Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 8-August-10
Spoiler Rating: Medium

Diabolique (1955)

The French classic Diabolique takes place at a boys' boarding school, a setting rife with implications. The imprisoned imps riot during meals, roughhouse in the halls, and wield slingshots near unprotected windows, yet the title (originally "Les Diaboliques," "The Diabolical Ones" or "Devils") refers to the grown-ups meant to teach these monsters how to think and behave. Not only do the adults display the pedantry and meanness usually attributed to European dons, they are positively up to no good. The blond science instructor with the come-hither body and take-a-hike attitude (Simone Signoret) wears sunglasses to hide the black eye her lover gave her. This lover is the headmaster (Paul Meurisse) whose inflated sense of self-importance rests uneasily on his wife's money. The wife (Vera Clouzot) brought a sizable inheritance when she left a convent to marry, and with her husband's infidelity and the violent claims he makes on marital privilege, she regrets having squandered her assets. This explains why a nice Catholic girl like her is plotting with the mistress to kill the brute. A fine bunch of devils indeed.

Like The Wages of Fear, director H. G. Clouzot's previous picture, Diabolique holds the viewer in an ever-tightening grip of suspense. The first half follows the women as they execute the murder. They have details to attend to, like alibis and proper tools, and personal issues to overcome. Despite their mutual hatred of the victim, they are not exactly chums. Each has inspired jealousy in the other's breast before, and the mistress barely tolerates the wife's fluttering conscience. To make matters more precarious, the wife has a heart condition which might carry her off in a swoon (or worse) during times of stress. It is almost surprising that they manage to do the deed, dispose of the body, and return to work looking, for the most part, as if nothing had happened.

The second half follows the women as the conclusion of their plan goes awry. The body disappears from where they put it, a place calculated to prompt discovery and suggest accidental death. Where did it go? Now everyday life mingles with the macabre dream into which the women have fallen. Staff and students wonder where the headmaster has gone. Strange signs hint that he is just around the corner, waiting for the right moment to reappear. The wife's health deteriorates due to the uncertainty, and so do relations with her partner in crime. They threaten to rat each other out. The mistress' sang-froid finally cracks. The wife clumsily allows a retired policeman (Charles Vanel) into their midst. The tension has to break, and it does after a prolonged spell of dread followed by a burst of gothic terror. As with all good mysteries, the solution seems inevitable once you know it (excepting the mind-screw thrown in at the very end), and even if you know or suspect it before it comes, the course of its unfolding exhilarates.

Copyright © 2010 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.