Movies
Diabolique
…Perhaps the most memorable thing about Diabolique is its legendary ending, which was mind-blowing at the time but has since been copied more times than anyone would care to count. As realistic as the entire film tries to be, Clouzot switched to low-key lighting for the finale, giving the school an almost ethereal appearance as Christina runs through its halls, trying to find out who or what is creeping around. What really sells it, however, is the slight of hand used on the audience. Up until this point, viewers think they’re watching a film about one thing when it’s really about something entirely different. And not in a Rashomon sort of way either, where there’s different point of views and only one person is telling the truth. No, Diabolique actually has AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT PLOT than what you’d been led to believe the whole time.
Back when I was getting my bachelor’s degree, I took a film class with a really odd professor who I’m convinced picked films to lecture on by throwing darts at a board – Red Rock West is the LAST flick most people would think of when trying to learn basic art motifs. He kept bringing up Diabolique and how much he loved it, which prompted me to pick up the original Criterion DVD. Long story short, I brought up the film after class one day and it turned out he had never seen the original and was foaming at the mouth over the remake starring Sharon Stone and Isabelle Adjani; hell, he didn’t even know it was remake or that Henri-Georges Clouzot’s brilliant thriller existed. Being the generous soul that I am (and feeling a bit smug), I brought him my copy the next day and – to my surprise – he ended up hating it, saying it was “a bit stale and boring.”
Normally, I wouldn’t sit here and criticize someone’s taste but… the man is insane and dead wrong.
Coming off the success of 1953’s The Wages Of Fear, Clouzot returned to the murder mystery territory that gave his career a sort of resurgence years earlier with Diabolique. Based on a novel by popular French writers Boileau and Narcejac, the film tells the story of Christina (Vera Clouzot, the director’s wife), a kind-hearted teacher who owns a boarding school run by her awful husband, Michel (Paul Meurisse). In addition to being a tyrannical headmaster, he constantly steps out on his wife and flaunts his relationship with Nicole (Simone Signoret) in front of everyone. Surprisingly, the women have a good dynamic with one another, since they both hate Michel for being emotionally and physically abusive, and devise a murderous plan.
Drugged and drowned in a bathtub, the two conspirators drag his corpse to the school pool, where his body will float and make his death look accidental. It sinks like a stone, however, and when the pool is drained, it’s nowhere to be found. When a body is found off school grounds, Christina travels to the town’s morgue to discover that it’s not Michel’s, and piques the curiosity of private investigator Alfred Fichet (Charles Vanel), who comes out of retirement to look into the matter. Shortly after, Christina starts noticing strange things around the school, making her already weak heart even weaker.
When Diabolique was made, Clouzot was considered one of the greatest working directors, ranking alongside the Master of Suspense himself, Alfred Hitchcock. There are a lot of interesting parallels between the two men’s work, and their reputations as directors of thrillers are still compared long after their deaths. Upon completion of The Wages Of Fear, Clouzot reportedly bought the rights to the novel Celle qui n’était plus mere hours before Hitchcock put in his bid. Upon Diabolique’s release in 1955, Hitchcock found himself a true rival and adapted the writing duo’s next novel, D’entre les morts – which is rumored to have been specifically written for him. The result was Vertigo, which, believe it or not, had a lukewarm reception at the time of its release but has since gone on to garner the reputation of being a classic.
The state of American cinema during the 50s was bigger equals better. Techniques like Cinemascope were being used to make everything seem larger than life, giving a sweeping, epic look to many studio films. Clouzot, being the renegade that he was, made Diabolique as an antithesis to these ideals, opting to make it as minimalistic as possible; one camera, one primary location and a small cast. Hell, it was even shot in 1.33:1. He uses this to advantage in a big way though, making it seem to the audience like he had placed the actors into a sandbox like a couple of ants, whipping out his magnifying glass whenever he saw fit. Frequent collaborator Armand Thirard piggybacks off this approach with his cinematography, starting the film off as an outsider looking into the school and slowly moving in until the finale, when the camera actually becomes Christina’s broken psyche.
While everyone puts in a great performance, Clouzot and Signoret carry the film as the two murderers. The conversations tend to seem off-the-cuff, giving their relationship a very natural feel. The minimal amount of music in the film adds to this, putting the audience directly into the reality of the situation. Unfortunately, life does imitate art sometimes, and Clouzot died five years later from the same thing that ailed her character: heart problems.
But, perhaps the most memorable thing about Diabolique is its legendary ending, which was mind-blowing at the time but has since been copied more times than anyone would care to count. As realistic as the entire film tries to be, Clouzot switched to low-key lighting for the finale, giving the school an almost ethereal appearance as Christina runs through its halls, trying to find out who or what is creeping around. What really sells it, however, is the slight of hand used on the audience. Up until this point, viewers think they’re watching a film about one thing when it’s really about something entirely different. And not in a Rashomon sort of way either, where there’s different point of views and only one person is telling the truth. No, Diabolique actually has AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT PLOT than what you’d been led to believe the whole time.
Interestingly enough, the ending was so shocking that less than a decade later, a bona fide horror classic that used similar misdirection and even the same room of the house for its most famous scene was released. The film was Psycho and the director was – you guessed it – Hitchcock. They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and if there’s any truth to that, Diabolique will always be known as one of the most beautiful girls at the horror prom.
Preserving the original aspect ratio, Criterion’s 1080p transfer is impressive and a noticeable improvement over its first DVD release. The grayscale has been altered, adding more variety to the color scheme by giving greater depth to the blacks and making the whites stand out a bit more. The film looks soft during certain scenes but is very crisp, detailed and clean looking overall. The French LPCM 1.0 track is clear of any noticeable flaws that plague older films (hisses, pops, etc). The dialogue and sound effects are very clear sounding; same goes for the score. As always, Criterion has included a booklet featuring an overview of Clouzot’s career, entitled Murder Considered As One Of The Fine Arts, by Terrence Rafferty, as well as the original theatrical trailer and a bevy of special features.
Special Features
Serge Bromberg Introduction (14:48) – Bromberg, who directed a documentary about Clouzot’s unfinished film Inferno, gives a fantastic frame of reference for Diabolique by discussing what came before it in Clouzot’s filmography, what the cinematic trends were at the time, and what techniques were used. He reminds me a lot of Tim Lucas when he talks, condensing a wealth of information into a fun and informative history lesson.
Selected-Scene Commentary (44:30) – Running the length of almost half the film, this commentary by French-film scholar Kelley Conway (author of Chanteuse in the City: The Realist Singer in 1930s French Film) is a bit on the dry side when compared to everyone else on the disc. In each of the three sections (Setup, Additional Clues, and The Finale), she gives a lot of scene-specific production info, along with just generally explaining the narrative in accordance with themes explored throughout the film.
Kim Newman (15:45) – Film critic Kim Newman talks – at great length – about his love for Diabolique and the impact it had on the film world. He mainly sticks to dissecting the finale and talking about how Clouzot put a fire under Hitchcock’s ass by giving him some real competition. I knew a good chunk of the information presented here prior to watching the interview, but Newman is a delight to watch and many of his observations are worth discussing at greater lengths. Out of all the special features on the disc, I really wish this one would have been longer. If you dig this interview, check out Nightmare Movies: Horror on Screen Since the 1960s, his criticism of horror films that recently came out in an updated edition.
Here’s what we know about Longlegs so far. It’s coming in July of 2024, it’s directed by Osgood Perkins (The Blackcoat’s Daughter), and it features Maika Monroe (It Follows) as an FBI agent who discovers a personal connection between her and a serial killer who has ties to the occult. We know that the serial killer is going to be played by none other than Nicolas Cage and that the marketing has been nothing short of cryptic excellence up to this point.
At the very least, we can assume NEON’s upcoming film is going to be a dark, horror-fueled hunt for a serial killer. With that in mind, let’s take a look at five disturbing serial killers-versus-law-enforcement stories to get us even more jacked up for Longlegs.
MEMORIES OF MURDER (2003)
This South Korean film directed by Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-ho (Parasite) is a wild ride. The film features a handful of cops who seem like total goofs investigating a serial killer who brutally murders women who are out and wearing red on rainy evenings. The cops are tired, unorganized, and border on stoner comedy levels of idiocy. The movie at first seems to have a strange level of forgiveness for these characters as they try to pin the murders on a mentally handicapped person at one point, beating him and trying to coerce him into a confession for crimes he didn’t commit. A serious cop from the big city comes down to help with the case and is able to instill order.
But still, the killer evades and provokes not only the police but an entire country as everyone becomes more unstable and paranoid with each grizzly murder and sex crime.
I’ve never seen a film with a stranger tone than Memories of Murder. A movie that deals with such serious issues but has such fallible, seemingly nonserious people at its core. As the film rolls on and more women are murdered, you realize that a lot of these faults come from men who are hopeless and desperate to catch a killer in a country that – much like in another great serial killer story, Citizen X – is doing more harm to their plight than good.
Major spoiler warning: What makes Memories of Murder somehow more haunting is that it’s loosely based on a true story. It is a story where the real-life killer hadn’t been caught at the time of the film’s release. It ends with our main character Detective Park (Song Kang-ho), now a salesman, looking hopelessly at the audience (or judgingly) as the credits roll. Over sixteen years later the killer, Lee Choon Jae, was found using DNA evidence. He was already serving a life sentence for another murder. Choon Jae even admitted to watching the film during his court case saying, “I just watched it as a movie, I had no feeling or emotion towards the movie.”
In the end, Memories of Murder is a must-see for fans of the subgenre. The film juggles an almost slapstick tone with that of a dark murder mystery and yet, in the end, works like a charm.
CURE (1997)
If you watched 2023’s Hypnotic and thought to yourself, “A killer who hypnotizes his victims to get them to do his bidding is a pretty cool idea. I only wish it were a better movie!” Boy, do I have great news for you.
In Cure (spoilers ahead), a detective (Koji Yakusho) and forensic psychologist (Tsuyoshi Ujiki) team up to find a serial killer who’s brutally marking their victims by cutting a large “X” into their throats and chests. Not just a little “X” mind you but a big, gross, flappy one.
At each crime scene, the murderer is there and is coherent and willing to cooperate. They can remember committing the crimes but can’t remember why. Each of these murders is creepy on a cellular level because we watch the killers act out these crimes with zero emotion. They feel different than your average movie murder. Colder….meaner.
What’s going on here is that a man named Mamiya (Masato Hagiwara) is walking around and somehow manipulating people’s minds using the flame of a lighter and a strange conversational cadence to hypnotize them and convince them to murder. The detectives eventually catch him but are unable to understand the scope of what’s happening before it’s too late.
If you thought dealing with a psychopathic murderer was hard, imagine dealing with one who could convince you to go home and murder your wife. Not only is Cure amazingly filmed and edited but it has more horror elements than your average serial killer film.
MANHUNTER (1986)
In the first-ever Hannibal Lecter story brought in front of the cameras, Detective Will Graham (William Petersen) finds his serial killers by stepping into their headspace. This is how he caught Hannibal Lecter (played here by Brian Cox), but not without paying a price. Graham became so obsessed with his cases that he ended up having a mental breakdown.
In Manhunter, Graham not only has to deal with Lecter playing psychological games with him from behind bars but a new serial killer in Francis Dolarhyde (in a legendary performance by Tom Noonan). One who likes to wear pantyhose on his head and murder entire families so that he can feel “seen” and “accepted” in their dead eyes. At one point Lecter even finds a way to gift Graham’s home address to the new killer via personal ads in a newspaper.
Michael Mann (Heat, Thief) directed a film that was far too stylish for its time but that fans and critics both would have loved today in the same way we appreciate movies like Nightcrawler or Drive. From the soundtrack to the visuals to the in-depth psychoanalysis of an insanely disturbed protagonist and the man trying to catch him. We watch Graham completely lose his shit and unravel as he takes us through the psyche of our killer. Which is as fascinating as it is fucked.
Manhunter is a classic case of a serial killer-versus-detective story where each side of the coin is tarnished in their own way when it’s all said and done. As Detective Park put it in Memories of Murder, “What kind of detective sleeps at night?”
INSOMNIA (2002)
Maybe it’s because of the foggy atmosphere. Maybe it’s because it’s the only film in Christopher Nolan’s filmography he didn’t write as well as direct. But for some reason, Insomnia always feels forgotten about whenever we give Nolan his flowers for whatever his latest cinematic achievement is.
Whatever the case, I know it’s no fault of the quality of the film, because Insomnia is a certified serial killer classic that adds several unique layers to the detective/killer dynamic. One way to create an extreme sense of unease with a movie villain is to cast someone you’d never expect in the role, which is exactly what Nolan did by casting the hilarious and sweet Robin Williams as a manipulative child murderer. He capped that off by casting Al Pacino as the embattled detective hunting him down.
This dynamic was fascinating as Williams was creepy and clever in the role. He was subdued in a way that was never boring but believable. On the other side of it, Al Pacino felt as if he’d walked straight off the set of 1995’s Heat and onto this one. A broken and imperfect man trying to stop a far worse one.
Aside from the stellar acting, Insomnia stands out because of its unique setting and plot. Both working against the detective. The investigation is taking place in a part of Alaska where the sun never goes down. This creates a beautiful, nightmare atmosphere where by the end of it, Pacino’s character is like a Freddy Krueger victim in the leadup to their eventual, exhausted death as he runs around town trying to catch a serial killer while dealing with the debilitating effects of insomnia. Meanwhile, he’s under an internal affairs investigation for planting evidence to catch another child killer and accidentally shoots his partner who he just found out is about to testify against him. The kicker here is that the killer knows what happened that fateful day and is using it to blackmail Pacino’s character into letting him get away with his own crimes.
If this is the kind of “what would you do?” intrigue we get with the story from Longlegs? We’ll be in for a treat. Hoo-ah.
FALLEN (1998)
Fallen may not be nearly as obscure as Memories of Murder or Cure. Hell, it boasts an all-star cast of Denzel Washington, John Goodman, Donald Sutherland, James Gandolfini, and Elias Koteas. But when you bring it up around anyone who has seen it, their ears perk up, and the word “underrated” usually follows. And when it comes to the occult tie-ins that Longlegs will allegedly have? Fallen may be the most appropriate film on this entire list.
In the movie, Detective Hobbs (Washington) catches vicious serial killer Edgar Reese (Koteas) who seems to place some sort of curse on him during Hobbs’ victory lap. After Reese is put to death via electric chair, dead bodies start popping up all over town with his M.O., eventually pointing towards Hobbs as the culprit. After all, Reese is dead. As Hobbs investigates he realizes that a fallen angel named Azazel is possessing human body after human body and using them to commit occult murders. It has its eyes fixated on him, his co-workers, and family members; wrecking their lives or flat-out murdering them one by one until the whole world is damned.
Mixing a demonic entity into a detective/serial killer story is fascinating because it puts our detective in the unsettling position of being the one who is hunted. How the hell do you stop a demon who can inhabit anyone they want with a mere touch?!
Fallen is a great mix of detective story and supernatural horror tale. Not only are we treated to Denzel Washington as the lead in a grim noir (complete with narration) as he uncovers this occult storyline, but we’re left with a pretty great “what would you do?” situation in a movie that isn’t afraid to take the story to some dark places. Especially when it comes to the way the film ends. It’s a great horror thriller in the same vein as Frailty but with a little more detective work mixed in.
Look for Longlegs in theaters on July 12, 2024.
4 New Horror Movies Releasing This Week Including ‘Late Night with the Devil’ at Home
Spring 2024 Horror Preview: 12 Horror Movies You Don’t Want to Miss
The ‘Scary Movie’ Spoof Franchise Is Getting a Reboot at Paramount!
‘Ready or Not’: Radio Silence Filmmakers Tease the “Absolute Banger” of a Sequel That’s Taking Shape
“We Built Every Creature” – ‘Alien: Romulus’ Goes Heavy on the Old School Practical Effects!
You must be logged in to post a comment.