Spoilers follow.
Christina Delassalle (Véra Clouzot) and Nicole Horner (Simone Signoret) are teachers at a run-down private school for boys. The headmaster, Michel (Paul Meurisse), is Christina's husband and Horner's lover, a relationship that he flaunts. In short order, the audience is shown that he is physically, emotionally and sexually abusive to both women. The audience also learns that they are conspiring to do something about him. What isn't clear until later in the film, is that the "something" is a plot to drug and drown him at Horner's home, over a holiday weekend. They appear to succeed, transporting Michel's body back to the school and dumping it in the pool, hoping to pass his death off as an accident. However, when the pool is drained and the body isn't there, the nerves of the two women begin to fray. Is someone playing a game with them, is Michel really dead or is his ghost haunting the killers?
Les Diaboliques is best known for its twist ending, one which I won't reveal, although it is not as surprising or shocking today as it may have been in 1955, a testament to the impact the film had on subsequent cinema. An amusing side note: Les Diaboliques concludes with an end title asking viewers not to tell people who haven't seen the film how it ends. Spoilers were a problem even 58 years ago.
Beyond the ending, there is a rich, rewarding film. None of the characters are particularly sympathetic; abused Christina is the person most people will identify with and she does have good cause to kill her husband...except, why not just divorce him? She says it is because she is Catholic; but she plans to murder him. It's been a while since Sunday school, but I think murder trumps divorce as a sin.
Paul Meurisse smooth acting gives Michel a slimy charm. He is superficially attractive; however, he is such a violent, repulsive person - casually raping his wife, giving his mistress a black eye, shoving his affair in Christina's face, inflicting petty torments on the staff and students - that he begins to slip into the mode of a caricature. This is important, as it keeps our sympathies, such as they are, with the killers. If anyone deserves to die, it is him. It also raises some questions about Nicole's overall motivation, as revealed in the finale, one of the few weak points in the film.
Both Clouzot and Signoret are captivating in their roles as the abused damsel-in-distress and femme fatale, respectively. Clouzot believably pulls off the shifts from fragile and doll like (her primary characteristics) to resolved (on a few occasions) believably enough. She also conveys the role of follower - whether to domineering Michel or take-charge Nicole - well. Signoret, beautiful and ice-cold, is perfect as a personification of Christina's independence and willpower, damaged as it may. What Nicole get's out of the relationship is a little less clear, although one scene near the end, where Nicole tells Christina they should leave the school together and Christina rejects her, hints at a relationship that is not just a friendship born of necessity and hardship. While based on undertones and interpretation rather than clear plot-points, there is some indication that they are lovers. If so, this clearly shows that Christina is evolving as a character, killing one domineering (and abusive) lover and ultimately rejecting another (although Nicole is not physically abusive towards Christina).
The film itself is filled with great moments, both scenes and images. There is a disturbing dinner where Michel forces his wife to eat a piece of fish while the staff and students look on that conveys the discomfort that everyone around Michel feels toward shim...and that none of them will stand up to him. A scene late in the film has Christina walking down a dark corridor of the school, her white nightgown slowly becoming the only thing clearly visible, emerging from the shadows like a ghost. A sequence at Nicole's home shows how the signs of the murder are interpreted by others. While she fills a bathtub to drown Michel in, her upstairs tenants complain about the pipes making so much noise late at night, while they are tying to listen to the radio. Scenes like this abound in the film, creating a complex environment for the story and one that repays close viewing and analysis.
There some plot-holes, mostly having to do with the ending and therefore something I won't go into. On second viewing, some of these are cleared up, but only because the viewer now has the complete story and can fill in some of the blanks and overlook some unexplained parts of the plot. Also, the finale includes a reveal that relies so heavily on exposition that it wouldn't seem out of place at the end of a Scooby Doo episode, a rare moment of clumsy writing. Les Diaboliques is a classic for a good reason; it is a masterpiece of film, a merging of story, acting, sound and images that creates a world of such depth and complexity that one can overlook the plot-holes. See it immediately, both to enjoy a great noir film and to see where many tropes of the thriller movie genre were popularized.
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