behind the scenes of an infernal shoot | EUROtoday

On May 24, 2025

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HOllywood, 1953. In his Permant studios workplace, Alfred Hitchcock ends the studying of The one who was nota black novel written by two French authors, Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, who tells how a husband, tormented by the guilt of getting killed his spouse with the complicity of his mistress, begins to imagine that the deceased returned from the lifeless to hang-out him. Enthusiastic, the grasp of suspense desires to make it the topic of his subsequent movie. He disillusioned when he found that the difference rights for the cinema have simply been acquired by Henri-Georges Clouzot, the one that’s rightly nicknamed “French Hitchcock”.

Wrapped within the worldwide success of Fear wage, Clouzot has the means to be his personal producer and won’t deprive himself of it. Of The one who was nothe retains the agonizing environment and the mechanics of the story, however he reshapes the intrigue in his personal means. In the situation, it’s now the spouse and the mistress, Christina and Nicole, who affiliate one another to get rid of the odious Michel, a merciless and violent husband. Clouzot additionally installs motion in a non-public boarding faculty that doesn’t exist within the novel. Boileau and Narcejac don’t really feel betrayed by all these modifications. On the opposite, a couple of years later, as nice admirers of the filmmaker, they may write in preface to the reissue of their guide: “Thank you, Mr. Clouzot! »»

In these years, Clouzot has a big defect: he is madly in love with his wife. For man, it is happy, but, for the filmmaker, it is a problem because he is convinced that Véra, that he married in 1950, has the fabric of a great actress. He wants to make her a star and entrusts her with the role of Christina, the wife who plotted against her husband, embodied, by the solid Paul Meurisse. The latter is more lucid about the talent of Vera Clouzot: “That discovered lighting, developed for hours, to present this face a suspicion of expression! He wrote in his autobiography in 1979.

Feeling that the function of Christina is overwhelming for Véra, Clouzot has the concept of giving that of Nicole, the confederate, to Simone Signoret. The two ladies are mates and he counts on the skilled actress that’s Signoret to assist her accomplice. Some devoted of the filmmaker and a handful of inexperienced persons, together with Michel Serrault and a sure Jean-Philippe Smet, 12, who is just not but known as Johnny Hallyday, full the forged. The capturing of what’s now known as Diabolics Begun on August 18, 1954 on the Château de l’Etang-la-Ville, within the Yvelines, the boarding faculty decor.

The Clouzot technique

The filmmakers are divided into two classes. There are those that work in conviviality so that everybody is snug and offers the perfect of themselves. And then there are the others, the perfectionists, the obsessive, for whom a movie is above all of the reflection of its capturing, and that are able to make their plateau a hell if, of their eyes, the situation calls for it. Clouzot is one among them.

In the booklet that accompanies the movie revealed by TF1 Studio in 2017, the historian of cinema Pascal Mérigeau explains about Clouzot: “The anxieties that haunt him and that he wants to offer in sharing to the spectators, he has the conviction that he must, to start, dump them on the set. […] And the more he is tense, the more vera convinces herself that she will not succeed. […] So he multiplies the catches, makes her start again constantly and mercilessly, until exhaustion. »Clouzot himself, at the microphone of Cinema on the square, On France Culture in 1970, thus defined his method: “As for the path of the actors, I primarily get on to place individuals in a sure nervous state, which continues to be not continually nervousness …” We would be curious to know what Véra Clouzot would have thought if she was not died of a heart attack in 1960.

Pair of slabs and heel stroke

Assistant of Clouzot on The truth (1960), with Brigitte Bardot, Michel Pezin is even more precise: “He treated the actors in two stages. At first, he dismantled, he massacred the interpreter, he emptied the actor with everything he could have with his substance by bringing him to the character. […] This is where the second time was “nailed therapy”: before asking for “engine”, that is to say after 30 repetitions, he found the possibility of annoying his interpreter, of injuring him. […] It’s the pair of slaps in Suzy Delair [sur le tournage de Quai des Orfèvres, NDLR]it’s the heel to crush Brigitte’s foot, he broke a toe in her The truth. And, when the actor’s revolt started, Clouzot said “engine”, we put it quickly in a box and, very often, it was this first socket which was the right one. “(Cinema TuesdaysFrance Culture, May 7, 1985).

Simone Signoret’s nerves on Diabolics have been put to the check. “The tension became extreme of the day when Clouzot said to me very badly:” I ought to by no means have allow you to learn the top of the situation. ” […] I said enough how painful the filming had been to fully assume the blame at that time, “she says in Nostalgia is not what it washis memoirs revealed in 1976.

“After tension, it was hell …”

The infinite rehearsals double the deliberate filming time, which Clouzot makes enjoyable of. Expected on the boards to interpret The witches of Salem, Simone Signoret finds herself in a fragile place, alternating filming of the movie in the course of the day and rehearsals within the theater at night time: “After tension, it was hell and then the apocalypse. […] My director, his wife and I no longer converse us, ”she writes in her memories. In addition, Clouzot refuses her the remuneration to which she thinks he is entitled.

To uncover

The kangaroo of the day

Answer

“I had signed an eight -week contract with Clouzot. […] We made it sixteen. He paid me only eight. He had prepared a contract very well that I had read very badly, ”provides the actress. The capturing led to ache on November 30, 1954. When it was launched on January 29, 1955, Diabolics Triumphs with almost 3.7 million spectators, confirming Clouzot in his standing as grasp of French suspense. Just a few months later, hundreds of kilometers away, a guide entitled Of the lifeless Lands on the desk of Alfred Hitchcock, in Paramount studios. Signed Boileau and Narcejac, he’ll turn out to be Cold sweats On the display.

“Les Diaboliques”, Blu-ray 4K Ultra HD, edited by Coin de Mire, € 29.99. On sale since May 20, 2025.

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