Diabolique

I have only seen but two of Clouzot's films (this and the equally brilliant 'The Wages of Fear'), but I understand immediately what connoisseurs mean when they say he's the French Alfred Hitchcock. He has an innate and unbelievably vivid and accurate take on human nature. I can't wait to check out the rest of his oeuvre....

The keys in the pool, the husband in the morgue! You dream too much about water in this house!

Headmaster of a boarding school, Michel Delaselle (Paul Meurisse) is a brooding bully of a man, one day his wife and mistress decide enough is enough and plot to kill him, trouble is that once they murder him, his body disappears and reported sightings of him are adding to the ladies' paranoia.

Thus is the setting for director Henri-Georges Clouzot's brilliant suspenser. The pace is stiflingly perfect, he gently racks up the tension, neatly toying with audience expectation, the sense of dread t...