If you are at all familiar with French cinema, you’ll know the name Henri-Georges Clouzot. If you aren’t, hopefully this new documentary about the director’s dream project will tweak your curiosity. Typically referred to as the French Hitchcock due to masterpieces of suspense like Les Diaboliques and Wages Of Fear, in 1964 Clouzot was trying to take film in a completely different direction with L’Enfer. It didn’t quite work out that way though…
Serge Bromberg’s new documentary L’Enfer D’Henri-Georges Clouzot (reviewed by us previously during TIFF and re-titled Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno for English speaking audiences) takes us behind the scenes, conducts current day interviews and even stages sections of Clouzot’s screenplay to tell us the story of how a dream project with an unlimited budget disastrously spiraled out of control into reels of never-to-be-finished footage and screen tests like you’ve never seen before.
Here’s the new English subtitled trailer. It’s a thing of beauty.
Thanks to Twitch as always.
That looks awesome. I had a look on IMDB for release dates and it’s already been released theatrically over here and is out on DVD in a couple of weeks, so I’ll keep an eye out for that.
It was playing at the Royal in Toronto for awhile, I assume it has left. GO SEE THIS, if you care at all about the art of cinema, what Clouzot was doing in this unmade masterpiece is neurotic brilliance.
Bob, can you recommend some other films that actress is in, she was mesmerizing.
Still kicking myself that I missed this at both TIFF and at The Royal on the big screen in 35mm. The clips I’ve seen are simply stunning.
I saw the remake version of Inferno in the used dvd shop next to the Bloor, has anybody watched this, is it any good?
I assume you mean the Chabrol film “L’Enfer” which used Clouzot’s script, but none of the dreamlike visuals. I haven’t seen it, but didn’t hear great things. I guess it depends – if you want a Chabrol film it may be quite good (I am growing to appreciate his slowly building suspense), but it won’t be anything near what Clouzot was trying to make since it focuses mostly on story and not mood.
I don’t know much more about Romy Schneider. She’s been in a wide variety of films (Preminger’s “The Cardinal”, Siodmak’s “Katia” and “What’s New Pussycat?”) and though she was quite respected she never quite got the roles with which she probably could have really made a name for herself. She died of a heart attack at the way too early age of 44.
I need to track down sone of her early stuff – I think Madchen In Uniform is supposed to be quite good.