Europe Endless - Horror: Les Diaboliques (Dir Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1h47m, 1955)
Henri-Georges Clouzot, the film director, has spent the night reading a book recommended by his wife. It is a thin paperback called Celle qui n'était plus ( She Who Was No More ) written by Boileau-Narcejac in 1952; depicting a plot by lovers to murder one of their spouses that spirals out of control, it has kept Clouzot reading through the night. He will option the film in the morning, whisking it from under the nose of Alfred Hitchcock by mere hours. The resultant film will be, alongside the tremendous financial and critical success of 1953's The Wages of Fear, the highlight of Clozot's storied career, and be used by directors from Hitchcock himself outward as a template for horror movies across Europe. This is Les Diaboliques, and it will keep generations awake in its noirish mix of horror, suspense and crime. Les Diaboliques wastes little of its two hour running time: its apparent tone is immediate from its first seconds; this is the n...
