This was the kind of movie you hear about for an eternity, but never manage to see, or, as in my case, just see the first half hour of and never get to see completely. And when you finally, after years or decades, see the movie, you mostly either mesmerized - or, like today, in the 'that's all?' kind of feeling.
Being a huge Hitchcock fan, and knowing the history of 'Les Diaboliques' and how it propelled Hitch into making masterpieces as 'Vertigo' and 'Psycho', I sadly saw the story's solution coming way too early - namely, the instant one of the male teachers said to the other that Simone Signoret's character had quite a commanding presence (after about two thirds of the movie, as she was giving orders and then rushing up the stairs). The only logical, non-supernatural solution was the one that the movie ended with - that the title-giving diabolical ones where not the two women, but the sadistic headmaster and his mistress.
I'd have loved to have a lot more 'signs of the unexplainable' bothering the women (both women, not just the frail wife) - aside from the missing corpse (always a great idea for a story), one of the boys having talked to the headmaster after his supposed death and the matter of the corpse's suit. In my opinion, the women quarreled to soon; and although I liked the performances at first, I soon found that Signoret's character was too obviously dominant, too self-assured, too straightforward and, most of all, a lot (!) too relaxed when the body of a person I just murdered happens to appear hundreds of miles away to be believable. As for Vera Clouzot's character: it was just way too convenient to have a rather young person have a heart condition in a thriller as not to mean something later on. The fact that the 'corpse' was seen standing in the bathtub on the cover of the DVD's German edition didn't help matters, either (in a rather small, but still recognizable picture)
But what bothered me most was the character of the private investigator. What was the point? So that he could mete out justice in the end? Since he obviously had a hunch who the real victim was, why didn't he warn her???
Bottom line: this is a picture one might (or should even, as a movie fan) have seen once, but unlike a lot of thrillers one knows the ending of, I see no reason to view 'Les Diaboliques' again. The absence of a composer of Bernard Herrmann's stature and the uneven camera worked against my involvement in the story, as well. I prefer 'Wait Until Dark', 'Psycho' or 'The Haunting' and quite a lot of others as far as suspense is concerned. Sorry, M. Clouzot, nice try, but I didn't buy this one. And rest in peace, Mr. Hitchcock, your rank as THE Master of Suspense is undisputed, in my book at least.
Being a huge Hitchcock fan, and knowing the history of 'Les Diaboliques' and how it propelled Hitch into making masterpieces as 'Vertigo' and 'Psycho', I sadly saw the story's solution coming way too early - namely, the instant one of the male teachers said to the other that Simone Signoret's character had quite a commanding presence (after about two thirds of the movie, as she was giving orders and then rushing up the stairs). The only logical, non-supernatural solution was the one that the movie ended with - that the title-giving diabolical ones where not the two women, but the sadistic headmaster and his mistress.
I'd have loved to have a lot more 'signs of the unexplainable' bothering the women (both women, not just the frail wife) - aside from the missing corpse (always a great idea for a story), one of the boys having talked to the headmaster after his supposed death and the matter of the corpse's suit. In my opinion, the women quarreled to soon; and although I liked the performances at first, I soon found that Signoret's character was too obviously dominant, too self-assured, too straightforward and, most of all, a lot (!) too relaxed when the body of a person I just murdered happens to appear hundreds of miles away to be believable. As for Vera Clouzot's character: it was just way too convenient to have a rather young person have a heart condition in a thriller as not to mean something later on. The fact that the 'corpse' was seen standing in the bathtub on the cover of the DVD's German edition didn't help matters, either (in a rather small, but still recognizable picture)
But what bothered me most was the character of the private investigator. What was the point? So that he could mete out justice in the end? Since he obviously had a hunch who the real victim was, why didn't he warn her???
Bottom line: this is a picture one might (or should even, as a movie fan) have seen once, but unlike a lot of thrillers one knows the ending of, I see no reason to view 'Les Diaboliques' again. The absence of a composer of Bernard Herrmann's stature and the uneven camera worked against my involvement in the story, as well. I prefer 'Wait Until Dark', 'Psycho' or 'The Haunting' and quite a lot of others as far as suspense is concerned. Sorry, M. Clouzot, nice try, but I didn't buy this one. And rest in peace, Mr. Hitchcock, your rank as THE Master of Suspense is undisputed, in my book at least.