so gloves left at a typewriter, jostling sounds from the bathroom and a sliver of white light snaking through a crack in the doors all become terrifying, in her eyes and so too in ours. Véra Clouzot is the best of the actors. She has the bodily posture of a wooden board, like the stiff, frigid, battered woman she has become in the subjugation of her marriage. The conversations with her husband are not equal duels; each of his sneering insults must be fended off, and at times she seems to be bracing knowingly for impact before she even is slapped. While some might question the logic of a mistress banding together with the wife, here is a character who does not question such things because she has been bruised long enough that any relief is an opportunity immediately seized. She never stops to consider that Nicole, her masculine opposite, might have an ulterior motive every bit as filthy as the opening credits shot of the muddy pool. Clouzot assigns an anti-spoiler warning to maintain this logical twist ending (a move first utilised by Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap, and later in the same vein with Hitchcock's Psycho). But he also throws a final spanner in the works. Having revealed all the answers he slips one last puzzle in: perhaps Christina did not die of a heart attack after all, and is still lurking the halls of the boarding school. Having pulled off the bait and switch, Clouzot can't bear to waste all the buildup of the supernatural and fantastical. It's like having your cake and eating it too.

quinimdb Apparently Hitchcock tried to buy the rights for this film after reading the book it is based off of, and as prestigious as Hitchcock is, it's hard to imagine it would be any better than this.The plot is rather simple. Two women, one in an abusive relationship, Christina Delasalle, and one who used to be with the same man, Nicole Horner, attempt to murder the abusive husband, Michel Delasalle. But these murderers aren't cold people, or at least Christina isn't, and if she was, then there would be no tension. Nicole on the other hand, is a bit more mysterious. She is separated from Christina by poles and many other environmental objects in the shots early in the film, but as it progresses Christina begins to trust her a bit more. And so do we. But strange occurrences begin to happen, and as the guilt and paranoia begins to nag at Christina, we begin to feel the same sense of paranoia. Subtle things will happen in this film just to throw you off, even for a second. Such as holding a shot for just a little too long, or switching to another unrelated group of people walking by. And when I say this film constantly keeps you guessing, I mean that. Just when you think you've figured out what's going on, it will send you down another long winding road quickly. Even after the film is practically over (after one of the most suspenseful and surprising endings of all time), the VERY last shot of the film ends on a rather ambiguous note.