One of the major films of the notable frenchman Clouzot, famous filmmaker who got, at least for a moment, to compete with the titan Alfed Hitchcock as master of suspense; it is a story whose literary origin even managed to snatch Hitch by a narrow margin. Adapts the filmmaker to the big screen one of the successful novels of the french writer-duo Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, singular adaptation of the dark experiences of an individual, owner of a school and husband of the director of the place, but at the same time he has one of the professors of the same as a lover; the despotic individual constantly insults the females, reaching the extent of them arranging the death of the subject, the film being also the story of the psychological tribulations of women, because in turn events of different nature will happen. The film has abundant background, such as the fact that it includes the filmmaker's wife, the Brazilian-born actress Véra Clouzot, and the fiery star Simone Signoret, having a certain controversy the relationship of both actresses in the filming, in addition to certain differences, natural by the way, between the literary and the cinematographic version of this shady story. Considered the summit of the french director, this is undoubtedly a good example of why he is considered one of the masters of suspense cinema, a great movie.
In an elementary school, we see Michel Delassalle (Paul Meurisse), owner of the educational center, in which the director is Christina Delassalle (Véra Clouzot), his wife. In the institution is also Nicole Horner (Signoret), teacher, and lover of Michel, love triangle that everyone knows, in addition to the constant abuse and humiliations to what man exposes both women. Lover and wife soon conspire, wish to liquidate the man, end their martyrdom, go to a secluded environment to finish finalizing details of the murder, Christina tells her husband she wants the divorce, doubt in her actions, but Nicole ends up making her angry. When Michel goes to the room where she is staying, he is deceived by his wife, and drinks a sedative liquid, loses consciousness; appears soon Nicole, immediately, takes Michel to the bathtub, where she drowns him. They put the corpse in a large basket and transport it secretly to the school, they deposit it in the muddy pool of the institution. The night passes, the next day the remorse is taking its toll on the director, Nicole tries to reassure her, the children play around the pool, and to everyone's surprise, nothing is found at the bottom of the pool. Fear grows, they do not find the body, the commissioner Alfred Fichet (Charles Vanel) leads an investigation that yields more than surprising results.
As stated earlier, in this film, Clouzot gives evidence of why he is considered one of the masters of suspense, of course, not comparable to the versatile major expert of the subject, the british Hitch, but it is remarkable how he weaves his suspense the french, in various sequences attests to his expertise. We have for example the sequence in which Christina is about to give the sedative to her husband, plague of tension the director those instants, she hesitates, but a few blows will end up convincing her of her nefarious enterprise. Other details where the tension reaches high levels, they transporting the corpse in the basket, the cover is about to fall and ruin their malignant concern, or the moments after the murder, the next morning, when the keys of the teacher fall on the water of the pool. Those are instants where the tension is tenfolded, always with diegetic sounds as an exclusive sound accompaniment. The tension will be fed by uncertainty, which will encompass everything, it will be the root of the growing dementia, where is the corpse, the fatal intrigue that drives to the madness both the spectator and the perpetrators of the bizarre crime. After shooting his also egregious The Wages of Fear (1953), Clouzot makes evident he knows how to engender the suspense, but also how to maintain it, how to increase it in climactic moments, that suspense that grows in the viewer in the same proportion as in both females, because it is no longer murder, as one would think a priori, which causes terror; it is what continues, the uncertainty of not knowing what has happened, where is the corpse in an unlikely situation, with disquieting and disturbing paranormal dyes. An invaluable resource for the generation of that sharp tension, are the diegetic sounds, the only auditory accompaniment at times, ingeniously inserted sounds, the water that runs from a tap, only that breaks the tense instants in which she is about to do her part, to dope the despotic individual, her husband. The drip of that same pipe, is also the only thing that breaks the sharp silence, reinforcing the oppression, the tension of those instants prior to the crime, which tighten the tormented psychology of the criminals. Bell sounds, tinkling, sounds unconnected with the action and also help to make that environment increasingly tense, and of course, the sounds of the typewriter at the end, there are even shots of a sweaty Christina, raising more nervousness.
The film is successful from the staging, with that effective creation of a dry atmosphere, an oppressive environment, which originates, and at the same time is reinforced with that superb work of photography, work and grace by Armand Thirard, supported by the sober composition, austere but compact, of his images, austerity that combines perfectly with black and white to generate that feeling of secrecy, cloister and tension. There are powerful contrasts, powerful chiaroscuros, unexpected chiaroscuros, some natural, others artificial, generated, in a game of light and shadows that apart from morbid beauty, enhances the isolation of the sordid school. The shadows invade a good part of the screen in many moments, spilling out in different forms, becoming characters at times, great success and mastery in that resource, raising the visual value of the film twice, bringing it closer to the black cinema, the North American film noir, at the same time that lukewarm to the german expressionism and all the gloomy power of this film current. The construction of the lugubrious atmosphere of the film reaches the point that these shadows are manifested starting from minor elements, clocks, vases, project their shade over the cloisters, and in that memorable final sequence, the shadows are, literally and more than ever, one more character. Additionally we have the water, and the rot that is generated from it, the water in the bathtub, the water that decomposes the body of Michel, the water in the pool where the body is deposited, the water stored in some sequences, such as when a vehicle arrives at school at the beginning of the film, an omnipresent element in the film and that is part of that wet dementia that is taking over women. Morbidly we have on more than one occasion images of the corpse, images of the individual dead, the present death in a sordid way, and in a way that then must have been much more shocking. On the other hand, and always within the photography of the film, there is a good deal of illumination of the characters, in the sequence of the infant who claims to have seen paranormally the missing director, the infant is shown with notorious and excessive illumination, while the rest is embodied with regular lighting. In the midst of all that darkness, there seems to be no logical way out of the mystery of the whereabouts of the body, there are images and circumstances that validate a disturbing supernatural possibility -even we have a final crack, the student who has had a vision again-, and the growing madness is breaking the women, until finding final climax.
There is certainly a film that has all the condiments to be a Hitchcock film, according to the legend that Clouzot, with the influence of his wife, went ahead for a matter of hours to the english master to obtain the rights to this novel. We have the details of a murder that happens and about which all the intrigues and speculations will be woven, also the subsequent investigation, the police work that will narrow the possibilities, and of course, the most important, the style to generate suspense, in which the spectator discovers the ominous details of the assassination along with the protagonists, it is not surprising in fact that the good Hitch had fixed his attention and intention in adapting the work of the famous french couple Boileau-Narcejac, and when not succeeding in this case, Hitchcock made up for it with Vertigo (1958), another successful work of the binomial. Naturally there are differences between literary text and film, for example, in the results of the crime, they are successful in the book, they fail in the film, besides the lesbian link they have in the book, something hidden in the film, but not absent. Thus, there is severe ambiguity among the females, isolated in a room together, plotting their plan, a closeness between the protagonists that leaves room for suspicion, not fully addressed, something that in part was probably eluded because of the film censorship of the time. They have opposite characters, the fervid and determined Nicole, opposed to the fragile and indecisive Christina, even the illuminations of both differ, dark the first, illuminated the second, something that, some assert, was to further distinguish the natures of both women, others argue -like the protagonist Paul Meurisse- that it was to praise the figure of his wife the director, overshadowed by the hot and fiery Simone Signoret. The opposite of feminine characters is even reinforced by the interpretations of them, the looks, the fervid eyes of the Signoret, always contrasted with the weakness of the Clouzot, the tessituras in their acting records reinforce that opposition. The final sequence is exemplary, seven minutes of a sequence that is perfect epitome of the observed, the power of the shadow is maximized, the paroxysm is reached in the shady, darker than ever passage, the black and white that yields to the gloom, the camera that moves with precision, briefly runs with little movement the environment to show enough and not distract attention in the least of what matters, the outcome. The film, it is true, depends a lot on its end, something good and bad, as also famous films have done it, the mentioned Vertigo, Witness for the Prosecution (1957), and respecting the wishes of the director, no revealing details have been disclosed in this article. The first viewing is infinitely more powerful than the later ones, of course, but it is maintained the suspense of a film in which the psychological torments are the biggest, the suspense, the psychological tension that grows by leaps and bounds among women, the suspicions, the conminations, accusations, injunctions. In an attempt to enhance the performances of his actresses, it is said that Clouzot made eating his wife genuinely rotten fish in a sequence, and that made women bear true weight, and a morbid irony is completed, Vera would die of an attack on the heart, like her character. With many inducements, the film is at the top of the production of Clouzot, the director despised by the new wave, but who showed in many ways a more modern style than those detractors.
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