Little work is needed by director Henri-Georges Clouzot to make you despise the antagonist of Diabolique with the proverbial fury of a thousand suns. The classic French thriller begins with talk of boarding school principal Michel Delassalle (Paul Meurisse) physically abusing his current sex toy, Nicole (Simone Signoret), who’s comforted by fellow teacher Christina (Véra Clouzot), who’s married to that son of a bitch.

Yes, Michel lives where he works where he fucks, openly, with wife and mistress knowing about the other, yet remaining as friends. It’s tough to be jealous when the man you share is a complete and utter prick — to you, to his employees, to his students. No wonder Christina wants to divorce; Nicole gives her the confidence to ask for one, but that’s merely a ruse for their plot to murder him.

It happens soon in the two-hour film — drugging and then drowning him in the tub — leaving the two ladies — and their audience — roughly 90 minutes to sweat it out as guilt mounts when the corpse vanishes. Threading the suspense in a methodical, drawn-out fashion of which Alfred Hitchcock was a master, Monsieur Clouzot (The Wages of Fear) eventually crafts a quilt of questions we can’t wait to see answered, just as we couldn’t wait to see Michel murdered.

With the devilishly delicious Diabolique‘s stellar rep, its big reveal scene may be known to many who’ve never seen it. That included me, and yet, I still couldn’t figure everything out before Clouzot chose to show us. Yes, its two hours run a little slow in patches, and the husband so hateful that he may as well have a swastika armband, but the overall story works so well, its continuing influence on so many other movies is simply undeniable. —Rod Lott

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