Today is February 14th which means it's Valentine's Day.
Ah oui ! Saint Valentin! Quand nous offrons des expressions de romantisme et de passion à ceux que nous aimons.
Sorry, today's post is about a French film so I got caught up in the spirit of the thing.
Let's try that again.
Ah yes! Valentine's Day! When we offer expressions of romance and passion for those we love.
So the theme for today's movie post is....
How to murder your spouse!
So Happy Valentine's Day.
It's Movie Time!
The subject of today's movie post is Les Diaboliques, a 1955 French psychological thriller film co-written and directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, and starring Simone Signoret, Véra Clouzot, Paul Meurisse, and Charles Vanel.
No, you don't know who those people are but that's OK.
Neither do I.
The movie is based on the 1952 novel Celle qui n'était plus (The One Who Was No More) by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narceja
What happens when a wife and her husband's mistress conspire to kill the husband? Let's find out!
Our drama centers around Hauts-de-Seine, a less than high quality boys' boarding school the suburbs of Paris.
The headmaster is Michel Delassalle, a cheap and malicious tyrant who hates the school and the boys in his charge. He is a miserable misanthrope who takes out his frustrations on the students, the staff and his wife.
The school is owned by Michel's wife, Christina, a wealthy, devout Catholic émigrée from Venezuela. She is the school's Spanish teacher.
Christina is also in poor heal, frail and unstable from a chronic heart condition.
Michel is totally contemptuous towards Christina, despising her for her frail condition, her mortality, her dreams. He consistently mocks her, always piling on emotional abuse.
Michel is having an affair with Nicole Horner, another teacher at the school. But Michel doesn't seem to treat Nicole any better than he does his wife.
Which may explain while Christina and Nicole form a bond over their mutual abuse from Michel.
(They may also might be in a lesbian affair but that is totally subtext. More on that later in the post.)
So a plan is planned to make Michel unalive.
1) Drug Michel's wine.
2) Drown him in a bathtub.
3) Dump his dead ass into the pool at the school.
4) Wait for his pale bloated dead body to float up to the surface of the pool.
5) Authorities will assume Michel got drunk, stumbled outside and fell into the pool and drowned.
The plan goes according to plan through step 3 but runs into a hitch at step 4.
Michel's pale bloated dead body never floats up to the surface of the pool.
Nicole arranges to have the pool drained and nope, no body.
What the hell?
Christina is feeling a LOT of stress.
Which is not good for her precariously weak heart.
Thumpity-thump!
So the stress gets worse.
There are reports of someone matching Michel's description showing up around Paris.
Thumpity-thumpity-thump!
Christina's wake heart is getting worse.
And some of the kids report seeing Michel around the school grounds.
Thumpity-thumpity-thump-thump!
A photo of the students and staff in front of the school shows someone in one of the windows of the building. That kinda sorta looks like Michel Delassalle.
Thumpity-thumpa-thumpity-thumpa-thump!
Doctors attending to Christina are worried that she's thisclose to dying of a heart attack so they tell her to stay in bed.
CAUTION: I am heading for a major SPOILER!!
While trying to sleep one night, Christina hears a noise coming from the bathroom and she goes to investigate.
Rising out of the a full tub of water is the body of Michel Delassalle?!?!
Thumpity-thumpa-th-th-th--SPLUT!!!!
Sacre bleu! Christina is dead from a heart attack!
SPOILER!!!
Nicole rushes into the room to embrace her lover Michel as they celebrate success in their scheme to murder Christina via heart attack!
What the hell! Really?!?!
Les Diaboliques is a masterful exercise in building tension and suspense. It feels like an Alfred Hitchcock movie. But in French.
Reportedly Hitchcock wanted to get the rights to the book Celle qui n'était plus but was beat to the punch by Henri-Georges Clouzot which royally pissed off ol' Hitch!
Speaking of the book, the movie follows the book AND it doesn't.
In the book, it's the mistress and the husband who plot the death of the wife and it's her body that mysteriously does not show up in the pool where it was dumped. And it's the husband who has the weak heart who dies when the wife's body turns up to haunt him into a heart attack.
And the lesbian relationship between Nicole and Christina in the book is NOT subtext but text. As a French film, Les Diaboliques was not subject to the restrictions of the American film industry's Hays Office on the subject of homosexuality but French censors had their issues with the topic.
Because much of the film hints as supernatural reasons for the absence of the body and the mysterious appearances of Michel after his "death", Les Diaboliques is frequently regarded as a horror film and certainly one can see how that assessment can be made given the rising levels of tension Christina feels due to Michel's mysterious appearances that haunt her guilt ridden mind.
And that scene of Michel rising ominously out of the bathtub dripping with water and unadulterated menace is definitely a classic horror trope.
But the horror tropes that are present are secondary to the main appeal of a tightly wound murder narrative that isn't all that it appears to be.
Les Diaboliques is about the murder of a spouse. The twist is which spouse is the actual victim.
So Happy Valentine's Day to my darling wife!
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