Diabolique (1955)
Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot
The cruel and abusive headmaster of a boarding school, Michel Delassalle, is murdered by an unlikely duo -- his meek wife and the mistress he brazenly flaunts. The women become increasingly unhinged by a series of odd occurrences after Delassalle's corpse mysteriously disappears.
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What critics compared Diabolique to
“Are you trying to Diabolique me?” Stephanie asks Sean at one point, a reference to the classic 1955 French film about a wife, a mistress and a murder—and a perfect alibi.
When A Simple Favor actually pushes for an film reference, cineastes at the screening I attended applauded Stephanie’s making emphatic references to Henri-Georges Clouzot’s psychological conspiracy thriller Diabolique (or maybe she’s thinking of the inferior 1996 remake with Sharon Stone?), when accusatory fingers start pointing in her direction.
There is another savvy moment, wonderfully played by Kendrick, where an increasingly paranoid Stephanie senses similarities with Henri-Georges Clouzot's classic 1955 thriller "Diabolique" and questions if she might be the victim of gaslighting.Lively is every bit Kendrick's match as Emily, a woman who can be warm one second and prickly the next, the scope of her complicated character coming gradually to light once her haunting memory is all which remains.
Director Franju brings to this grim story—by Diabolique and Vertigo authors Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac—a wry humor at times, helped along by Maurice Jarre's wonderfully bouncy and off-kilter score.
The idea for "Eyes" was worked on by several writers, including first assistant director and future director Claude Sautet as well as by Thomas Boileau & Pierre Narcejac (whose novels became Clouzot's "Diabolique" and Hitchcock's "Vertigo").
Franju recruited the nefarious duo Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac (responsible for Diabolique and Vertigo among others) to adapt Jean Redon's novel, and the scenario smells of their usual queasy blend of police procedural and obsessional guilt; the cops here fumble around and send a decoy almost to her doom — they don't know they're in Boileau/Narcejac territory and therefore irrelevant.
The great Thomas Boileau and Pierre Narcejac, whose stories provided the basis for Diabolique and Vertigo collaborated on the screenplay with Franju, building a measure of suspense as outside forces conspire to stop the doctor in his tracks, but it's Franju's atmosphere that keeps the film interesting.
Working from an adaptation by the team of Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac (known for the novels that morphed into Vertigo and Diabolique), director Georges Franju has fashioned a terror tale that's as poetic as it is horrific, buoyed by the ascetic camerawork by Eugen Shufftan (a year before he took the Oscar for The Hustler) and an early score by Lawrence of Arabia composer Maurice Jarre.
The title card that ends classic French shocker Diabolique (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1955) asks the audience not to reveal that film’s ending to the audience.
This segment takes a great deal from the Grand Guignol-influenced crime films of that late ’50s like Clouzot’s Diabolique , with a healthy dose of early Hitchcock, when he was finding his ground between the silent age and the sound era, and descends into genuine animated fantasy, as its bizarre and quite-funny car chase around the streets of Ennui is rendered in a Herge-like cartoon.
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But the biggest star here may be Fincher’s surgically precise insight and silky style of suspense, which makes this film a modern companion to such classics as Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” and Clouzot’s “Diabolique.”
You may be reminded of Gothic romances like “Jane Eyre” and “Rebecca,” or the Euro-noir manipulations of “Diabolique” and “Gaslight.”