In the film Les Diaboliques, director Henri-Georges Clouzot uses basic visual tricks that hint at the outcome of the film. These techniques work on the viewer’s subconscious. A viewer made aware of them should be able understand the relationship of the characters and the true deception of the film fairly early on.

The first example of this comes in the very first sequence of shots following the opening titles. We are shown several consecutive shots of a truck driving down the road. The truck arrives at the school, and Michel Delasalle, the victim, gets out of the driver’s seat. What can we derive from this scene? First, the number of shots of the truck moving seems excessive. One establishing shot of the truck approaching the school would have been sufficient. This should tell us that something significant is being communicated here.

In every one of these shots, the truck moves from right to left across the screen. Generally a series of shots showing a single action will show it from different points of view. In such a case, we might get a close up of the driver or a shot of the truck moving toward or away from the camera. We don’t find that here. It is usually thought in film that the protagonist or sympathetic character should move from left to right across the screen. It seems more natural to a person who reads from left to right. The antagonist should do the opposite. Here Clouzot not only uses this device, but pounds it in. Also, seeing Michel get out of the driver’s seat can be correlated to the film as a whole. He caused all of this right-to-left motion that our subconscious doesn’t like. He is also in the driver’s seat of the deception in the film.

Clouzot goes on to use this technique very heavily in the first act of this film. Notice that the first time we see all three of the main characters on screen together, Christina is in the middle. A later scene will feature shots with either Christina facing the camera and the others facing away, or vice versa. It becomes a visual two-on-one, despite what is being said between the characters.

A final example of this technique is the scene with the two women talking about the murder by the pool. Again our sympathetic character, Christina, is on the left, and on the right, the mistress. Though they are talking about a plot between them, and only them, a white pole runs right down the center of the screen dividing them. The mistress is sitting with her back to the wife. We can garner from this that some deception on the part of the mistress is coming between them.

What is remarkable about this is that in fact there is no surprise ending. Clouzot is giving it away without telling us he is giving it away. . .

That the inept criminals weren’t caught sooner proves that this conspiracy was indeed, remarkable. The two women escape being caught for their misdeed so often that it becomes funny. Characters threaten, but no one kicks the chair out from under their plot: not the drunken soldier, the groundskeeper, nosy neighbors-–one of whom would make a keen detective--or the rambunctious schoolboys. The low-key humor, which runs through the whole film, begins with an over-the-top costume design that prefigures Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. As the ultimate symbol of purity, Madame Delasalle has dark braids, and wears a prim gingham dress. The only thing missing is Toto. Nicole couldn’t be more unlike Christina as a brusque, chain-smoking, brazen mistress.

The plot of a wife seeking revenge on an abusive husband is nothing new. The uniqueness of this film and the crime itself is the collaboration between the wife and the mistress. Christina and Nicole seem to coexist peacefully, and we wonder how they became such good “friends.” Why would a mistress seek to help the wife if there wasn’t a deeper aspect to their relationship?

The time period didn’t lend itself to an open portrayal of lesbianism, and we aren’t given anything definite in the way of dialogue or acting to sooth our curiosity. Nicole makes no affectionate overtures toward Christina, even when they share a bed. Neither does she make an attempt to comfort her friend other than in an off-handed deferent way.

When finally the two are to part, we think we will get the whole story. Christina, bedridden, says to Nicole, “You think it’s time for us to separate?” Nicole’s reaction bewilders us yet again with her brisk adieu. Other than veiled references, no proof exists for anything other than a platonic relationship between the two women, and the ending has us believe what we’ve witnessed is in our minds, as Michel and Nicole reunite. While the relationship between Nicole and Christina is bizarre, who better to commiserate with than a mistress who has also felt the force of Michel’s blows?

The dubious nature of the two women’s bond unsettles us. During the film, we want to know the truth: are they lovers? But in not knowing, the film rivets our attention more than if we were to witness a passionate embrace between the two.




a devilish twist: hidden conspiracies in les diaboliques  
response by KING GONDO OF THE SHOE PEOPLE

In a remarkable coup, French director Henri-Georges Clouzot managed to gain the upper hand in an initial competition with Alfred Hitchcock, acquiring the rights to the Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac novel Celle qui n'était plus before his powerful Hollywood counterpart was able to. This novel (translated “she who was no more”) became Clouzot’s Les Diaboliques, by far his most well-known (and most influential) work. The plot of the film contains elements of film noir conspiracy, yet they are applied alongside touches of the seemingly supernatural that make its murder plot unique in film (Hitchcock’s Vertigo being one key exception). As far as fitting the conventions of film noir, Les Diaboliques contains several integral elements. Noir mainstays such as multiple layers of deception, the “cunning and vicious female” character type, and an attempt at the “perfect crime” are all major themes of the film, but they are overshadowed by two key plot twists—the apparently supernatural elements and the revelation of the film’s “true” conspiracy.

The murder of the malicious Monsieur Delasalle is proceeding as planned, despite numerous close calls that have left the audience exhausted and ready for a resolution. All that is left is for the body to be “planted” in the school’s pool, which his (ex-) wife and mistress are attempting to accomplish. In this sequence, Clouzot has demonstrated one of Hitchcock’s most interesting observations: that the audience unwittingly sides with a character in a suspenseful situation, whether or not the task of the character is “good” or “evil.” Just as the audience subconsciously pulls for Norman Bates as Marion Crane’s car sinks into the bog in Psycho, they are again tricked into this same situation with the disposal of Mr. Delasalle’s body. In another similarity to Psycho, Clouzot cleverly prolongs (and raises) the suspense of the film after the initial shock, soon revealing that the body has disappeared from its aquatic resting place.

With the audience left as a dazed boxer, Clouzot delivers left and right hooks mercilessly: Mr. Delasalle’s suit, neatly dry-cleaned, is delivered to the school; Christina finds an empty hotel room checked out in her husband’s name (calling to mind North By Northwest); and most disturbingly, students begin to report sightings of their errant headmaster. The audience’s collective mind is sent into a whirlwind of possible explanations--perhaps Mr. Delasalle has come back from the dead; or perhaps someone moved the body and is playing mind games. Suspicion must also be placed on the protagonists, neither of whom have gained much sympathy from the audience. When the final plot twist occurs (revealing that the initial murder plot was really an elaborate murder plot against Christina), the audience is shown the truth. The most notable aspect of the true conspiracy in Les Diaboliques isn’t its overly elaborate and ludicrous nature—noirs often deal in these types of situations. The twist is that the film’s main conspiracy isn’t even revealed until the end of the film.

It is here where the film lives up to its translation. The “devils” of the title are revealed, and they are not Nicole and Christina (besides, Christina is far too much of a victim throughout the film to fit this notion of evil); they are the Hitchcockian blonde Nicole and the merciless Mr. Delasalle, the figures of absolute evil and deception that the title suggests. Whether the change of the title to simply Diabolique for its American release alters the meaning is another interesting topic (if there is only one “devil”, who is it? Clouzot, perhaps?), but it is one that will not be delved into in this paper. However, in a twist ending befitting their films, Hitchcock one-upped Clouzot three years later with a thematically similar film, again employing the writers of Les Diaboliques. Remarkable because of its similarity to the Clouzot film, yet distinctive because of its structure, Vertigo cemented Boileau and Narcejac’s names in film history (and further enhanced the reputation of Hitchcock as an artistic filmmaker).




freedom phallic phone  
response by PAUL SOTHERN

Sigmund Freud’s concept of penis envy is a psychological theory in which a woman, at some point in her life, is made aware of her lack of a penis. This revelation inadvertently causes a feeling of intimidation and/or jealousy towards the men that she shall encounter throughout her life. The two main characters in Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Les Diaboliques, Mademoiselle Delasalle and Mademoiselle Horner, simultaneously experience both sides of penis envy; Delasalle, the weaker of the two, is intimidated by Michel, her doomed lover whom Mme. Delasalle and Horner are conspiring against. Horner is envious of--and ultimately attracted to--Michel’s unashamed abuse of power and assertiveness as a boarding school principal, which she also exudes to a certain degree with those who are weaker than her, such as her students and Mademoiselle Delasalle.

The characters’ descent towards murder, brought on by the thoughts evoked by penis envy, are notable in two scenes: the moment in which Mme. Delasalle calls Michel to notify him that she wants a divorce, and the scene in which Horner provokes Mme. Delasalle to confess over the phone to the police regarding her involvement in Michel’s murder. Both of these scenes involve a telephone, used as a phallic symbol centered between the two female characters as they argue over matters concerning the conspiracy against Michel. In the first scene, Horner’s envy of Michel and his respected member result in the intimidation of Mme. Delasalle, which in turn causes her to submit to Horner’s commands and call Michel to lead him to his demise. In the other scene involving a telephone as a key piece of the film’s mise-en-scène, Mme. Delaselle is once again pressured by Horner to make a call, except this time the recipient of the phone call is the police. With an excellent judgment call concerning Mme. Delasalle’s character limitations, Horner dares her accomplice to confess to the police the details of their crime. While doing so, Horner flaunts the phallic telephone in front of Mme. Delasalle as if trying to simultaneously intimidate and impress her with the power she conveys. Mademoiselle Delaselle once again submits to another overpowering figure that has taken charge of her life and reluctantly decides against calling the police, thus keeping the murder perfectly undiscovered for the time being.




are they really grading papers?  
response by GEORGE CERCLE CARTER, A.K.A MISS ROUGE

Les Diaboliques is a remarkable for presenting, in each scene, multiple forms of dialogue and visual figurative context that helps the viewer accept the ending of the movie. As a viewer it would be hard to accept that Michel Delasalle could still live after being sedated and drowned in a full bathtub, especially after it would appear both his wife Christina and Nicole Horner wanted to kill him. The most important scene to present this style of figurative context is the paper-grading scene.

Before either of the characters begin grading their papers, the mise-en-scène already sets up an important visual figurative context, with a lamp dividing Christina and Nicole. Previous to this scene, the two characters seemed united in some way, by both feeling guilty for performing the act of killing. However, the lamp forces the viewer to look at the two characters as being completely separated from each other. Adding to this sense of division is the lighting of the scene. Instead of having the lamp appear to equally light both the characters, the lamp seems to be lighting Christina more than Nicole. This heavier lighting on Christina causes us to view her being more of a protagonist hero and to view Nicole as the antagonist of the film. When the dialogue begins in the scene, the viewer becomes aware of how much more upset Christina is about the act of killing than Nicole is, to the point of were Christina is unable to grade her papers without making multiple mistakes on one paper.

In my opinion, the most important part of the movie happens after Christina realizes she has made a mistake grading a paper. Nicole gives a big eraser to her. This eraser shows that although Christina is deeply upset by the act of killing someone, Nicole is not even remotely worried about the act of killing someone. The eraser is a symbol for Nicole’s morality and having a big unused eraser shows that Nicole knows she has not done anything wrong, therefore she would not need to try to erase any guilt from her conscious. Christina on the other hand is plagued so much by her guilt that she has used up all of her eraser and soon the stress from the guilt will get to her already weakened heart.

After this scene, the plot of Les Diaboliques goes through multiple twists until the ending. If it were not for the grading paper scene, the ending would completely ruin the entire quality of the movie.

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