Movie Review: Les Diaboliques (1955)

Tania Says:
We ran into a pack of foreign films and it was hard to get motivated to watch them. It isn't that I hate subtitled films - they just take a little more concentration. So we decided on Les Diaboliques first since it was the shortest film. Although it took awhile to get into it (for me at least) I ended up really liking this movie.

It is about the wife and the mistress of a really horrible school headmaster teaming up to kill him off. So they get him out of town and off him and then weird things start happening to them and around the school and the two women freak out and wonder if he is still alive, if someone knows what they did or if they are just paranoid and a little crazy. There are some twists and turns (that I will not spoil for you but were spoiled for me mid-movie when Josh admitted to seeing the Sharon Stone remake of this movie and told me what was going to happen.) The twists aren't all that crazy or surprising though as they probably were back in 1955. We seem a bit more jaded now as to what is actually a twist. But those twists are entertaining and make for a very interesting story.

The end of the reveals the biggest twist and then at the very end it actually says on the screen - "If your friends want to see this movie DON'T tell them what happens." I thought that was hilarious - maybe the first spoiler warning?

The performances by the wife and mistress are both very good. I really liked Véra Clouzot as the wife. She was suppose to be a sickly, frail women and the actress really captured that. She was skittish and weak and easily manipulated by the mistress. The mistress, played by Simone Signoret, was strong and confident and knew exactly how to manipulate the wimpy wife. The husband though wasn't so great. Paul Meurisse didn't play the husband nearly as mean and evil as I would have liked. I mean he is horrible and I certainly wouldn't want him around but I would have liked to see more evil.

Overall though I would recommend this movie even to people who are scared of or intimidated by subtitled movies (which I am to a certain extent). This story is engaging enough to make you forget you don't understand the language.

Josh Says:
I remember, after seeing the remake of this movie, hearing a tremendous amount of buzz for this, the original version. As is generally the case, the buzz consisted mostly of purists, or braggarts trumpeting the genius of the original and decrying the poor choices that degraded the idea of the film in the remake .

I'd say that there was a bit of hyperbole involved in the romantic descriptions that people had to offer for this movie after the horrendous Sharon Stone remake. While I don't think it was a bad movie, it wasn't quite a masterpiece, I don't think. I enjoyed most of the performances, but Simone Signoret, for example, I felt gave a little bit too much away in her portrayal of the mistress. Her choices for this character seem to fortell what is to come at nearly every turn. While I agree that Meurisee could have come off a little bit more bastardly, I think his performance within the confines of the 50's and what was acceptable was pretty darn good.

Of the three though, Vera Clouzot does the finest job in portraying an ailing woman who has seemingly decided that she's had enough and will not remain in this abusive relationship for the rest of her short life (she has a heart condition).

The supporting cast is somewhat unnoticeable, save for the commisiare, played by Charles Vanel (one of two actors whose career lasted over 80 years). I'm fairly certain that Peter Faulk stole the character Columbo directly from this film.

The story is pretty sound, and somewhat 'Hitchcockesque', however for me, something was just not quite there, and perhaps it's exactly Hitchcock that was missing. Bring him in to direct this one and it's probably a 10 out of 10 instead of say, a 6 or 7.