Quoting
transmogrifier (view post)
45
Movie: Les Diaboliques (1955)
Director: Henri-Georges Clouzet
Commentary: So...I did not review this when I saw this 10 years ago, so all of the specifics have washed away, and I’m left with the feeling of escalating tension. I need to rewatch this ASAP. Thus, I leave you with the great Pauline Kael: “The setting is a French provincial school for boys; the headmaster's wife (Vera Clouzot) and mistress (Simone Signoret) conspire to murder him. It sounds simple, but the characters seem fearfully knowing, and there are undertones of strange, tainted pleasures and punishments. According to the director, Henri-Georges Clouzot, "I sought only to amuse myself and the little child who sleeps in all our hearts-the child who hides her head under the bedcovers and begs, 'Daddy, Daddy, frighten me.'" Clouzot does it, all right; his Grand Guignol techniques are so calculatedly grisly that they seem silly, yet they succeed in making one feel queasy and sordid and scared. (Some people may feel too queasy to find the film really pleasurable.)”
Key Quote: “It's always the ones who know how [to swim] that get drowned. The ones who can't, don't go near the pool.”