Sleuth (1972)

Interesting.  I can see some similarities also to Games -- which also starts Simone Signoret.  Both involve someone being driven crazy by sightings of someone supposedly dead.

Oh, my, I just checked the plot summary for Diabolique, and Games could almost be the English language equivalent of it.  Signoret even has the same role in both, except she's merely the husband's murder partner (which is the murderer and which is the accomplice is an interesting question) in the latter.  In both cases the husband is going for the wife's money.  There are definitely differences in plot details, and in Games Signoret's character gets away with everything.  But both involve a husband and another woman driving his wife crazy over the reappearance of someone who supposedly has been murdered.

I’m just over halfway in Diabolique. I’m not overwhelmed by the quality of this movie. For 1955, it may have been cutting edge but it looks more than a little dated now.

Thelma and Louise this is not. The girls very clearly are leaving a trail of clues behind them. They have in no way thought this crime through. And that might sound endearing in a way, but I get the definite feeling that French women in the audience of the time would have been jeering these two women for their obvious stupidity.

And one of them is being swallowed by regret after-the-fact. (In Noirt, they drugged him and then drowned him in the bathtub. They carried him back in a wicker basket at night to the school.) You might interpret the wife’s guilty feelings and doubt as indicative of a moral conscience. But the character comes across not as moral but as insipid and weak. If you’re going to do a job, do it right. Stop the blubbering.

It just gets utterly ridiculous. They eventually dump the body in the unused (and overrun with muck) swimming pool at the school. But the wife can’t keep her eyes off the pool, especially because it is in view of her classroom. Will the body suddenly appear?

It sounds suspenseful. But the way it plays out is pretty dumb. But there is a nice twist. Having all but given herself up by giving every obvious tell to those around her that something is amiss, the weak, insipid husband-murderer orders the groundskeeper to drain the pool. She just wants to get this over with. The police will come in. They’ll rule it an accidental death. Or at least, in her weak and overwrought mind, it will be over one way or another.

But when the pool is finally drained, there is no body. To top if off, soon after, the dead man’s suit is delivered by the dry-cleaners to the school. They go to the dry-cleaners to try to find out who dropped the clothes off. The get not only a description of the man (but no name) but the key to a hotel room that the man somehow left behind.

The wife (ex-wife) goes to the hotel room and no one is there. She meets a custodian of the hotel who tells her the man is rarely there and rarely seen. The plot thickens, I guess.

My motivation now is just to get this film over. I’m far enough into it that I want to see where they are going with it. But this is not an exposition of great French acting or movie-making, at least yet. It feels more like an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents that runs on for too long.

I would have loved to watch Diabolique with you, Timothy. Something this amateurish is best when shared.

Why someone wanted to stretch this out to 117 minutes is anyone’s guess. Tightened up, it would have been much the better for it.

Most of the negative reviews I read said “Despite the good acting.” You may be a good judge of acting or not. But I can see Kim Novak or even Jamie Lee Curtis in the role of the terrorized wifey, Christina Delassalle. But the performance of Véra Clouzot (and the plot of this movie) would have been considered amateurish for a high school play. Véra Clouseau, maybe.

Anyway, the way this all works out is that it was the husband and mistress who were trying to kill the wife via inducing a fatal heart attack. They were faking his death. Yawn. What an absolutely stupid device. And, of course, in the movie it works right on time. He delivers the scare and she dutifully keels over on queue of a heart attack. Like I said, amateurish even for a high school play.

Simon Signoret, who plays the mistress, Nicole Horner, sometimes has shades of a good femme fatale. But the more you get into the movie (which starts reasonably well), the more you see her complete lack of range as an actress. The child actors in this (who had only bit parts) were more convincing as real people.

So there’s nothing you can do with a movie such as this (if you have reasonably good taste) but to invite some like-minded friends over to laugh and throw tomatoes at this turkey which so many others (going by the reviews) hold in high regard.

One reviewer sounds just to the “right” of me regarding his rant about this steaming pile of crap: