Diabolique (1954)

Want to see it?

Seen it?

0
1
2
3
4
5
Rate this movie.

Buy it now on DVD

Starting at $22.42

Want to buy it?

Write a review

Discuss it

Add to lists

Recommend it

Get recommendations

Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot.

Starring Véra Clouzot, Pierre Larquey, Paul Meurisse, Simone Signoret, Charles Vanel.

The greatest film that Alfred Hitchcock never made, Henri-Georges Clouzot's Diabolique is set in a provincial boarding school run by headmaster Michel Delasalle (Paul Meurisse). A ruthless lothario, he becomes the target of a murder plot concocted by his long-suffering invalid wife Christina (Vera Clouzot, the director's own spouse) and his latest mistress, an icy teacher played by Simone Signoret. A dark, dank thriller with a much-imitated "shock" ending, Diabolique is a masterpiece of Grand Guignol suspense. The simple murder plot goes haywire, and Michel's corpse disappears, prompting strange rumors of his reappearance which grow more and more substantial as the film careens wildly towards its breathless conclusion. Later remade as a greatly inferior 1996 Hollywood feature with Sharon Stone and Isabelle Adjani. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide

[more]

Reviews and discussions

Re:Screaming in Spanish: Foreig ...
by unclefestering in Friends of Foreign Flicks

loved it.

"It's been a while since I've seen Les Diaboliques, but I think that it was set in Spain, although is is a French movie. I think that Criterion had it available for a while, but I don't know if it is still out there. it takes place at a bording school where the headmaster's wife and mistress conspire together to kill him. The movie is a thriller as much as a subversive horror movie. It just picks up after the murder and keeps you on the edge of your seat right up until the very end. " [More]

Review by All Movie Guide

All Movie Guide

loved it.

French filmmaker Henri-Georges Clouzot created enough pulse-racing suspense in just two movies to take his place in history next to Alfred Hitchcock as one of the finest thriller directors ever. Clouzot followed up his remarkable 1953 action film The Wages of Fear with the dark and mysterious Diabolique (Les Diaboliques). Wages has moments of almost preternatural tension and is arguably the more interesting film, but Diabolique most captured the popular imagination. That's probably due to the film's familiar yet strikingly fresh combination of chilling atmospherics, sexual intrigue, macabre pacing, and influential "horror" plot construction. Typical of many French films of the 1950s, Clouzot's style was influenced by American film noir; unlike the French New Wave films which followed it, Diabolique also revealed the German expressionist roots of noir. The film has been remade three times, as Reflections of Murder, House of Secrets and the pitiful 1996 Diabolique, and many of its plot twists have been recycled in countless other thrillers. ~ Brendon Hanley, All Movie Guide

Tags: murder , crime , french , suspense , criterion
View all