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Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: Unrated
Binding: DVD
EAN: 0932222502829
Format: PAL
Number Of Items: 1
Region Code: 2
Running Time: 100 minutes
Sales Rank: 186992
Theatrical Release Date: November 21, 1955
Editorial Review:
Product Description:
Amazon.com essential video:
Legend has it that Henri-Georges Clouzot beat out Alfred Hitchcock to secure the rights to this novel, which proved to be a veritable blueprint for an icy masterpiece of murder, mystery, and suspense. Véra Clouzot plays the sickly wife of a callous headmaster of a provincial boarding school going to seed, and the commanding Simone Signoret is the headmaster's mistreated mistress. Together they plot and carry out his murder, a brutal drowning that director Clouzot documents in chilly detail, but the corpse disappears, and a nosy detective starts sniffing around the grounds as threatening notes taunt the women. Clouzot's thriller is as precise and accomplished a work as anything in Hitchcock's canon, a film of grueling suspense and startling shocks in an overcast, gray world of decay, but his icy manipulations lack the human dimension and emotional resonance of the master of suspense. The film has been accused of being misanthropic by many critics, and Clouzot's attitude toward his characters is bitter at best, contemptuous at worst. The viewer is left on the outside looking in, but the razor precision and terrifying twists deliver a sleek, bleak spectacle worthy of attention. --Sean Axmaker
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Excellent Cinema
The next time you need a film that totally enthralls you, see Les Diaboliques. I had heard so much about this movie that when I finally found it, I watched it immediately. I was nervous from all the hype (as well as from seeing the "remake" with Sharon Stone and Chazz Palminteri, I know it is poor). But seeing this 1955 masterpiece, I am reassured.
The acting is superb. The cinematography is eerie and lends to the mood of the film. And the story is so original and exciting it ... Read More
Rating: - Le Diabolique
A frightening crime caper from 1955 directed by multi award winning French filmmaker Henri-Georges Clouzot
Rating: - A Film So Good It Made Hitchcock Jealous
A murder mystery, a suspense thriller, an exploration of human psychology, Diabolique is so good that when he first saw it (the first of many viewings) the reigning master of the suspense thriller, Alfred Hitchcock, was envious. The tortuous Diabolique is the story of the murder of a cruelly domineering headmaster of a French boy's school, carried out by his ailing foreign-born wife and aging, blonde mistress, followed by the sanity-assaulting, seemingly impossible, turns of events that ensue from ... Read More
Rating: - Outstandingly Terrifying
What a mistake to watch this movie at nighttime!!
Les Diabolique (The Devils) is a tale of a woman, Christine who is the wife of a boy's boarding school principal, Michel Delasalle. In a terrible marriage, she wants a divorce, but Michel won't allow her to divorce him. So, Christine and her friend, Nicole devise a plan to murder her husband.
They put sedative in his wine, and then drown him in a bathtub. They then take him in a wicker trunk back to the boarding school and ... Read More
Rating: - "Les Diaboliques" 1955 French Suspense Masterpiece!
In 1955's "Les Diaboliques" the viewer is taken to a French provincial town and is introduced to Michel Delassalle (Paul Meurisse), a sadistic headmaster of a school belonging to his wife Christina (Vera Clouzot). Christina is a fragile young woman with a weak heart and is tormented by her adulterous husband who is having an affair with Nicole Horner (Simone Signoret), a strong, forceful teacher who has been his mistress from the day she arrived. He has, however, treated her as badly as his wife, and ... Read More
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