Diabolique (April 27/03)

Though it's almost 50 years old, Diabolique packs more surprises and thrills than most contemporary movies that claim to do the same.

Set at an all-boys private school, the film introduces its three primary characters almost immediately: Michel (Paul Meurisse), the cruel headmaster; Christina (Vera Clouzot), his long-suffering wife; and Nicole (Simone Signoret), a teacher that's been having an affair with Michel for an unspecified amount of time. Christina knows about Michel's infidelity, and doesn't seem to mind terribly. It's just another reason for her to go along with Nicole's plan to murder him. The two women concoct a scheme involving spiked wine and drowning via bathtub, and everything seems to go smoothly. But when they temporarily dump the body in the school's swimming pool, that's when things go awry.

More than anything, Diabolique perfectly defines the term "slow build." Director Henri-Georges Clouzot takes his time in setting up the story and indeed, it's around the 30-minute mark before anything of substance happens. Prior to that, the film does a nice job of establishing the characters and makes it clear that Michel is someone worth hating. He's a tyrannical sort that rules through fear and intimidation, berating his employees and smacking his wife, so he's certainly not someone we feel sorry for when he eventually gets his comeuppance.

But, more than anything else, Diabolique is a thriller. Though there are sporadic moments of dark humor (including the fate of poor schoolboy Moinet, who keeps insisting that he's talked to Michel), the film works best as a suspenseful and occasionally creepy nail-biter. Clouzot, who co-wrote the screenplay, does a fantastic job of infusing the majority of the film with a real sense of dread and foreboding. Aside from sequences that are inherently suspenseful (the drowning of Michel, for example), Clouzot manages to turn seemingly uneventful moments into surprisingly tense fodder. Like Hitchcock, Clouzot delights in tormenting the audience - withholding vital secrets until the last possible second, while the screws are tightened more and more.

Diabolique doesn't move a mile-a-minute, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. The film requires patience, and rewards the viewer with some incredibly satisfying moments and a twist ending that's almost impossible to guess.