Les diaboliques (1955) Englisch · DVD

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Les Diaboliques tells the story of a sadistic headmaster who brutalises his wife and mistress and their plot to murder him. Superbly edited with nail-biting suspense, the two women murder the headmaster and dump the body in the swimming pool, but when the pool is drained no corpse is found. An unsettling and beautifully-paced study of betrayal, mistrust and guilt, Les Diaboliques is atmospherically shot in black and white, its murky tones hauntingly echo the moral ambiguity of its principals.

In this heralded French terror classic by director-screenwriter Henri-Georges Clouzot, the wife (Vera Clouzot) of a boys-school headmaster (Paul Merisse) tires of his violent treatment of her, along with his philandering, and teams up with his mistress (Simone Signoret) to drown him and make it appear as a suicide. When the body goes missing and sightings of the supposedly dead man are reported all over town, the two mismatched women must uncover what happened to the body before it`s discovered what they`ve done. Upon its release, Clouzot urged all who saw the film not to reveal its surprise ending - one which still stands as one of the original 'shock' endings.