The Quarantine Stream: ‘Les Diaboliques’ Is The Best Suspense Film Hitchcock Never Directed
By Hoai-Tran Bui/Oct. 30, 2020 7:00 am EST
The movie takes place at a French boys’ boarding school run by a cruel and sadistic headmaster who is hated by the boys and staff alike, even the stunning teacher Nicole (Signoret) who until recently had been his mistress — until a black eye swiftly makes her change her mind. The headmaster’s sickly wife Christina (Clouzot) meekly accepts his abuse and sheepishly watches by as he doles out his latest punishments. But both she and Nicole have had enough. Nicole proposes the extreme action: a murder plot with the perfect cover-up that will make it seem like a suicide or accident. Christina reluctantly goes through with it, and they seem to pull it off — until the body disappears from the pool that the two of them had dumped it in. And that’s where the plot really kicks in.
Ghostly apparitions appear to pop up throughout the school, students swear they had seen their headmaster around the grounds, and strange deliveries made just the day before start to poke at Christina’s deeply Catholic guilt, and the poor, sickly women starts to unravel. The feelings of dread build and build, up to that shocking climax.
The story behind Les Diaboliques and its tense, terrifying twist would end up coming full circle — inspiring Hitchcock’s Psycho, with Psycho author Robert Bloch even citing Clouzot’s film as his all-time favorite horror film. It’s a fitting legacy for the film that Hitchcock just missed out on.
